Blogger strike

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I woke up this morning and the side of my mouth looks like the Goodyear Blimp is now residing there. You might think this would put me in a poor mood, but the sun was out and there were these two little finches on my window sill, trying to get warm and chattering away, which can’t help but cheer even the most dedicated Grinch.

No, I’m not in a poor mood, but I am in a disappointed mood when I saw blogger after blogger who was nominated link to the Wizbang Awards with cries of “It’s all fun!” and “Vote for me!”, as if we haven’t learned a damn thing about all our discussions of popularity contests, A-Lists, and Power Laws this last year. At first when I didn’t see such links I thought the group as a whole would not perpetuate the same old shit, but after the last couple of days, I can see it’s business as usual.

Someone wrote me yesterday about their nomination and I won’t say who, it’s up to them to identify themselves, and asked me about these awards. Is this a link pimping thing? Well, yes, I said, but it’s a good thing if quality writing like yours gets some attention (though I find it unlikely people will look beyond the usual suspects). However, don’t feed the link pimping I wrote, meaning don’t link to the award.

However, the top cream, the A-Listers, they don’t have any such problem with fulfilling what only gives them more air, so I feel pretty stupid for my advice.

David Weinberger wrote on this, facetiously I do believe, or I don’t know my Joho:

And good news! They let a woman onto the list of best overall blogs! Congratulations, Megnut! To be fair (i.e., to try something new), there is a category for Best Female Authored Blog. No, there isn’t one for Best Male Authored Blog, for obvious reasons.

Anyway, I’m darn proud of Joho’s humiliating showing.

David should be proud of his humiliating showing – would he rather be Little Green Football and win? It would seem that in blogging, David, bigotry outs over gentle wisdom and openess when it comes to popularity. Bigotry or arrogance, one or the other.

And there’s two women in the top list, Meg and Michele over at A Small Victory. And you’re not last anymore, David, so you’ve lost that distinction.

Yes I was rather pleased at the explanations for why there was a Female Blogger category because there was no chance a woman can win, which I guess goes to show women webloggers how much our writing matters. It’s good to get reaffirmation like that. More, there was additional confirmation of this when I see the people link to Douglas Bowman “Who/Where are the Women” posting, who wouldn’t link to the same questions of women and writing when raised by women such as myself, or Misbehaving.net, or Maki, or Netwoman or, well, I could go on.

As I wrote in comments at Misbehaving, “I wonder how much more credence this question will be given because it’s posed by a man, rather than a woman?”.

I wish that I could talk all the women webloggers and all the non-A List webloggers to go on strike for a week, not to write, not to post, not to say a damn thing online – just to show if we are background noise, buzz if you will, we’re pretty damn important to how all this works. That if we’re not listened to when we speak, then perhaps we’ll be listened to when we don’t.

Business as usual: You, the buzz, to the linking; the popular to be linked and voted; and me to my usual rants that make no difference.

Update

I had an email from a person who is in the awards who thought I was shouting at them with my discussion earlier about the Wizbang awards. The person also said that the essay sounded self-centered and that I didn’t care about the people in the awards who are not as well known.

I guess I am not a very good writer after all, because what I wrote ended up disconnected from what was perceived.

I do have a fairly good rating in Technorati, and people must wonder why I write so much on this – what do I have to bitch about: the A-Lists, the hunt for links, and women’s writing. I have people coming by, writing comments, linking to me, and I’m a woman. What do I have to complain about?

True. All true. That’s why I felt more obligated to write what I do, because I remember all too well coming close to quitting two years ago this Christmas, when I was alone in San Francisco and felt even more alone online because no one was around, or commented, or seemed to see me.

I’ve never forgotten this and hoped to make a difference, but I’m fighting against human nature. I wasn’t helping, and once you get to the point of having to explain your motivation, you’ve already lost the battle.

To be honest, if the Wizbang awards person had taken the nominations, went out to Technorati and found the least linked of them and put only them into the award lists, I would have promoted the hell out of it. I wouldn’t have been on that list, but I still would have promoted the hell out of it.

Do me a favor folks. Disregard my earlier rants about the Wizbang awards. Instead, go out there and look at the lists. From each, find the sites with the fewest links in Technorati, visit them. For those you like, leave a comment or two, and then vote for them.

Last Update

I read some of the comments associated with the so-called cheating on this ‘award’, and then read what Meg wrote in comments to this post, “This award is stupid and meaningless, and I don’t even want to link to it”, even though promoting the contest would be more votes for her.

I sheepishly admit to the truth of what Meg is saying, and wonder myself why I bothered to link to it – it wasn’t worth the effort, and if some people had fun, who am I to complain.