An alternative title might be: The One In Which I Call 3 Million Bloggers Crap.
Sometime on July 6, 2004, Technorati tracked its 3 millionth weblog. According to other sources*, there are about 8,000-17,000 new weblogs created daily (avg: 15,000) which means that 1 blog is created every 5.8 seconds. These blogs unleash somewhere in the vicinity of 275,000 individual posts every day, or more precisely, more than 3 blogs are updated every second. Of course, the 3 million number has to be tempered with the knowledge that as many as 1.65 million blogs could be inactive (based on the frequency of posts for these blogs).
I say all of this because, well… like cable before it, quantity doesn’t necessarily breed quality. 3 Million channels and still nothing on. I read somewhere in the vicinity of 20-30 new blogs each week. I don’t count blog explosion blogs for the simple reason that most of them are crap. It seems that any monkey with a keyboard is posting meme links, pictures of cats wearing funny hats, or emoticon laden stories about who’s fucking who in Ms. Troglodyte’s 3 Period French class. I don’t find any of this particualry interesting.
I find most of my blogs the old fashion way… I bloghop. Visiting one of the blogs on my blogroll, clicking on one of their blogroll links, reading a little, then clicking on one of their blogroll links, etc.
There are only one or two highly traffic’d blogs I read regularly (Mighty Girl & Defective Yeti). The majority of my blog reads are great, relatively undiscovered blogs… like Naladahc, oft referred to as just “Nala,” or A Girl & A Boy, or actually any of the blogs I have on my blogroll on the right sidebar (Wetwired, 6togo, Socially Inept, and Daxahol are daily reads). The fact is, most of the blogs I read as I bloghop I’ll never read again, cause like a lot of blogs, they’re crap. I’m not saying I’m much better, although I can be counted on for a laugh here or there.
Today, was different though. For the first time ever, I found a really good blog… that rare diamond in field of spoiling potatoes. I stayed for an hour or so, reading everything I could. This person is a great storyteller who happens to be a good writer. I’m not sure what is real and what isn’t, but it is entertaining nonetheless. I’m not sure who is behind The Lucidity and Lunacy of Millicent Frastley. It could be a 60 year old garbageman from Sacramento or a 22 year old college co-ed with a deft hand and keen eye for observation, but this blog is definitely going on my list of daily reads.
* You can verify my sources here.