A never-ending torrent of advice pours down on the web about how to build a popular website, and aspiring writers are not spared this flood of counsel.

Afflicting far too much of this advice is a truly obnoxious blogging personality disorder: positive-thinking conformism. I’m talking about that sunny-faced variety of aggressive social pressure, typified by hypocritically griping about everyone else’s griping while pretending to give out positive, “expert” advice — advice that has no basis in objective reality.

Worst of all, this unrealistic griping often subtly attacks others who at least try to base their gripes in objective reality, stigmatizing them as trouble-makers and “know-it-alls.”

In all seriousness, what this online happy-thoughts dogma really boils down to is a broadcast form of relational aggression, a type of bullying based on shaming and threats of ostracism. Scan the promotional advice websites, and you’ll quickly bump into the primary tactic of this covert control-freakery, a list of “negative” blogging styles that freshmen bloggers had better avoid if they want to sit at the Cool Kids table.

But, you might object, isn’t it true that being gripey inhibits success online and in writing? Absolutely not, and we’ll get to the abundantly obvious evidence for this later.

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Some time ago, I dug into Patrick Kiger‘s list of literary one-hit wonders to see what they all had in common.  What I found was that none of them followed what has become accepted as the “way things work” in the book biz.

One of the authors on the list, Ross Lockridge, dumped his masterpiece Raintree County inside a beat-up suitcase in a publisher’s lobby. Not only was it read, it was published, recognized as genius, and later adapted for the big screen.

Of course, Lockridge pulled his stunt in the mid-1940s.

Recently in Los Angeles, a writer tried a similar tactic to get his screenplay read by a literary agent.  Rebuffed multiple times, he decided to leave a briefcase containing the screenplay with the lit agent’s front desk.

The result? The police were called, and destroyed the briefcase with explosives.

O brave new world! That has such protocol in it! So long, Raintree County. Hello, vapid celebrity memoir!