The blogosphere is a strange, amazing and frightening place.

I’ve been exploring the world of blog networks. I say exploring, but what I really mean is observing from a comfortable distance with a self-satisfied sneer on my face. I would have imagined, from my obviously naive and unrealistic bubble, that writing stuff about your life online would be the resort of people who are fed up with the three dimensional world and need a place where they can wantonly put forth whatever is on their mind without having their performance appraised, motives questioned or grammar corrected (ahem). In short, people like me.

I mean, obviously the premise is flawed from the outset, as the number of blogs out there is huge, and the number of people like me is so small as to be almost immeasurable (and that is probably just as well). But even so, the number of ways people can find to take their own individualised cyber-portal for self expression and make it the same as everyone else’s never fails to amaze me.

There is now a content generating meme available for every day of the week. If you aligned your blog with all of them (and some people do) you’d be writing a meal plan on Monday (that’s not a blog, that’s a shopping list), discussing the funny things your cats do on Tuesday (it doesn’t rhyme or start with the same letter as Tuesday, but apparently it’s a thing. Also, it’s a little bit exclusive of people who don’t own cats, or who do own cats that never do anything interesting (Yes. I’m looking at you, Sis.)), writing wordlessly on Wednesday (that’s not even possible, unless you just post an image with no heading or caption, which is an interesting idea but doesn’t really you help to connect with your readers) being thankful on Thursday (and presumably remaining bitter and ungrateful for the rest of the week) and flogging your blog on Friday. (I’ve already written about how stupid that is). By the time you got to the weekend you’d be so over-memed with your blog that you’d be ready to delete it and start fresh. And I probably wouldn’t blame you.

My first and extremely predictable reaction to this was to declare Cum Tacent Clament a meme free zone. You can take your “Write like everyone else Wednesday” and stick it up your word processor. Unfortunately there is the small matter of the large pink “One Lovely Blog” sticker sitting on my left side bar. There’s more than enough disingenuousness around with regards to things that actually matter as it is, without me getting all hypocritical about something as banal as Novelty Mango Chutney Recipe Tuesday*.

So instead, I’m starting my own meme-based protest movement. I was going to call it “Self-Important Saturday” – a day for people everywhere to show how independent, creative and spontaneous they are by all writing about the same thing at the same time for a day each week. Unfortunately I slept in on Saturday, and then the rest of my day got filled up with opera rehearsal and sepak takraw training.

So instead, I hereby present you with the very first “Meme-free Monday”. It’s a one day in the week when bloggers from all over the community can celebrate the freedom of their online voice by WRITING ABOUT WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT!

It’s such a great idea, don’t you think? Send the message to five people, and let’s spread the word of meme-free Monday to everyone in the blogosphere! The first person to send me a link to their meme-free Monday post wins a free Cum Tacent Clament T-shirt** signed by Brooke Fraser***. <3 <3 <3 Yay! <3 <3 <3.

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

*This might be a real thing, but probably isn’t.

**This probably isn’t a real thing either.

***How cool would that be?