All these blogs suck. Same stuff over and over.
February 6, 2004 7:54 PM   Subscribe

Sins of the Bloggers: I am a little sympathetic to this guy's complaint that too many blogs are repetitive. It's not unusual to see the same headlines over and over in my RSS reader as everyone steal links. You're all latte-sipping, iMac-using, suburban-living tertiary-industry-working WASPs who offer absolutely no new insights on anything whatsoever apart from maybe one specialist field if we're lucky." And they are ruining Google.
posted by Slagman (8 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: I didn't want to see this in the mefi RSS feed after seeing it in all the other feeds



 
Executive summary:
You are all pretentious twats
You make up irritating jargon for the sake of it
All of your blogs talk about the same crap
Movable Type is Badly Designed
You are all fucking stupid
You are all sheep
etc
posted by Slagman at 7:56 PM on February 6, 2004


er, in main post, should be "steals."
(hangs head in shame)
posted by Slagman at 7:57 PM on February 6, 2004


Is it me, or is the claim that weblogs have polluted Google completely baseless? Any given search seems to be plagued with useless links, sure, but most of the chaff is any of:
  • redundant mailing list archives
  • quoted replies within the redundant mailing list archives
  • redundant mailing list archives in languages I can't read
  • incomprehensibly useless "forum" posts and bulletin boards full of clueless noobs
  • outright googlespam.


  • Weblog entries seem to comprise a very very minor portion of any given result set. Maybe I just don't google for stuff that turns up a lot of weblog content, but I really don't get where this perception comes from.
    posted by majick at 8:01 PM on February 6, 2004


    I knew it was only a matter of time until someone posted this here, despite my hopes that it might turn out to be otherwise.

    It's rather thoughtless of you, Slagman, frankly. The piece throws off a huge amount of heat, no light: it's one extended yowl of scary, self-righteous hatred, directed at the wrong targets. I really can't see that the rant adds anything to the discussion, says anything new, or even says what it has to say particularly well.

    They guy scares me, to be honest, and I really was hoping we could all let this pass without comment, which is the treatment it deserves. And I'm not sure why you link twice to the same piece.

    Please think twice about posting this sort of thing in the future.
    posted by adamgreenfield at 8:05 PM on February 6, 2004


    majick
    I think the Google complaint has to do with searches on obscure subjects, where blogs might dominate. If you click on the Google link in the main post, it will give you links to the main arguments for and against "trackback" and other features that supposedly ruin Google. I actually love Google so much it scares me. It's too good if you know how to use it.

    adamgreenfield
    I linked for the reason I stated, that I am tired of seeing the same stuff pop up again and again in my RSS reader, like the bit about the silent Itunes songs that somebody finally linked on this same MeFi page. It really seems to be a small universe, and I know that when I see something twice in my RSS reader it is only a matter of time before it will blossom from one to the next, and probably be posted here.

    Yeah, this guy is something of a bloviator, and you might not like his prose, but I enjoyed his rant. It is an intereting thing on the Web and certainly better than the latest news article about some horrific crime and whether we should hang the perp or electrocute him. And the discussion in the comments below it it is far ranging, many sided and your viewpoint is represented as well; that discussion is "best of the Web" in my opinion. I suggest you take a second look.

    Sure, this essay delves a littler deeper into the same subject, particularly the types of people drawn to blogging. But since we just saw the bloggers delude themselves and the country into thinking Howard Dean was actually a viable candidate, the subject is timely.
    posted by Slagman at 8:15 PM on February 6, 2004


    Blogs, redundant mailing list archives, etc. haven't been much of a problem for me when using google. At least most of them have real non-commercial info.

    The googlespam is out of control, though. I've given up on searches after going through ten+ pages of google results where the majority of them were for GODDAMN AMAZON AFFILIATES.
    posted by D.C. at 8:17 PM on February 6, 2004


    One thing I especially liked was how he pointed out the pretentiousness of the often slippery neologisms like blogosphere, blogroll, blogstream and moblogging. The cuteness hurts my brain.
    posted by Slagman at 8:23 PM on February 6, 2004


    I raise your "think twice" to "don't even think of" posting this whining crap.

    There is more to the internet than Google and RSS.
    posted by john at 8:24 PM on February 6, 2004


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