Yeah, it's a weird title for a caption! Hope you'll come inside and see why I named it that!
Made this for Alexis0919, who is now on the Haven, but started out as a lurker here on this blog, then gave a male/female name in the comment section to receive a personalized caption, then liked it enough to start created her own! Not quite sure I need to explain this one, but if you feel the need to comment on this one, please do! I have a bit of a discussion planned for the rest of this blog post.
Making captions can be an interesting exercise in alchemy.
You can take a decent picture, write up a straight forward syrupy plot with wish-fulfillment elements that never challenges the thought process of the readers, and no sexual context, then post it in the middle of the week .. and it gets 6 comments from people that aren't me, and a total of 9 in all.
Afterwards, you take a photo that inspires a multi-pronged story line with a few different layers of smut and fetish, deception and infidelity, and post it on Friday night, the start of the weekend. Two days later, the view count is half of anything released over the entire week AND has ZERO comments 40 hours later.
It really is a crap shoot to how and why a caption can resonate with people. Maybe the weather was bad on Wesnesday and Thursday and people stayed inside, or they had shitty days at work so they wanted some escape. Or the nuanced story I wrote on Friday ended up reading like a mess of text as it was set unto it's spot in the caption.
Both captions had fantastical settings that most likely will never happen so you can't say that either were relatable to the real world. One had a much more favorable outcome, but how often do we like captions where evil wins out, or the bad guy "wins"?
Don't think I am complaining about not getting comments on one particular caption, as I'm thrilled to get 9 on the other one. I am just so fascinated by the metrics of what makes something popular on my site, and on others as well. And just when I think I find something that works as a formula, and outlier pops up to tear down some part of the equation!
It really is alchemy I think!
Until the other day when I was listening to SiriusXM's 70's station, I thought that Supertramp had done this song. Now I feel bad for this band as I wonder how many others thought the same thing!
wonderful cap.
ReplyDeleteFor me the reason to comment or not may vary. A good caption and blog post helps, but it's not the only thing.
Sometimes I read it when I'm pressed for time, and though I usually intend to come back to comment, in those cases more often than not it slips my mind to do so.
Sometimes, no matter how much a caption has lifted my spirit, I can't bring myself to write a comment, no matter how much I try to. I stare at the screen and my mind stays blank.
Then there are the times I write a comment, make a wrong click and everything is gone. I'll rewrite the short comments, but the longer ones usually result
in me not being able to recreate to my satisfaction what I wanted to say the first time.
There are more reasons, but these are the main ones.
As for the alchemy of a caption, I have the same questions as you have. I just want to have fun writing them, and hope that at least the recipient likes it.
For the contest I'm already happy if I get either one comment or one vote. At least then I know I'm not the only one who likes it.
I hope this helps a bit in unraveling the secret of the alchemy of the caption.
If my older sister wasn't a Bay City Rollers fan back then, I probably wouldn't kave known they were former BCR. But when I hear this song unanounced I often said they are the Bay City Rollers.
I had heard that they were former BCR bandmembers, the irony of which is they left the band before they were big here in America. They both seem to have hit the US around 1975. Nowadays, you mostly see either bands songs in commercials.
DeleteAnd I totally understand why people don't necessarily leave comments. The alchemy for me is trying to figure out the best times to schedule them to be uploaded where most people can see them, and they won't get lost in a shuffle. There are so many outside influences as to why they might not get the attention that others get.
For instance, you were the last person to comment here on the blog .. Friday afternoon around 3 PM .. and then again right now, 3 1/8 days later. I never usually go that long between comments. It could be some really nice fall weather, or people had shitty weekends, or a myriad of things. I just usually get curious as to why certain things trend certain ways.