Howdy folks!
Today I would like to introduce you all to a very good friend of mine, and a fellow blogger. His name is Sparky, and he has been one of my biggest inspirations ever since I opened up Evil Squirrel’s Nest. Here you see Sparky back in the days when he used to work in the sporting goods department at K-Mart. Always cheerful, always friendly, and always willing to act like he actually knew which ammunition actually went with the gun you were going to purchase… but those days are over for Sparky. Now that he’s an uberfamous blogger known the world over, he sits at home and collects unemployment while he patiently waits for his blog to start making him tons of money.
Sparky is living the American dream, and I’ve always strived to join him in his life full of adventure, sparkliness, and waiting in the bread line. So today, I’m going to show off what I’ve learned from the master, and really make this blog of mine super sparkly awesome and popular!
Because, you know, I want this more than I do the air that I breathe…
The most important thing I need to work on is building a huge base of followers and make them think that I actually have any use for them other than padding my own blog’s stats. Time was, when I’d get a new fan who showed an interest in my blog, I would also become a fan of their blog as well and reciprocate the interaction. Sparky’s much smarter than I’ll ever be, and he taught me that time spent actually reading the blogs of other people could be put to better use relentlessly stalking the few bloggers who actually matter.
No, the best way to show your followers that you care without having to actually spend much time on them is to continuously pump out pretty little awards. What better way to spread the love than to guilt your fellow bloggers into accepting an award that will take them several weeks to complete all the useless crap you required them to comply with in order to show off the badge you made for them!
I drew this, can’t you tell? It looks so much like the rest of my artwork!
Oh wait, did I say make for them? Silly me. See, while I do have some skill at creating my own artwork on the computer, Sparky was shocked to hear that I went through all the effort to create original art to sprinkle throughout my blog posts. I mean, that’s why the internet gods created Google Image Search, right?
Heck, as it turns out, I don’t even need to take the time sifting through Google! See, artists tend to follow other artists blogs, so I have a wealth of other creative people at my disposal whose unwatermarked pieces of art they post are just ripe for the picking! No wonder Sparky is so reviled revered in the blogging community… the man’s an absolute GENIUS!
So, I’d like to present the following award to all of my supercool followers out there!
The King Limpy Award is the most prestgiousest blogging award out there in the known universe! Only the totally rad and sparklicious bloggers out there can display the King Limpy badge on their sidebar! The rules for being allowed the privilege of displaying this awesome image on your pathetic blog are quite simple indeed! You must do them in order too, that’s important for some reason….
1. Thank the recipient for nominating you for the King Limpy Award! And don’t just say “Golly gee, thanks!” and provide a linkback…. after all, you really aren’t worthy of of this award anyway, and you know darn good and well it was only presented to you to get some free advertising on your blog. Go all out and grovel at the feet of the presenter. Offer your devoted readership forever, and possibly even hand at marriage. Don’t worry if you are the same gender as the blogger who nominated you, this is 2013 and that’s perfectly OK now.
2. Answer all 99 questions provided by the presenter. Yes, these are very personal and probing questions, because more than likely the presenter is only trying to find out if you’re truly worth stalking by trying to root out if you share any of their favorite fetishes. Don’t be shy, let your personality flow!
3. Create 99 new questions of your own for other bloggers you’d like to nominate. This is merely a useless fetch quest to distract you from realizing that the blogger who nominated you hasn’t liked or replied to anything you have posted in weeks, not that they were ever even reading the stuff on your blog they did Like in the past. All questions must contain at least one adverb and use of the letter P is forbidden.
4. Buy something from my online store. Minimum purchase to qualify for the King Limpy Award is $150 USD. This award is all about shameless self-promotion after all. Sparky would want it that way. You know you always wanted to drink your coffee from a mug with Buster’s handsome face on it…
5. Nominate 500 other bloggers, and make sure to share the good news that they’ve been nominated for the King Limpy award by commenting on one of their more serious blog posts, like the one about how they were just diagnosed with terminal cancer. Don’t forget to include the link to my store! Check up on your nominees to see if they’re followed through on your nomination or not. Continue to pester the ones who ignore you by noting that they must have overlooked your previous comment. Repeat daily as necessary.
Forgive me, Sparky, for one original artwork!
Since the King Limpy Award is mine, I’m not bound by the rules I established for it. So I choose to nominate only one blogger for it, Merbear. I could waste my time getting the links to a bunch of my other followers, but like Kevin Bacon, every blogger on the World Wide Web can be traced back to Merby in under six degrees of separation. So by just nominating her, I’ll start a chain reaction that will soon make me just as famous and beloved and rich as my pal Sparky! I won’t have any problems making sure she follows up on the award either, since I already check her blog out about 200 times a day, and I’ll be sure to drop helpful reminder comments on her blog every hour on the hour. Maybe she’ll present me with the Creeper Award again!!! She loves me so, and I love her…. and the life-sized poster of the left side of her face I have on my wall!
This will be so awesome! Within the next few days, my follower counter will go through the roof! I’ll soon have thousands of fans with foreign names I can’t pronounce who will Like my posts within 0.043 seconds of me posting them! Awesome!!! No, Sparklepony awesome!!!!
So there you have it, folks! How to make millions of friends on the internet and get rich trying! If Sparky can do it, then so can I!
Did I mention Sparky’s advice will turn you into a babe magnet?
Disclaimer to those not in the know: This post was my entry in Alice in Wonderland’s Sparklepony contest, and should not be taken seriously… well, too seriously anyway. I am not normally this annoying…. honest!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
Zomg, I haven’t laughed so hard in a while. I LOVE it and will have to check out all your link drops later. Soooo funny! Thanks for a totally fabulous entry! And of course Mer is the one to nominate for the King Limpy – hahaha love it!
The cool thing is that within the first hour of posting this, I’ve already gotten two follows from other bloggers pushing the Sparky plan! Yesssss!!! I’m on my way….
Great! I’m so glad it’s helping you too! Power to the Sparky!
The pupil has become the master my young Padawan.
Learned well from Sparky, you have.
🙂
He has lit up my path and shown me the way! And I’m now up to three new followers this morning alone who will never read a post on my blog…
That is indeed the Sparky “way to bloggy enlightenment” 🙂
Totally rad and sparklicious blogger? Little old me? Wow. That is a hellofalot of stipulations for your award there ES, but how can I pass on it? I mean…its King Limpy!! I am honored and shall stalk the fuck out of you forever and ever. And ever.
No really, just speechless here..so many people to thank…all the little people…
I’ll work on that question list….. no, better yet, I’ll just ask Marlene for 99 random facts about you. Sparky don’t write no questions…
If you can come up with 99 questions, I will answer them!
I don’t know about 99 question, but I can come up with 99 problems, and a bitch ain’t one!
Chicken, buck buck buck….
most entertaining, witty and insightful post. I hope you win. Sparklepony is sure to make friends with Rainbowdonk. Just imagine tiny little Rainbowsparkies flying about. Now THATS cute! Wheres my hook?
🙂
Oh my, I never thought about that! Sparkly, rainbow maned little colts might be wandering about should I manage to hook up the two. The mind boggles!!!!
Jeez the cynicism just flows like a waterfall out of this one! Fair enough though. I don’t know anything about this Sparky thing – but I get enough bloggers (or fake bloggers) with “how to make money from your blog!” etc. to be pretty cynical too. I just ignore them.
You must get a ton of “awards” to be this jaded about them though :p … I’ve only ever got one, so they still have a bit of novelty for me.
Like I said in the disclaimer, this was an intentionally overblown post written specifically for a contest another blogger was holding about a “tribute” to a hypothetical “world’s most annoying blogger” named Sparky, who gave advice on how his blog was so “successful”. One of the keys to Sparky’s success was the handing out of meaningless blogging awards, and I kinda latched on to that element for my entry since I already wasn’t too big a fan of them, and as you obviously caught, largely rolled my eyes over. I knew I could tap that for plenty of my usual brand of cynical and sarcastic humor…. and hopefully, it will win! 🙂
Other Sparky bad blogging habits I included in it were numerous linkbacks to older posts on my blog, the over-worshipping of certain more popular bloggers, relishing fake honors and pumped up blog stats, and extensive use of plagiarism (The image for the fake award I gave out was blatantly stolen from something the blogger holding the contest had posted in her blog in the past)…
Yeah that all sounds pretty dodgy. Good work in giving Sparky a bit of hassle then
Ok, I’ve read the post about the competition now. So it makes more sense 🙂
There we go!
Funny thing about doing this post… I set my blog’s record for most followers added yesterday (Only 6, big whoopdie doo!), and with one exception, they were all those pesky Sparkly-like bloggers who want to show you how to make money with your blog! Sparky may not be real, but his spirit is alive and well in the blogosphere!
True. I don’t know whether these are real people or what exactly their scam is, but it sure is daft. If you think you’re going to make a living out of blogging, you’re almost certain to be severely disappointed.
Did you know the “Sparkie” is actually taken from a Christian education program called AWANAS – you play games, eat snacks, read the bible – good times =) I went when I was a little squirrel . . .
OMG! I had no idea where Alice had gotten that image! That’s pretty funny…. Sparky gone bad! And being corrupted by my squirrel girls!!!
LOL I thought it looked familiar – I had to double-check, it’d been QUITE a while, but it’s pretty hilarious! =) Cute too! Those squirrel girls have quite the charm! lol
Oh my. I laughed so, so hard reading this. Good luck with the contest!
Blogging might not be the way to “make money” … but I am sitting here thinking everyone in the blogosphere needs one of those Buster mugs. ^.~
Yes they do! Especially all those new “get-rich-quick” bloggers who have “followed” me since i posted this!!! 🙂
Oh! That could be your award, instead of the King Limpy. It could be the Buster Mugging Award. LOL 😀
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ROFL!
for me that may just be a phrase, but my boys actually still roll on the floor so does that count? 😉 lol Great post! 🙂
I make it my mission to make normally sane adults roll on the floor in laughter! And when I’m really on my game, I even hope to make the LMAO part a reality! 😉
lol If I did the latter though, I wouldn’t be able to sit down at my computer anymore 😉 haha
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