It’s time for another one of those joint posts. I have to admit that Lee came up with the title. Lee is great at coming up with brilliant titles. I have no patience for them. The first part is by myself, Rhett and Lee follows.

There are a couple core ideas that we are showing an unwavering allegiance to: organic blogging, authenticity and creativity. I imagine that all those ideas overlap; yet, they are separate. I have challenged you and in return you have challenged me to test the limits of blogging. I know that most bloggers wouldn’t consider themselves novelists or poets, but you are liars and I mean that in the best way possible. What I really mean is that we are storytellers and myth-makers.

There is a confusion around the idea of myths and metaphors. What is a myth? It’s a lie, right? No. It is just a grandiose metaphor. I have a story for you today and not one I wrote. One from the late and great Joseph Campbell, who understood the power of myths and metaphors perhaps better than anyone in the past few centuries. This excerpt is from the opening pages of his book Thou Art That:

When the first volume of my Historical Atlas of World Mythology, The Way of the Animals Powers came out, the publishers sent me on a publicity tour. This is the worst kind of all possible tours because you move unwillingly to those disc jockeys and newspaper people, themselves unwilling to read the book they are supposed to talk to you about, in order to give it public visibility.

The first question I would always be asked, “What is a myth?” That is a fine beginning for an intelligent conversation. In one city, however, I walked into a broadcasting station for a live half-hour program where the interviewer was a young, smart-looking man who immediately warned me, “I’m tough, I put it right to you. I’ve studied law.”

The red light went on and he began argumentatively, “The word ‘myth,’ means ‘a lie’. Myth is a lie.”

So I replied with my definition of myth. “No, myth is not a lie. A whole mythology is an organization of symbolic images and narratives, metaphorical of the possibilities of human experience and the fulfillment of a given culture at a given time.”

“It’s a lie,” he countered.

“It’s a metaphor.”

“It’s a lie.”

This went on for about twenty minutes. Around four or five minutes before the end of the program, I realized that this interviewer did not really know what a metaphor was. I decided to treat him as he was treating me.

“No,” I said, “I tell you it’s metaphorical. You give me an example of a metaphor.”

He replied, “You give me an example.”

I resisted, “No, I’m asking the question this time… And I want you to give me an example of a metaphor.”

The interviewer was utterly baffled and even went so far as to say, “Let’s get in touch with some school teacher.” Finally, with something like a minute and a half to go, he rose to the occasion and said, “I’ll try. My friend John runs very fast. People say he runs like a deer. There’s a metaphor.”

As the last seconds of the interview ticked off, I replied, “That is not the metaphor. The metaphor is: John is a deer.”

He shot back, “That’s a lie.”

“No,” I said, “That is a metaphor.”

And the show ended.

In our modern area we believe in science and math. We believe in a right and wrong, or a truth and a lie. We believe in historical facts and stories are for entertainment and children. However, if we were honest with ourselves, we would recognize that all we are is stories. In my eyes you have one of two choices in front of you as a blogger, as a human. You can tell stories that connect with the people and truths of our time or you can stick to the cold-hard facts and the quick dollars. You can lift up the potential of humanity or you can dwell on yourself. Are you talking to a person or a machine?

I have bad news for all us bloggers out there, we are all liars! Don’t believe me? Let me explain. You might have guessed I took the title for this post from Seth Godin’s book “All Marketers are Liars”. The basic idea behind the book is that the world view is there before the marketers and those that can tap into the lies that consumers tell themselves can make a lot of money by continuing to build on that world view. From the books description “Successful marketers don’t talk about features or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story. A story we want to believe.”

Think about some of the commercials that you see on television. What stories are they telling you? One of the commercials that always gets me, and my wife, is a Pampers commercial. It usually airs around Christmas time. It features Silent Night being sung and pictures of all these cute adorable babies. There are no words, they don’t sit there and tell you how much better Pamper diapers are than all the other brands, but it is a very effective commercial. They are telling you a story, a story that parents can understand. Parents will do what they think is best for their children and if that means spending more on Pampers diapers so they sleep like that then parents will do it. Pampers did not create this world view, but they found a great way to tap into it.

Now think about blogging. Blogging is about telling stories, whether you blog about blogging, making money online, writing, or your blog covers a specific niche that you are interested in. Your blog is about you telling a story. That story will be a part of the lie your readers will tell themselves, so your blog will resonate with some readers and not with others depending on the truths that they hold. Don’t try and make your blog something it is not. It is your story that people will want to read and share in, not someone else.

Epiblogger was born because Rhett and I were tired of reading the same unauthentic stories on other blogs. Make money online blogs always promise to show you how to make money online, but never really do. Writing blogs tell you how to write headlines to attract the most readers and get “Dugg”, but they never really deliver. Blogs on blogging say they will help you to become a better blogger, but often just put out superficial lists of things that have already been done. Blogging has been taken over not by authentic stories, but business stories that don’t really connect to real people. This does not mean that at some point we don’t want to make a living running Epiblogger. Both Rhett and I would love to spend our days just writing here, but we will do it authentically. You could say we will do it organically.

It is this idea of telling authentic stories that makes all bloggers liars. If we as bloggers are being authentic, we are telling our story, a story we want to believe, and that story will be a part of some larger “world view”. Tell your authentic story and people will find something in your story that they will connect with.

Photo by Renato Souza