Dying blogger giving away 100 dollars, people laugh like crazy

And now a late-breaking A to Z news report:

Dying blogger giving away 100 dollars, people laugh like crazy

Mumbai: In an interesting development, a broke amateur blogger who lost his job thanks to the April AtoZ challenge, has decided to give away his last 100 dollars through a blogging contest. The announcement sent shockwaves of amusement throughout the blogging community, with incidents of laughter induced hernia and vomiting reported from all over the world.

Our agency was among the first to report the tragic loss of Akhil’s job when he was caught writing articles for the AtoZ challenge during office hours. The blogging community, crossing borders and cutting lines, had strongly supported him and his right to get the load off his head. This time though, the reaction is completely opposite.

Vaisakh, a blogger from India, tried his best to talk to us over the phone. However his incessant, breathless laughter rendered all his words inaudible. After half an hour of effort, he finally caught some air and said:

“I’ve known that guy from the first day he started writing. I really liked his incoherent, thoughtless banter, made me feel really good about my own writing. But then tragedy struck and he was thrown out of his job. People really sympathised with him you know, but sympathy doesn’t pay the bills, does it? I can’t believe he is stupid enough to give away his last penny, that too through a blogging contest! I mean do you see the irony here? One challenge took away his job, the other one is gonna take away his life! He has really outshined Peter Griffin I tell you.”

We caught up with his fellow blogger Ayush Chauhan at a cheap liquor joint just outside of town. Sticking a dirty needle up his left arm, he talked about the good times and how it all went down the drain so quickly:

“We were 2 broke IT guys. Then we were 2 broke IT guys who blogged. Our dreams of making thousands of dollars online were brutally shattered when he got fired. Ever since then, he has been begging me for some money, but you can see how things are. I’m glad he is getting it over with. That poor bastard never knew what hit him. May he rest in peace.”

Source: www.zuzafun.com[/caption]

When last seen, Akhil was living in a cardboard box just outside of Vashi station. He appeared frail and delusional, and kept muttering something about the Govt. taking away his home. Our reporters managed to get some fluids inside him, giving him the energy to speak:

“Sure, I lost my job due to the AtoZ, but it inspired me to write. I finally got a place to put my endless thoughts to rest. This is my tribute to my blogging friends, my death will spawn 100 new articles and those 100 will give birth to 10000! Money is so overrated I tell you, and eternal glory costs only 100 dollars. I invite you to share this glory with me.”

The situation continues to be grim but excruciatingly funny.

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      Okay so the article is not totally real, but the contest part is.   For more information check out 1 Hundred Works.

Related articles

• Forced by A to Z Challenge, man loses job.
• Travels Within and Without
• Building Communities: Corinne Rodrigues and the A2Zeders

A-Z Reflections 2013: Ornery's Wife from Zoe's Cottage

As I was out reading Reflections Posts, I came across some fantastic ones that I thought would generate a good discussion. Perhaps you were too weary to write your own, but I'm pretty sure you still have some opinions. I thought Ornery's Wife did a great job of outlining some of the main topics we as co-hosts want to hear your opinions about. So comment away, or if you've already done so in your reflections post, feel free to leave the link to it in the comments. ~Tina

Since I have a strong tendency to FORGET things, I may have forgotten to write this when I had planned to and in fact may forget to put in some important thing.  I hope not...

First, the Positive aspects of the challenge:

• It was very well organized and advertized
• There were many participants, from diverse backgrounds, locations and perspectives
• I found a LOT of new blogs to follow
• Many new friends are following my blog :)
• There was a lot of information up front about how to be successful and by reading that I was able to finish the challenge successfully and change up many aspects of my blog to make it more reader and comment friendly.  I do love me some comments!
• After reading so many blog posts with the Captcha turned off, when I found one with that in it I was shocked! :)  I only had one or two anonymous comments that were unrelated to the post and those were directed to Blogger's spam folder.
• I like only having to link up ONE time at the beginning of the challenge instead of daily--sometimes I can't get to my computer until late in the day and not having to stress if I didn't make it at all was really nice!
• My Google Chrome browser highlighted which blogs I had already visited on the linky list so I could check out new ones easily since (as I mentioned before) I am inclined to FORGET things like where I had been before.  It only worked if I clicked the link directly from the list (as opposed to from another comment on a blog) and in Chrome (not Firefox) but that was how I usually went "shopping" for another friend. :)
• I love that there was not a set theme other than the alphabet letter for the day--you could choose your own theme for the month or choose not to use one at all and fly by the seat of your pants. 
• I was also glad there was no length requirement.  Some of my favorite reads were just a picture with a caption.  I also found that if the post was really long and about a topic I was only marginally interested in, I didn't spend much time there.
• I was challenged to amp up my writing, both in quality and quantity. The challenge seemed to attract a really large group of "real" writers, and their content was more often than not meaty and fun to read with fewer glaring grammar errors. 
• Truly, this was an amazing collection of bloggers!  Not only did most of them reciprocate visits, a lot of them left great comments. I have never had that type of response in any other blogging carnival/hop  in the past.

Now for the negative aspects, if one could call it that--Perhaps more like constructive criticism?

• There were several blogs I visited that never did post a single entry for the challenge after they announced they were participating or else dropped out early in the month. I couldn't find the email address to send the links to so I didn't ever report them. Even at the end of the month I was still stumbling across some of those.  Perhaps there could be a link on the linky page of the A to Z blog about where to report? (or did I just miss it??)
• I came across several blogs with Adult Content that were not flagged on the list. I may choose to visit one, but I would like to know in advance it is such. Otherwise the tags on the blogs were somewhat helpful when deciding which ones to visit.  For the most part the AC notes were the only ones I tended to avoid because I FORGOT what the different letters stood for other than WR and I didn't want to take the time to go back up and read the list.
• The Disqus comment thing was annoying.  Some of the blogs allowed you to comment with just your name and email address, but others required you to have a Disqus account or log in with Facebook, Pinterest, or Twitter.  I didn't comment there.
• Some of the blogger profiles are linked to their Google+ account, but there is not a visible link to their blog in their feed. So, when tracing down a comment I was directed to Google+ but couldn't reciprocate their visit because I couldn't find their blog address.  Perhaps if someone has their blog set up this way they might add a blog link to their home page or else in the comment itself.
• I was more likely to comment on a blog whose comment link was at the bottom of the post as opposed to having to drive back up to the top to find it.  Some of them were so small and hard to find it took a lot of time.  
• I was more likely to read a post if the entire thing was displayed when I arrived on the site as opposed to having to click a "read more" link. Page re-loads take valuable reading time and as I mentioned above, I have a tendency to peruse the length of the post before I read it to determine if I have enough time (or attention) to give to a lengthy piece or not.

And that is about it.  Thanks to Arlee Bird and all the helpers who made the challenge so much fun and easy to participate in.  Thanks to all my new followers and those who left such insightful comments on the posts. Thanks to you for reading this one!  I'll be back next year, maybe on more than one blog! :)

Thanks, Ornery's Wife (love that name) for sharing. Please go visit her at Zoe's Cottage and give her some more bloggy love.

Building Communities: Corinne Rodrigues and the A2Zeders

        In this year's A to Z Reflections Posts I kept seeing the name of Corinne Rodrigues mentioned in regard to the bloggers she had encouraged to join A to Z and the blogging community she had developed.  Since one of the goals of the A to Z Challenge is to build community, what she was doing was right in line with what I'd been working toward.  Corinne was so successful at this community building that I've invited her to the A to Z Blog to tell us more about this topic.   I think what she has done is part of the future of what the A to Z Challenge will become.


Although I've been blogging regularly for six years now, it was only in 2011 that my blog really took off. That was largely due to the fact that I was invited to join a Blogging Group on Facebook.   This was a group in which we share our links, have a lot of fun and laughter, discussed issues and yes, even got into arguments at times.  We  sent each other messages when we knew someone was not feeling good, wished each other for birthdays and anniversaries and even condoled the passing of family members. But most of all, we visited and commented on each other's blogs.  Now I knew that each time I posted, I could share my link in the group and have at a couple of visits and comments on my blog. This was so different, from putting my posts out in the blog world and hoping some random blogger would come along and be nice enough to read and comment.

Some people say that they don't blog to be read, and don't need assurance from their readers.  My question to such folk would be, 'Why blog, then. Why not keep your blog private?'  If we're honest, every visit, every comment, every 'award' does make us feel that someone is 'listening' to us.  I can quite frankly say that the moment I knew I had serious and committed readers, the quality of my posts improved. Now I knew for certain that people were 'listening' and caring enough to tell me so.

It was with this experience in mind that I decided to take on the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge for the first time.

 I'm part of a group of Indian women bloggers - but it's a blogging group with a difference. We don't share our links - we share our thoughts and opinions on a variety of subjects. So while I interact with a lot of bloggers there, I don't actually visit all their blogs and neither does everyone of them visit mine! When I read about the Challenge, I shared the link with this group.  Someone in this group asked me if I was participating and told me that she would too if I was.  I decided to take up the Challenge on the blog that I share with my husband (and dog!) so as to get it really started.  By then the number of bloggers taking up the challenge was a staggering 1500. How was I going to be able to post, visit and get visitors to my blog, I wondered.  That's when I had  the idea of creating a Facebook group for specifically for Challenge. I invited some bloggers there, and they in turn invited others and soon we had a group about about 15 bloggers.

A2Zeders was born. We read and shared all we could about the Challenge. A few of us had undertaken the challenge before and shared their experiences.  Our guidelines were simple - write, read and comment. Every day I would pin a post for the Alphabet at the top of the group page. The members would then add their links to the thread and start to visit and comment on as many other blogs on the thread as they could. Many members even shared all the links on Twitter.

It's summer in India, and many members were scheduled to go on vacation. So that was going to be a challenge. We found a way around that too. These members scheduled their posts and someone in the group religiously shared them on the relevant thread and made sure they got comments.  There were a few members who seriously considered dropping out because of difficult work routines. Did we let them do that? No!

Soon people were chatting to each other on other threads - asking for suggestions and ideas,  praising someone's post for the day, inquiring why someone hadn't posted that day, motivating,  pushing and just being community.  The power of community using social media was on display the entire month of the Challenge.

As with all groups, there were some members who just shared their and didn't bother to visit other blogs or really interact in the group. Thankfully they were a very small minority. And it was completely their loss.

I'm happy to report that some members got so hooked on to this experience, that they've taken on another challenge for May.  Even better, we've created a new Facebook group - restricted to some of those who took part in the challenge.  We've begun visit each others' blogs, take on group prompts, undertake blog critiques. It's still in the early stages, but I'm confident the experience and euphoria of the A-Z Challenge can be converted into a sustainable group of bloggers committed to improving the quality of their writing and motivating other members to do the same.

I'm grateful to Arlee Bird and all the members of the A-Z organizing team who through their creativity have encouraged other bloggers to be creative and innovative.

Do you think that being part of Blogging Group on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or any other platform, can help improve your blogging/writing experience?

Corinne Rodrigues is a Mumbai-based blogger who can be found here.