Respect Thy Neighbour - And Why We Shouldn’t Judge A Book By Its Cover
Written by Monika Mundell · May 7, 2008
While sitting at my keyboard and typing away I’m watching a movie. Yes, that officially confirms that I can multi task. Isn’t that a woman’s birthright anyway?
The movie is about a girl who does an experiment in school about fat people and how they are being treated by most people. I think you can guess that many fail the test because they shun, ridicule, ignore and outright bully fat people and it made me ask myself “what right do any of us have to judge others for how they look, are dressed, talk, behave and what not.”
The sad thing is we all do it. I do it and while I stop myself every now and again and remind myself that I’m no better than the fat lady shopping with her three fat kids in tow. I look at them and feel repulsion for letting themselves go so far.
To be honest, I do feel rotten when I catch myself with these thoughts and it wasn’t until I read a book that talks about the conditional cause of obesity that made me realize that it might not be their fault at all.
If you are interested, the book is called The Gabriel Method and will most likely be the most eye opening book for anybody who ever has or still suffers with extra weight. (And it isn’t a diet!).
It was for me. See, throughout my life I have struggled on and off with extra weight. I have pedaled between $62 kg’s all the way up to $90 kg. After reading this book I now know that the cause of my weight gain is emotional based and I need to resolve this before I can lose weight once and for all.
But I don’t want to talk about my weight issues. I want to address the problem of judging others because of their appearance. While I am heavier than is good for my height, I don’t particularly look fat.
I wanted to know why we judge others constantly and why we do this, even though we know it is wrong. After much consideration and thought provoking discussions with my husband I came to the conclusion that in many cases it is a result of our upbringing and the influence we were exposed to while growing up.
Knowing this doesn’t make the act of thinking these thoughts any better, but it does help the healing process and getting better at not judging others because they look different to us.
I suppose the stereotype advertising we are exposed to every day doesn’t help this cause either. Our role models these days are stick insects (not mine BTW) with collar bones that nearly touch the nose. (Ok that is also judging but I like to drive home a point here about false advertising).
Upon realizing this myself I have started to consciously see the good in every person I meet. I really does help. While it isn’t much, I believe if we all did that, the world would be a much better place.
In case you wondered why I’m rambling about judging others by a cover I’d like to make the connection to working from home. We do the same while surfing websites and blogs and our minds are constantly in a state of judgment. We judge other blogs on their colors, their RSS subscriber feed, their comment section and in the way we can or can not navigate their website.
Funny thing is that while we do this we miss out on some really good reading because we are blinded by appearances. Instead of giving someone the benefit of the doubt we click away, never to return. I have come to learn that some of my favorite bloggers own very basic blogs. There is no fluff about them. They are simple and on the first look boring, but when I looked beyond the “facade” I found real treasure.
Does this happen to you too? Have you caught yourself judging other websites or blogs, only to be positively surprised once you looked more closely or is appearance everything to you, even if it contains a shallow shell? What do you think?
My name is Monika Mundell, and I’m the author of Freelance Writing. Learn more from me there.
I realize that it’s kind of popular today to judge everything and everyone by appearance, though I also realize that it’s silly to follow standards. I’d say I don’t judge, I compare to make choices. Definitely it happened to me that I caught myself judging other websites and blogs but I’m not very strict here
I love interesting and quality content most, there is no point in subscribing in a reader and returning to a website/blog with nice layout but nothing to read.
I agree that we should definitely not judge people or blogs based on their looks.
I used to click away from ugly blogs thinking that they couldn’t possibly teach me anything. But I have learned that some of the best information comes from “ugly” blogs so I never click away without reading a bit first.
Most of my blogs are ugly and I don’t have a high amount of RSS subscribers on any of them because of this. But I don’t care because I know I provide useful information and I still get plenty of visitors from search engines.
Look at Griz’s blog. It’s one of the ugliest out there but it also provides more useful money making information by itself than 50 other MMO blogs do put together.
I have to agree with you Monika, it is so easy to judge. The main thing I try to look for when looking for a blog is content. If you are going to be reading blogs then you should be looking for good content. Not just looking for the nice colors and pictures on blogs or even other types websites.
Of course, it’s good to know that people DO judge a book by it’s color. Without that knowledge you can’t properly market your website or blog. In most (NOT ALL) markets if you put up junky looking sites you simply won’t make as many sales and your site will be less sticky.
There are many sites with ugly designs that have great content. Those sites would do much better if they had pretty designs. It’s a fact that should not be ignored if you care about retaining your traffic.
@ Trent: I had to laugh at Griz’s example. I think he’ll be the first to agree but like he always says, it doesn’t matter how his site looks. What matters is the content and the clicks he gets. Surprisingly he gets tons.
But then it isn’t as all his traffic is from the search engines anyway.
@ Dan: Yes, judging is perhaps too easy for us humans. We do it on autopilot. Maybe it is an ingrown thing. Content is really what matters most.
Like we look past somebody’s appearance and within we find the most beautiful person.
@ George: From a marketing standpoint it is good to know what people think. That is why it helps to understand human psychology to become a really top marketer.
As for your ugly site comment not making as many sales; over the course of being online I have seen many sites of whom I know they make killer sales and they were butt ugly. I think it depends on the niche they are marketed in too as you said, so it can work too.
@Monika
You are correct, in some niches ugly sites will actually sell more than nice looking sites. However, when your niche has more tech savvy customers they are less likely to trust someone with an ugly site over a nice looking site.
@ George: yes, you are totally right there. I think the savvy-ness of the user matters when it comes to conversion. So anything related to making money online and tech wouldn’t go down well with a crappy site design.