Blog-Culling Fallout and a True Blogrolling Amnesty

Last month Atrios announced this past Saturday would be his designated blog-culling day, although he called it amnesty. His so-called amnesty didn't effect me, since I was not on his blogroll, so I was not endanger of being culled. Some other well-read, and enjoyable blogs were culled from his list, like skippy. As Jon Swift notes:

But the more I learned about this Amnesty Day, the more I realized that it was a very strange amnesty indeed. The amnesty he granted turned out to be amnesty for himself. He wanted to assuage himself of the guilt he might feel at kicking blogs off his blogroll instead of granting amnesty to others to swarm across the border into his domain.

But, amazingly, there were a number of other alpha-dog bloggers that took his lead. Such as Markos, who incidentally, also culled skippy fom his blogroll, along with others. I was saddened to find that Ezra joined the blogroll culling fest, while being culled himself. However, I do like that he cleaned up his categories.

Probably the most obnoxious, and self-aggrandizing post came from Chris Bowers. Tucked away we find this bit of non-encouragement for the solo blogger, like myself, and so many others.

The current requirements to becoming a top progressive blog are far in excess of what they were just three or four years ago. Except for those rare individuals who can produce a seemingly inexhaustible amount of content such as digby, Atrios, and Glenn Greenwald, it has become all but impossible for a single individual to rise to the top anymore. The solo-content provider model is dying off.

Why the rant? For a group of democrats that are top-dogs in a people-driven medium (blogging), they aren't acting very democratically. In fact, they have taken it upon themselves to turn the progressive blogosphere blogtopia (y!sctp) into two-blogospheres. The elites and the rest. The few versus the rest. Sound familiar?


But with Kos and Atrios making a big show about "culling the blogroll", and Chris Bowers playing "Mine's Bigger" with the rest of the blogosphere, is this really what it's come to? Is this the Revenge of the Nerds come to fruition? Is this the guys who DIDN'T get laid on prom night finally staking their claim to coolness?

If so, are we going to sit by and take it? Are we going to just toil away while guys like Atrios and Kos and Chris Bowers define the rules and brand the rest of us as useless?

Those rules will speak loud and clear to a multitude of readers. Smaller blogs, and blogs the big-boys can't bother to link to are not worthy. And as skippy and Jon Swift both note, it will limit diversity. There is no arguing that.

But skippy, Jill, spiidey, and I'm sure many others, are pulling back the curtain so you can see what exactly the "man" behind looks like.

In light of this curatin lifting, I am following skippy's lead (as well as his rules) and declaring a REAL blogrolling amnesty. Here is how it goes:

to wit: any blog that has linked to skippy ToaAW and has not received a reciprocal blogroll link will now be included on our roll! all you have to do is notify us in our comments section or by email, and we will happily include you! that will show those big shot elitists too good for the little guy blogs! ha!

Should you add ToaAW to your blogroll, let me know and I will happily reciprocate.

Comments

[JabeDobegag]

Haha that's rediculous. No way

[anadevalrie]

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