I’m writing this stuff down so I’ll have stuff to say at the ACES convention, to save my loyal readers from having to sit in on my session. So, here’s another observation about blogging:
Say you go to Matt Welch’s news blog, click on some of his anchored links (the ones down the side, vs. the ones in his main column) and, over time, you see the same people all talking about the same stuff. Or you could click on Hoy Story and experience the echo chamber of blogging, because Hoy is always saying pretty much what all the other politcally conservative bloggers are saying (except he talks about California news, which must taint him with the right-ringers who hate tree-huggers and vegetarians).
This makes it insufferable to travel to those districts of the blogosphere where people have the temerity to possess wrong ideas the ability to post them. (Wrong idea: whatever I disagree with today.) Less annoying but still irksome to outsiders is the blogroll: It’s what I do every morning, surfing all my editor blogs for interesting links. At some point we’re all linking to each other. I give Nicole a shoutout, she agrees with Will, who disagrees with Clay, whom I further chastise for some small infraction. Newsdesigner notes this and suggests a burgeoning trend of copy editor blogs.
What’s really burgeoning is a small community of people with similar interests. Every time somebody links to my blog, it motivates me to link to theirs. Those of us in the community just see it as doing the stuff pals do: high-fives, hey you’s and such. Others who happen upon all this wonder: When are these dweebs going to get over themselves and get a life?
Before blogging came along, people could find really cool Web sites and wonder, what chance to do I have to get in on the fun? With the advent of blogging software, it got a lot easier for people to join all these clubs that had locked them out before.
The annoyance you feel at seeing what appears to be some kind of online circle jerk is really just a reaction seeing a bunch of people having a good time and you being excluded from it. Starting a blog is how a lot of people overcome that sensation, because once you start posting and sharing with others, they’ll reciprocate and the next thing you know, you’re in the club.