Go fuck yourself, Daddy, and hello again, WordPress!

Here’s a lesson you must imbibe in your life, young one: NEVER LISTEN TO ADVICE FROM YOUR MBA FRIENDS.

If you haven’t pursued an MBA yourself, there should be no reason for you to listen to your MBA friends. I made the mistake of listening to an MBA friend of mine, and bought into his Shiv Khera-ish lecture of ‘pushing things up one notch’.

‘How long will you keep writing on WordPress, bro?’ he asked me one day, amidst clouds of smoke and hope. ‘The world has moved on to other platforms. When you started the blog, even mobile phones weren’t around’.

Which is not completely true. I started in 2007 and Nokia was the Apple of the world’s eye back then.

‘But you’re missing my point. You need to scale things up. See, if you’re trying to create a brand (Am I?), people need to experience a professional UI’.

I nodded my head. I have found it’s the best way to avoid speaking to one’s MBA friends.

‘Let’s create a site for you’.

The above line can be interpreted in a number of ways. As a line mouthed 40 minutes into a movie, it could be the inciting incident transforms the protagonist’s life.

Spoken to me however, the line is impotent.

I am as technologically suave as Shakuni attending a Tech event in Cupertino. My friend asked me to choose a domain hosting site, and I duly chose GoDaddy. I mean, Mithun was doing their ads at the time – would you blame me? My friend graciously created the site for me, and (probably) shook my hand at the end of the mission.

And so there I was, over the last four years – trying to handle my own site.

If it was supposed to inspire me, it had the opposite effect. Earlier, I was just some guy who got high and typed keys onto a site. Now, I was a writer who was seeking to create his own brand. I mean, if someone gave you a choice between the two scenarios, which one would you take?

Running my own site sounds nice from the outside. It has a nice ring to it, and I used the line a few times at parties where I forgot to bring my personality.

I run one of India’s longest running humour sites.

Oh, nice. What’s it called? 

Heartranjan.com

Art-?

No. Heart. Heartranjan. 

Okay. Let me note that down. Heart Dungeon. Dot com? 

No, not Dungeon. Ranjan. Cos my name is Hriday Ranjan…so…heartranjan.

Oh, okay. Humour site, eh? Hmmm.

 

I thought running your own site was like having your own digital castle, where you can lounge and look at the world from the balcony. What I didn’t know was it was closer to running your own garden.

You have to get down everyday and weed out the rubbish. On WordPress, my spam was handled by disciplined employees. On my site, I received 200 comments a day from strange Russian companies.

I also noticed that spam messages are getting smarter. Earlier, a typical spam message would read:

Use Tadalafil for Erectile Dysfunction. 50 mg. 

Short, sweet, to the point. Easy to notice and do away with. But over the recent few years, spam messages trick you into believing somebody in the world cares about you – and then twist the knife into your heart. Modern spam messages read like this.

Hey 😀 Thanks for the post, I found it absolutely engaging and must say, you do raise some terrific points. However, I must say I wish you had expanded on few of the issues that you raise in the post if your dick is limp, use Tadalafil 50 mg for Erectile Dysfunction.

The messages trap you into hope, and then smack you with a product. And imagine getting 200 of these everyday! I can’t remember writing anything interesting in the last four years, probably due to the pressure of ‘running my own site’.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into months and months into years. Over the last four years, I have become a standup comedian, a newspaper columnist for Indian Express, a critic for Film Companion, and an A++ accredited roller of joints.

You wouldn’t blame me for ignoring a mail from GoDaddy that my billing needed tending to. I thought it was their Annual Ronadhona Subscription time, and ignored the mails. Turns out my domain ran out and somebody else bought it.

I spoke to their agent Naresh, and was informed that I need to pay thousands to recover the site, with no guarantee of recovering my content.

I did some research and found that GoDaddy wasn’t developed by a son who wanted his his ailing father to achieve his dream. It was a company founded in the US with nearly 6000 employees around the world. GoDaddy could go fuck itself.

I dropped the plan, asked Naresh to go fuck himself in Corporato – Thank you SO much for ALL the help, Naresh. I hope you rise to great heights one day. 

Which is when I found that my wordpress site was still intact. It waited for me to build a house and was there for me when I returned. Of course, the subscribers are all gone -from 3000 to 7, but those can be gained back.

It must be good to go back to typing without an agenda or pressure. And for the reader to scroll through stuff that was written just for the fun of it. Which is why I have returned to WordPress again your dick is limp buy Tadalafil 50 mg and experience magical results.