Blog Police

It seems it's that point in the blogging cycle when a new crisis de blog needs to appear and start making the rounds. The latest hoo-ha is focusing on blogrolling and whether it is a good or a bad thing. (Disclaimer: I love my blogroll, and it's not going anywhere, so clearly I have a dog in this hunt.) The gist of it is that Shelley of Burningbird declared, rather preemptorily, that blogrolls "hurt" bloggers (because of the way that the "big name" ranking systems like Technorati, Truth Laid Bear's Ecosystem, and Google use them -- her assertion is that they preferentially exclude smaller, more "diverse" bloggers in favor of blogs run by white, male, middle-class poli-bloggers). Lauren of feministe took this as an opportunity to remove her own blogroll (though in her case it was also about the unweighty size of it).

Uproar ensued, and a prolonged discussion of blogrolling and the ways people do or do not use blogrolls, and whether they are worth the "risks". Lots of indignation and anger all around, with most of it deriving from people feeling like they were being told how to blog by someone whose authority they did not recognize, whether that person was Shelley, or someone commenting on their blog, or by another commenter.

I find this all unbearably irritating.

The reason for that is that I only see these kinds of squabbles erupting in a specific sub-section of the blogosphere: that inhabited by people who primarily view blogging as a political or activist actitivity, particularly with a liberal/progressive slant. (It may also happen in the rightwing side of this, but I don't frequent those blogs, so I can't comment on their internal dynamics. I'll just say I haven't seen any left-wing blogs chortling about such brouhahas on that front, so I'm inclined to believe that they don't happen there with the same frequency.)

You don't see this kind of power struggle and navel-gazing and loyalty-testing going on so much in the other regions of the blogosphere. The knit-bloggers don't argue about who has the highest traffic. The food bloggers don't get into irritated huffs about the gender distribution of blogs in each others' blogrolls. The eco-bloggers don't snipe at each other about failing to promote diversity through their linking behavior. It's not to say that there these don't have their own flavors of recurring dispute (like the question of how to talk about pregnancy or motherhood when an infertility blogger finally manages to carry a fetus to term, or hard-core knit bloggers expressing irritation about puppy-bloggers).

This is not to say that those discussions of power and hierarchy are not important or inappropriate.

No, what irritates me is that it's only those bloggers who yell and stomp about how blog "diversity" is being undermined who play these "what blogs should be" games. How ironic is that?

This is not to say that discrimination doesn't exist, or that it shouldn't be challenged, or that steps shouldn't be taken to correct it. But that does not mean that such corrections are the end-all and be-all of blogging.

People, blogs are a tool. In this, they are like computers or books. There is no one "right" way to use a computer, nor one "right" way to write a book. I am thus deeply suspicious of anyone who claims that there is, let alone someone who does so in the name of providing a voice to "little" blogs and enhancing "diversity."

The best way of encouraging new and small blogs, and enhancing blog diversity is simple:

Stop trying to limit, define, or package blogging into a neat little parcel. Let it be messy and incomplete and individualistic and personal. Let blogging be shaped by the entire diverse world people who blog, one blog at a time, not by fiat, whether that definition is imposed by the mainstream media, "A-list" bloggers, or individuals who seek to speak for all bloggers.

Fight your battles -- but don't pretend that those battles are about blogging. They are not.

Reference links:

Shelley's first post; a follow-up; a second follow-up; Shelley reflects on the aftermath.

Lauren's first, second and third posts on the subject.

Bitch, Ph.D.'s defense of her blogroll, and my comment on her thread along these lines. (I also comment earlier in the thread, but it was mostly about how I use blogrolls.)

PZ's take on it; I've commented there too.

Chris Clarke's first and second posts about it.

cindy's thoughts, with good comments.

Comments

[Scrivener]

Are you kidding me? I haven't been to Dr. B's yet today, so this is the first I've heard of this. I'm with you all the way on this one. Plus, jsut want to say, what stupid shit, don't we have better stuff to argue about?

[Rana]

You'll get no disagreement from me, David. Shelley's been on my roll for a long time, and often makes really good points about gender and tech, but things like this really make my eyes roll.

[musey_me]

Rana - My blogroll isn't going anywhere either. I heard a comment on the radio today about how if mainstrem media disappeared, blogs would also disappear because they are the reaction to mainstream media. While I know what the comment was referring to, it did the same thing you're talking about - tried to define all of the blogosphere by what one (important and active) portion of it does. Without my blogroll, I wouldn't have a roadmap to my favorite places.

[Phantom Scribbler]

Oy, Rana, thanks for stepping into the fray with some words of sense.

For myself, I'd rather see some honest catblogging and cool knitting photos than any A-list nattering about the politics of blogroll diversity.

And who knew that people relied on TTLB to determine their self-worth? I thought it was funny...

[Rana]

Yeah, it is, somewhat. I find myself in a slightly awkward position in this whole mess because I'm one of the "older" bloggers out there, and began blogging during a time when people like Lauren and Shelley and Invisible Adjunct and Stephanie of Yarn Harlot were just starting out and we were all relatively small bloggers together.

So I consider myself in some respects to still be a part of that crowd -- and yet, I've not had the same appetite for expansion and promotion that many of the others have. I look at what has happened to Steph's comments thread, or the ways that people get tetchy when someone like Lauren decides not to act like the local "public utility" (as one commenter phrased it) but like an individual, and I know that my readership has reached just the right level. I don't want a huge readership -- I want to be able to just hang out here and mope around and act silly without the weight of responsibility those people now carry around with them.

So in that regard I'm more sympatico with "smaller" and "younger" bloggers, who don't have to deal with those enormous social pressures to always be focused and "on" and there for their readers.

I also sit in an intersection between the political and activist bloggers -- some of my posts get picked up and linked by them -- academic bloggers (ditto); the hobby bloggers; and bloggers who I simply consider fellow travellers and friends. If I have a hierarchy on my blogrolls, it is by size and likelihood of reciprocal linking -- thus dooce is on the left, and feministe is on the right.

The upshot of this is that I feel I have retained my sense of the essential randomness of the blogosphere as a whole in a way that people doing more focused blogging at a more intensive level may have forgotten. It's a big ol' messy place, just like the world in general, and I believe in respecting and even admiring that.

But we know I have issues with hierarchy and arrogance in general, don't we?

[Jill Smith]

Oy...

I could say something detailed and cynical about bomb-throwers and the temporary traffic spikes they incur, but I'll settle for just cynical and leave the detail out of it.

[wolfangel]

Rana, you should check out my current favourite description of why we like the blogroll.

I admit mine is poorly maintained now. I should update it.

[Chris Clarke]

I could say something detailed and cynical about bomb-throwers and the temporary traffic spikes they incur, but I'll settle for just cynical and leave the detail out of it.

Heh.

Minor quibble: some of us bomb-throwers couldn't care less about the traffic that results: we just love the sheer free feeling of saying whatever stupid thing occurs to us.

And I wish I'd kept my mouth shut on this one.

[Rana]

Ah, well. Being a dork in public is all part and parcel of blogging, isn't it? It's not like I haven't!

;)

[laura]

Great post. You're saying really well stuff I've been thinking sort of resentfully without really knowing why.

I want to think that any type of heirarchisation of categories of blogging subjects is false: that poli-blogging can be inane & banal and craft or pet blogging can be profound and politically engaged. But is this just romantic nonsense?

[Psycho Kitty]

Yeah, I saw that argument too and didn't get it. I keep a blogroll because the places on my roll are sites I enjoy. I really don't have any ulterior motives. Plus it's a heck of a lot easier than bookmarking all of them.

[miguel]

It all reminds me of high school. Who is most popular. Who knows who. Who says the most outrageous things. Who has the hippest looks. Who is the most connected. It's like an internet equivalent of small town hotrodders circling Main Street, boys gunning their engines, girls shaking their locks. It's absurd. I thought I was past all this primate position jockeying. My only interest in blogging is to read good stories and to try and write the best stories I can. It's just plain fun to communicate. When it stops being fun and starts getting to be popularity contests, like any high school dance I just walk out and sit down with the people who just want to enjoy each other's company.

[Satsuma]

You're right. I've also found recently that there's a whole network of British bloggers who never ever get mentioned or linked to the section of the blogosphere you are talking about. Then there are all the blogs in other languages. The blogosphere is as big as the world and I think sometimes we imagine that our own corner of it is all of it.

[Mel]

excellent post, Rana -- I've been suprised (and wearied) by this little tempest too. Thanks for getting to the political questions in all of this (not just the "I like/dislike blogrolls," which has been filling up so many comment threads).

[Harrison]

My lord, but Shelly's post was annoying. I assumed there would be fall-out, so I stuck my head in the sand. I hate getting bogged down in these sorts of things.

And, Shelly, you are no John Stewart...

[QC]

EXTREMELY well said!!

[jocelyn]

interesting. i love when i read this stuff, and realize i'm SO out of the loop. i'm so in the middle. i don't read the drudge report, and i'm still not sure what the hell this TTLB stuff is. i still not cognizant of what 'movable type' is, and i'm still a little jealous that i can't figure out how to have cute little pics and things to link to people on my blog, or that i don't have my OWN website, rather than a blogger blog.

on the other hand, i actually HAVE a blog that i've maintained for over a year, have some readers and commenters that aren't just people who know me (although even some of those people 'found' me anyway), and am amazed at the large amount of people i think are educated, smart people who still don't really know what a blog is.

drifting over to the other side again, there still are so many 'famous' bloggers that i don't get around to or even know about, and i feel like there's just TOO MUCH INFORMATION to get my mind around sometimes. like i will just explode. so, i end up getting all my news from yahoo headlines and jon stewart, lest i just break down in a sobbing mess and feeling like the zoloft ball all the time (who ended up getting a makeover from the look of that website, it seems).

anyway. who knew. blogrolls are controversial? i use them as my own handy bookmark reference, and a way to give a shoutout to people that i think people who stop by my blog should check out. that's that. i didn't know it was so political. personal = political, though, right?

smooches!

[Rana]

Personal is political, indeed. I suspect that's why these things get so whirlingly out of control -- there's rarely "safe" space to just hang back and observe.

I don't care who is popular and who is not. I got over that in high school, when I was very much not and learned that that could be a good thing.

(Thanks, miguel, for the analogy!)

laura -- I don't think that's an unreasonable position to take. I've seen deeper thought about complicated issues on so-called hobby blogs than on many of poli-blogs; good ideas, people and writing aren't neatly packaged, as much as some folks would like them to be.

(I am very suspicious of anyone who demands a "tidy" view of life. Life is many things, but it ain't tidy!)

Psycho Kitty -- yeah, my blogroll = my bookmarks. :)

Satsuma, thanks for bringing up the non-English bloggers. I suspect it's not coincidence that these sorts of things tend to originate from us here in the "good ol' USA" -- we've made navel-gazing a national pasttime!

I just have to say that it's conversations like this that make blogging worthwhile, not "Top Ten" lists.