The title, “Where We Relax,†in the author’s self-appointed category, “Personal,†suggests this might be a family blog, about the places two or more people who spend a lot of time together go to relax. I imagined parks, saunas, swimming pools, cafes, most of them kid-friendly, illustrated with photos of the happy group enjoying their sojourn from the nine to five. It would be bursting with “awww†moments and the scent of fresh air so tactile it would cause tendrils of longing and envy as the reader dreamed of escaping from behind the computer screen into a playground of green earth, dirt, dandelions, and buggy-wugs. Naturally, reality bears no resemblance to my imagination. Normally I cope with the stress of this rift by eating cookies and reading surrealist fiction. The bloggers over at “Where We Relax†suggest that I cope with that stress by using one of their massage products, available through their sponsor, Ultimate Water Massage.
The blog is written by a team of seven people. Thus far most entries have been written by the only two without human names, Service Guru and Product Guru. In lieu of an “About,†one must refer to the upper toolbar and select “Company and Authors,†which is a blog post written by Admin, which is either short for “administrator†or the name of a human male. Here one learns that the blog is written by employees. For once my imagination isn’t concussed after colliding with reality.
The design is based on the idea of water. The background is a soothing collage of blue abstract shapes and lines. The entries and navigation column are silver with rounded edges, while the content background baby blue framed by lavender. Very feng shui.
Aside from a smattering of first person posts that begin with the story of a stressful meeting or painful toe and end with sweet relief offered by one of the company’s products, most of the blog entries are decidedly impersonal. Strangely, the topics that have the most posts seem to have the blog writers as the intended audience. “Writers Only†and “Writing for WordPress Tips†have a combined total of 15 posts, balanced against 23 posts under the 8 other categories combined.
Most of the other posts are about stress, ways people cope with it, what causes it, the damage it can do, and concerns along those lines. The posts read like professional articles, which is to say, they are very well written. Many are punctuated with statistics and polls. According to one of the how-to-write posts, this is the “E†in a SUPER post. A SUPER post is Simple, Unexpected, Practical, Expert, and Relates to the reader. Wedged between the E and R of a SUPER post, one learns that Expertise, specifically when the reader perceives it, DEFEATS doubt. How can you be sure the reader perceives your expertise? By using Demonstrations, Examples, Facts, Evidence, Analogy, Testimonials, and Statistics, one can be sure to bludgeon doubt by exuding the perception of expertise.
As a reader, any one of those letters might dispel doubt, but when they are all used in a cacophony, what is perceived is not expertise but the salesman’s pitch. Bites of numbers and percentages don’t necessarily lend credibility, especially when one doesn’t know where the numbers came from, how they were counted, or who counted them. Statistics are notorious for being misleading, and statistically, people are disinclined to follow things that will mislead them.
The writers are knowledgeable and skilled at crafting technical essays. However, I can’t shake the feeling that it’s all crafted just to sell something to me. This blog doesn’t seem to have found its own voice yet. Normally I have no problem imagining what kind of person might read a particular blog on a regular basis, but aside from repeat customers and industry employees, my imagination fails me. However, the first entry was made less than two months ago, so this blog is young enough to be rife with potential.
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