A Cynic's Guide To Getting Rich Off Angry-Making Blog Posts

Step One: Write a superficially inflammatory blog post that's guaranteed to get lots of people up in arms while containing no actually offensive or serious content. Acceptable topics for haughty dismissal include, but are not limited to: Firefly, aspects of nerd culture, groundless speculation as to whether a particular athlete is using steroids, Jonathan Coulton, or taking a strong position in the gaming platform debate. (Note: Mac vs PC used to fit in here as well, but that ship has sailed). Step Two: Publish said blog post, preferably with a highly inflammatory title like "Joss Whedon Blows" or "My Three Days Of Being Bored Stupid By Conan O'Brien And Never Laughing Once and Anyone Who Likes Him Is a Poopyhead" or, well, you get the idea. Step Three: Make sure everyone knows about your post, preferably by dropping references to it into social media spheres generally inhabited by the particular bear-equivalents you want to poke with sharp sticks. Be as snotty and condescending as possible. It gets a better reaction. Step Four: Wait for Nerdrage to erupt. The people you have been mocking will, once you have whipped them into a frenzy, go berserk stampeding to your post to flood your comments section and retweeting the link that will get other people there. Other people will no doubt click through in order to see what their friends are so upset about, get upset themselves, and retweet the link with added indignant commentary. Step Five: Count the increased traffic. If you're getting paid by the click, count your money. Step Six: When the furor dies down (because someone else has been wrong on the internet somewhere else), write some perfectly innocuous posts about how you like cheese or some such. Wait until everyone has completely forgotten you were responsible for a foofaraw, or possibly a hootenany. Step Seven: Start the process all over again.