As many of you probably already know, this weekend is Blogroll Amnesty Day, which I was intrigued to discover spans more than a day. I started reading about it Friday night and of course there were more posts about it on Saturday. More about the inherent irony of that later, because there is quite a bit of it, in my opinion, behind some of the people who claim to support Blogroll Amnesty Day.
Also, as you’ve probably already seen, Jon Swift provides the entire skinny on the history of this auspicious event. You’ve seen links to his website from me whenever I do LOLCons, because those were apparently his idea (which I ironically didn’t learn until after I’d done my first one). I’ve never blogrolled Mr. Swift, although I read his blog every day (and at least twice on the weekends). He seems genuine, and I figure the pingbacks from LOLCons posts are good enough
In short, Blogroll Amnesty Day, or “BAD”, which is a good descriptor for the type of day it effectively is, is supposed to be a time when people provide some out-links for those who link to them. Some even go so far as to synchronize their blogrolls to include links to the blogs (er…people) who have blogrolled them. “Fair and Equal Link-Exchange” Day, in other words. And for a guy who’s been on the interwebs since the early 1990′s, I will admit to more than a modicum of amusement of the supposed hype over a specific day for this, when the concept of reciprocal linkage has been around since, well, the early 1990′s (when linking to each other was about all any website could do to promote itself), and when the idea of Fair and Equal Exchange has been an at-least-theoretical underlying principal of commerce, and relationships in general, for several millennia.
But yes, let’s pretend like it’s a new idea, and sell it to the public in relatively transparent attempts to move oneself up from B-List to A-List, or C-List to B-List, or…pfft…whatever else it is one hopes to get from it, like a false sense of magnanimousness. (If it was not yet obvious, Commander Other plopped some BAD on his plate with large helpings of cynicism and acerbity)
Yes indeed, I’m being a smartass about this, because I’ve never found it too much trouble to look at my WordPress Dashboard (or SiteMeter, or Google Analytics, all of which I subscribe to for the simple exercise of discovering who links to me, and to help me determine whether or not I should link back to them) once a day and see where links to me are coming from. And when I find something new sending links my way, it takes very little effort (I believe it’s called a “click”) to investigate the source of that link. And if it turns out to be from a blog, and if I happen to like it or think it has at least a potential for fun-ness (and they’re not just ripping off my stuff and posting it as their own), then I’ll leave a comment on a post I found intriguing, add them to my ever-growing RSS feed, and add them to my blogroll. Entire process: maybe 4-6 minutes per site. It’s just not real difficult, even for a father of two working two jobs, deeply involved in two time-consuming community endeavors and four blogs. Although, I’ll admit that there have been days in the past when all I’ve managed to post is an announcement that I’ve added so-and-so to my blogroll.
This process is how, in fact, the following blogs made it on my blogroll (to name but a few, in no particular order, but mentioned here because I distinctly remember the times when I added them):
Again, these are just a few examples of on-the-fly blogroll maintenance. If you’re not in my blogroll, but you have blogrolled me, it’s possible that I missed a visit here from your blog while I was moving the otherwhirled to new servers, or was out of town, or something. Please hit me up, and I’ll reciprocate. And that list above is, in many ways, about the best I can do, without just simply pointing you to my entire blogroll. At an average of 50 unique visits per day, I don’t know that there’s very many blogs out there that have fewer visitors than I do, for me to link from this post in support of the day.
But since, unless I’m sorely mistaken, I’m very up-to-date on maintaining my blogroll as it is, what I did in celebration of Blogroll Get Real Day was actually remove several blogs from my blogroll. When I first set this blog up, I intentionally added some A-Listers, not in the attempt to make myself look better or even necessarily associate myself with them, but in tribute to what I perceive to be their admirableness, their greatness, their relevance, the fine examples they set, their inspiration. These are blogs that I’ve been reading, and commenting on (under various pseudonyms) for years. But after a point, it gets depressing, this unrequited love thing. I thought I was done with that when my marriage passed the five-year mark (because, trust me, if she could put up with me for five years, we were pretty good-to-go. It’s been almost 14, now). I thought I was doing the right thing, filling my blogroll with the people who’s thoughts, commentary, and imagery are a formative part of my existence: read, or at the very worst, skimmed, every single day that I’m online, which is typically more than 350 days per year.
I waited until noon-ish today, February 3rd, Central Time, to post this. I think since some of these people have been supporting “BAD” since Friday, that’s more than enough time to presume that I’d be on their blogrolls by now. Of course, maybe, despite the name of the day, that’s an unreasonable expectation. I realize that, despite the inherent self-contradiction of its title, it’s less of an amend-your-blogroll day as it is a link-to-those-presumably-less-fortunate-than-you day. However, even that is clearly not the case (I mean, I love them both, but Jon Swift linking to Blue Gal under this title is something akin to Cisco linking to Dell), and this whole unrequited love thing kind of sucks. So, as a result, you will no longer see the following blogs in my blogroll. They don’t need me, I apparently supply nothing to their own lives (about which I’m not offended in the least ~ there’s how many millions of blogs in the world, after all?), and really, ultimately, because who gives a shit about what I think about whom? Roughly 50 people looking for pictures with smartass-captions, not commentary on other bloggers, that’s who!
- TRex (linked since he started his new blog)
- Blue Gal (linked since this blog first launched)
- Sadly, No! (linked since this blog first launched)
- Firedoglake (linked since this blog first launched)
- d r i f t g l a s s (linked for over 3 years from this blog and previous versions of perpetual dawnne)
- The Rude Pundit (linked for over 3 years from this blog and previous versions of perpetual dawnne)
And several others whose writings I have supported over the years. That doesn’t mean that I believe the people in the list above are bad people or are doing bad things. In fact, I still love them and will continue to read their posts—avidly, even. They probably have some internal qualification for blogrolling that isn’t mentioned in their BAD support. I know in one case, it’s apparently because I’m not a “writer”, as if blogging must equal writing or it has no legitimacy or something (which is obviously not the case because the person in question links to both MPS and Dependable Renegade, but I digress, of course).
Contrarily, I have seen one nice individual blogroll me in support of this day, or at the very least blogrolled me this weekend, and I would like to say thank you, and encourage any stray readers to visit his blog:
Intrepid readers may note that there are over a dozen blogs still in my blogroll who do not link to me. So, why have I not removed them from my blogroll, you ask? Because they have not pretended to support BAD without really supporting BAD, that’s why! As much as I appreciate Fair and Equal Exchange, it’s not so much of a requirement with me as it is a wish, after all. I also don’t really have the time to comment or otherwise participate on every blog I read, so it’s not like I’m putting out all that much. But I will note the inherent tickle of mirth it gives me, knowing that they know I have them blogrolled, because I see the referrals from their SiteMeter, StatCounter, and Google Analytics pages several times a month. And that’s the real difference between them and the folks in the last list above. The ones still in my blogroll know I link to them, and don’t give a shit. There’s a refreshing form of honesty in that! The ones in the last list above, however, either never check on their own referrals, or I’m way at the bottom of page 1,000 in their stats, or they just never click through them to see what’s up with whom. But, I also suppose they’re probably too busy for that, and kudos to them. All the more reason for me to remove an obviously superfluous link to them.
Anyway, Happy Blogroll Amnesty Day, folks. And remember, Fair and Equal Exchange is much nicer as a continual, heart-felt endeavor. The concept of “I’ll think about you out loud 1 day out of 365 (or EVER)”, is really far more demonstrative of one’s short attention span than it is of any desire to “share the wealth”.
{yes, this post was made at roughly 12:09 central time and updated several times over a period of roughly 3 hours. i should have left it in Draft mode a bit longer. i apologize for not having done so. as of 14:55, there will be no more edits to this.}
