Stop Abuse of Blog Memes!

Today, you may have discovered on other blogs, is day where potentially thousands of bloggers across the globe are rallying to stop abuse – ANY kind of abuse. Here’s a message about it I received from BlogCatalog:

On Thursday, September 27th, post about any abuse topic you care
about – child abuse, domestic abuse, animal abuse, drug abuse,
emotional abuse, verbal abuse, political abuse – and let the world know
you stand united with thousands of bloggers as part of the Bloggers
Unite "Blog Against Abuse" campaign. Depending on your topic, you can
even link to local, regional, national, or international organizations
that you care about or support. Every post will count!

On that note, I’d like to raise awareness of blog meme abuse, whether it’s blogging about five things no one knows about you or things you have in your bag you take to work. These memes, while bringing the blogger community together, tend to shut everyone else out, and they’re abused. They do, however, increase lots of links among groups of bloggers, so their blogs’ search engine rankings stand to gain. That’s why meme abuse is very hard for anyone to overcome. Even I’ve fallen victim to it, and I’m not sure I’ll fully recover.

On this day of raising awareness of abuse, I’d like you to consider other forms of abuse that lack the fundraising machines and political lobbying to attract the attention they so deserve:

• Semicolon abuse
• Free soda refill abuse
• Walking slow on the stairs to the subway to prevent people who are running to catch a train from actually catching one abuse
• Bumper sticker abuse
• Purell abuse even when you’re only handling your own stuff
• Making that hand gesture to get the check abuse
• Abuse awareness abuse