Inherently Different

The One About Crap

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.

4 thoughts on “The One About Crap”

  1. I saw a great saying – maybe it was on your site. Andy Warhol once said that everyone would have their 15 minutes of fame. In today’s world, every blogger is famous for 15 people.

  2. I’ve often times wanted to write this same exact post. of course in my owns words and my own whitty comments. You really kind of summed up my experience blogging.

    “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.”

    Sometimes I’ve wanted to choke these people, but instead I’ve since learned to grasps the importance of these blogs. They aren’t for you or I who like to blog hop and see whats out there. Those really are for friends, and what used to be kept in a private setting has now been brought out into the world for all of us to. I honestly don’t care what a lot of people at for breakfast, but for some reason there is always someone out there who is interested in reading about it.

    As far as the meme links I here you on that. It seems like over kill to read about the same things over an over again on very similar looking pages. It’s also amazing how much incorrect information gets past through these meme links. I don’t think there is much we can do about that sort of thing as bloggers other than to try and avoid failing into those pitfalls. I sometimes find myself linking to something only to all the sudden see it spread like wild fire. As a I look back at those things in the future I feel like I only added to the problem, but I know I had users that were happy I posted that stuff.

    I still find the best way to find a blog is using the old traditional means such a weblogs.com or clicking on the links in blogrolls. Its interesting to see that bloggers are loosing some of their pull in the search engine based on things like blogrolling (ones that use javascripts). Bloggers for a while had a great deal of power over search engine results because of the interconnectivity of blogs. With the abundance of blogs Ive seen service like blogrolling pop up which makes adding links to your blog even easier, but that difference is that links are hidden from search engines because the blogrolls are javascripts. As a result blogs don’t get crawled quite as quickly as a result, and they don’t get credit for many of backlinks they have established.

    In the end it should be interesting to see what really ever happens with blogs. It seems like everyone and their mother has one (well at least mine does), which really effects who people interpret and see them. A year ago people didn’t know the word blog and now if you don’t know what one is you are out of it. Anyway, I’m done ranting cause I could go on forever and that’s really what my own blog is for.

    Sorry for not proof reading this. It probably is chaotic at best.

  3. I still have no idea why anybody would read my blog.

    Hell… it is devolved into nothing more than a vocalization of my toy collecting mania and occasional spur of the moment rants about politics and religion that often fail even my own “is my logic even valid” arguments.

    But I am happy at least ya stop by and read it for whatever it is worth.

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