5 Apocalyptically Bad Topics I Don’t Want to See in 2012

The Ginger horse is either "Using multiple Twitter accounts" or "War"

2012 is finally here. The year of the London Olympics, the Golden Jubilee and, most concerningly, the end of the world. If the misinterpreted non-prophesies of a dead Mesoamerican civilisation are to be believed (they’re not), then the world will end in some horrible manner on December 21 2012 (it won’t).

Luckily though, that theory’s all a steaming pile of tripe. The world’s not going to end. But these horrendous blog topics should.

Five Topics That I Don’t Want to See in 2012

One: Mystic Meg’s Crystal Bollocks

There’s a few reasons I didn’t update the blog in December. But the main one is the fact that the last 31 days of the year are inevitably haphazard predictions about what’s going to happen over the next 12 months. And they’re invariably wrong. If the predictions I read for 2011 were true, we’d all have thrown out our computers in favour of tablets and smartphones by now. So why is it that I spent December reading about iPads and Android Phones being guaranteed to supplant the humble desktop in 2012?

Stop making predictions. You’re terrible at it.

Two: The Great Scheduling Swindle

It’s 2012. We’ve all got RSS feeds, Facebook feeds, Twitter feeds and all manner of other alarms and alerts. What we don’t have is bookmarks. So why, oh why, oh why are we still seeing posts that claim you need to stick to a blog schedule? Here’s a list of the bloggers that influence me the most: Tom Albrighton; Ben Locker; Sarah Turner; Jordan Cooper.

None of them have a regular blogging schedule. That’s because they’re too busy doing the kind of real work that gives you insight into your craft, instead of blogging about blogging every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

So put your calendar down, do some work, and come back when you’ve got something worthwhile to say.

Three: Doing Death to Death

I was going to write a list of everything that bloggers claimed was dead/dying in 2011. Then I decided that said list would encompass pretty much everything ever invented by man, and thought it best to sack it off.

“Are Dead” posts are dead. Buy some flowers and move on.

Four: Inf**kingraphics

Is anyone else as bored to death of infographics as I am? Sure, the first five dozen or so infographics (or, as I like to call them, pictures) that hit the big time were genuinely interesting data presented in an interesting way. But now we’re at the point where people are churning out and sharing infographics just because they’re infographics. The presentation method is now more important than the information imparted.

Step away from the crayons, and start writing again. Because your crappy vector pictures only speak a single word: Yawn.

Five: Doomed! We’re DOOMED I tells you!

Come on. There was hardly a natural segue from that apocalyptic introduction into this post, and I’m a natural pessimist. So let’s all agree, today, January 4th 2012, that we’re not going to spend the next 11 and-a-bit months trying to make everything vaguely doom-themed. Because it’ll make us all look stupid in 2013 when the Martians invade.

So don’t bother with the apocalypse. Unless there’s a giant asteroid hovering into view in late November. Then you can feel free to go for it.

What don’t you want to see in 2012? Or, on a less curmudgeonly note, what do you want to see more of? Share your thoughts in the comments section below, or with the ever-expanding Unmemorable Title Facebook community.