Slashdot Mirror
The World of Blogebrities
Jeremy writes "The folks at Blogebrity have a unique take on the blog scene. Drawing a parallel to the glitz and glam of Hollywood stars, they've divided some of the better-known bloggers into A-, B-, and C-lists. Slashdot favorite Wil Wheaton is featured on the A-list, while some lesser-known bloggers such as Bruce Sterling made it to the B-list, and most of the non-geeks like comedian Margaret Cho can't seem to break out of the C-list. What does the slashdot crowd think of their choices?"
Crimony. Another few years of the word-hackery that brought us "blogebrities", and we're all gonna sound like some freakish variant of the Smurfs.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Seriously, "Blogebrities"?!?!?!
WTF?
I think blogs are a great way for B- C- and Z-list celebrities to get their names back in print.
I think it still comes down to personal preference. My girlfriend wouldn't find too many of the geekier types very interesting, and would find the comedians, and entertainers more interesting.
That is the biggest draw of blogging, you can find someone that is writing about what you like, and don't have to read articles that don't interest you. There is so much out there.
I think trying to categorize bloggers is mostly useless.
"Blogebrity: The Magazine. Coming soon to newsstands near you" (No, really, they're marginally serious. At least they're seriously floating the idea. And no, I don't really fucking care if they don't really intend to sell real paper magazines at real newsstands.)
"Isn't it about time that someone talked about bloggers?"
"Because, isn't it time that bloggers got some attention?"
(Actual quotes from the site.)
Jesus Christ.
Give me a fucking break.
There's the Stanford transhumanist society one. Can't think of any other good ones.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
I wish I had the last 30 seconds of my life back.
Mailing Wil a "get better" card - $3.
Buying him weird medications over the Internet - $99.
Trying to slashdot his server - Priceless.
Money for nothing, pix for free
We dont. Why are people so fascinated with celebrities? Are your own lives really THAT boring?
OMG! BTW Did you hear that Nick and Jessica filed for divorce?
I think this whole blog thing is getting way out of hand. Who cares that much about someone else life? Most people can't even care for themselves...why should you be worrying about checking out the latest cell phone picture with a story about how the line at McDonalds is too long. Gimme a break.
While I clearly know the name, but have now idea how to spell it... I'll be honest, I've never even seen her, but damn if her name doesn't get dropped like it's supposed to mean something.
Who cares?
are your sitemeter hits and your TTLB ecosystem status. i'm currently a marauding marsupial.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Does somebody want to do my homework and see if the person who sent this to Slashdot is the same as the domain owner?
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
I recently started a blog that I'm purposely not advertising anywhere, because for now I'm simply using it as a way to share my thoughts with just a close circle of friends. But I've been thinking about the issue of "blogebrity" for a few months now.
I wonder what percent of bloggers start a blog out of some misguided attempt to achieve "celebrity" or acceptance among the cloaked masses?
I'm sure many bloggers, well, blog because they actually do have something good to say, but at the same time there are tons of hacks out there just trying to get page-views and AdSense clicks that pollute the infosphere.
Being a page-view whore isn't much better than being the jackass who yells and raises their hands in the back of a video interview.
I looked under N, but I saw no Neal, Cowboy. This list is a fake.
Didn't see groklaw mentioned.
PJ is certainly a celebrity at this point--she even has her own stalker (Maureen O'Gara).
No, not your opinion, their opinion.
Well, yours doesn't either, but that's now what I was talking about.
Give me a list of blog sites with a recap of their content and let me decide if I like them. A/B/C categorizing of how "good" they are does me no good whatsoever.
And please call them something else. 'Blog' is one of the few words I hate more than 'Podcasting'
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
That the RTFA'ers are upset that they are not on the A-List, since the site appears to be down.
Everytime some sort of a list comes out, whether it's top 100 songs, best ice cream flavor, all time movies, you're always going to have "aww man, X needs to be there," or "why did Y get there? they suck."
It's a list man. It's opinion. It's a list of Blogs, and it's not that big of a deal.
Maybe in blogebrity's eyes, Margaret Cho doesn't have anything to say? Maybe she says more than those D-Listers that DIDN'T make it.
It doesn't look like they explained their system here.
A blogebrities , but i know a fairf few Blogstards.
Rollin rollin rollin , rollin rollin rollind P
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
But hey! This opens up all kinds of future blog-related positions. Watch for these coming Slashdot stories!
Carousel is a lie!
I have Wilwheaton.net in my browser history and cached on my drive. Never has their been a better reason to rub magnets on my hard drive than now.
/. ++
I mean, really, why? If you like what someone has to say, read their blog. If you don't, then don't- its really not all that difficult. This really should have had the "Its Funny, Laugh" tag.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Loic lemeure being on the A group must be a bad joke isn't it?
I'm curious to see who ends up in the top spots for the blogebriy top 100 (the superstars of blogging). I'm hoping to see Jason Kottke pretty high up there. I mean... quitting job to go blogging full time (and money made not through ads but a fundraiser in the style that of NPR). Jeff Jarvis also has gone blogging full time (well... more so consulting about blogging) and you can catch more on that here
- Teja
Or was that someone else?
Deleted
Blogrebrity Sex Video Scandals
Celebrate the finer things in life
Blogebrity is one of the entries in that stupid viral-marketing contest. And it's not like I'm the one who broke this story, either. Aren't there any press releases to post today?
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Someday I hope to be a D-minus blogebrity
I dare to dream! =)
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Isn't this website part of the Contagious Media Showdown that was posted a few days ago?! WTF? Isn't this considered cheating?
Never use that word again. Some neologisms man simply was not meant to know.
Canthros
I look at the A-list, and only recognize very few of the names. Should I?
Great, not only do I have so little free time now because I have to keep up with my life along with all the lives of fabulous celebrities, now I have to keep up with blogebrities.
I hope they make the B! Bloggertainment channel so I can get all my blogebrity news. I just have to know which blogebrities are "linking," if you know what I mean.
"There are more important things than stopping terrorism. Upholding the Constitution is one of them." - Ars Forumer.
I just realized, from reading comments here, that it's not pronounced 'Bloggey-brites' but instead 'blog-eb-ri-ties'.
That's sad. Not my not knowing the word, the word itself. It was bad enough when it was a nonsense word 100%, now that it means.... THAT... it's even worse.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
Jim Carrey on SNL playing Jimmy Stewart imitating Jim Carrey: "I need attention 24 hours a day! Look at me! Look at me!"
Intelligent Life on Earth
I for one welcome our blogrebrity overlords!!
Hmmm... I've seen several lists in which Dave Barry's Blog has been recognized as one of the best (it's worth it just for the "24" synopsis) and he's not mentioned in any of the three lists.
Looking through the names, I see a number I'd never consider and I can come up with a few more I would have liked to see. Like any "best of" list, this one is just somebody's personal opinion.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Wheaton's current entry is all about how lousy he felt when he got sick. If that's what it takes to be a blogging A-lister, I think I'll stick to the rest of the Internet for awhile longer.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
I remember her.. she was "booed" offstage at my Uni ( few years back) because the crowd wanted to hear the "good comedian" coming up after her...
Didn't really care for any of them.. but the other guy whoever he was, now he was funny!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Interesting how, just today a columnist in Dagens Nyheter (largest newspaper in Sweden) wrote a column about blogging. He drew a parallel to other fads, the one he specifically mentioned was the early 90's Grunge trend.
These trends were first hailed as something new and different, which would change the world, only to subsequently be adopted by the mainstream/the existing powers, and eventually died off without actually changing anything.
(The anti-fashion 'grunge look' became the fashion, then went out of fashion, then things were as they were before.)
The parallel he saw, was in the increasing amount of Celebrity blogging. People who are already in the mainstream media are increasingly starting to blog themselves, and that's corrupting the original visions of blogs being a kind of "even playing field".
Now I'm not sure whether the columnist was right or wrong about this. (I can't and won't predict the future.) But I thought it was an interesting thought anyway.
Oh boy, yet another outlet for already-celebrities to get noticed. Boy oh boy, because, you know, not enough people know that Margret Cho is a fat, bitter lesbian asian-american with, you know, problems. And her take on things is really cool. Like that time when she saw that one homosexual and called him a silly fag, and then ended up eating a ham (or a tofu ham, sorry, I should probably read her blog to find out if she's vegan or not), while flashing back over how she was discriminated growing up. Okay, seriously, a lot of these people are pretty cool and say things that aren't outright lies. But does the world really need another portal? Why does Andy Baio merit an "A" while "THE" Isabella Wunder only get a "C"? Because some goon somewhere says so? It's like reducing the art of movie criticism to Beavis and Butthead. "Citizen Kane - 6T's! Awesome!" "Casablanca - B6(j7)! It's neat!" "Spellbound - 23.3! I didn't get that one scene!" Except without even the comments. With "indie" being all the trend, you'd figure (well, if human thought / capacity for getting stuff off the ground was anywhere near ideal) that there'd be a few more "indie" websites. Remember mp3.com? Now THAT was what the internet should be all about. Evidently we'd rather just know what everyone else is reading, and want it from more than just google and Alexa.
This is either Insightful or Flamebait...
I can't decide.
What the hell, I'm not on the list! This is an outrage and an opportunity for a shamless /. plug
www.internaldemise.blogspot.com
I don't even want to KNOW what list Roland Piquepaille is on.....
The URL has changed but he was the first review of Sith.
/fanboy
He ranks pretty high in my book.
blog is the worst word EVER omg/wtf/bbq/kfc
To be frank, seems like a giant wiener waving contest.
In all seriousness, this is what any form of media does best; tell us just HOW IMPORTANT media is. Bloggers are especially impressed with themselves, so it makes perfect sense.
(PS: I don't mean media = press. Bloggers are as much journalists as gossip columnists, and about one step above "storytellers". Not surprisingly, in both camps there seems to be equal amounts of drama in the drivel they put out).
Please help metamoderate.
What I find hilarious is how this thread is stuffed to the gills with people who rushed a post on Slashdot to tell the world that people with blogs are pathetic for thinking their opinions are important enough to publish on the web.
Mr. Kettle? There's a Mr. Pot holding for you on line two... says he wants to tell you something.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Blogebrity? Another abomination of the English language which is hardly surprising coming from people who work in New Media and the Web where everyone is happy to coin a new term if gets them some attention.
Secondly, I'm not sure if this Blogebrity thing is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but if it isn't, it's enough to put you off the whole phenomenon of blogging for life.
Strangely enough, I'm voting Insightful. Wish I had points to enforce that with... who really cares about "blogebrities"? I've noticed that /. does this more and more frequently. "Oooh! They said blog! We must report!" or "Oooh! Today is day 7 of Star Wars in theaters, let's post another random article so /.ers can say Lucas raped their childhood memories!" Why can't we have more stories like the one this morning about Voyager?
For the nth time,
strcmp("Internet Junkie","Nerd")!=0
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
who could forget the lovely and talented Ali Davis, author of True Porn Clerk Stories? I'm sorry, that's the best blog i've ever read, bar none.
filter: +3. Hey, look! all the trolls went away!
This story was submitted as an attempt to gain clicks. The site itself is probably meant as a joke, but it is certainly an entry in the "Contagious Media Showdown." The showdown is "a competition to create the most viral website, as measured by the number of unique visitors from now until June 9th."
Getting it submitted to Slashdot probably won it for those guys. Seems like ballot stuffing to me, though.
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
Sad that only cataclysmic events seem to give everyone a reality check as to what's important. Too bad memories are short.
Somewhat related, I saw earlier today that http://talkingpointsmemo.com/ (a progressive political blog) is going to have a special guest blogger next week in the form of Senator John Edwards (John Kerry's right-hand man last fall); ought to make an interesting read.
eweblogebrityzine?
(that's e-web-blog-ebrity-zine)
Fuck that. Hell I even refused to call a web log a "blog" until it fucking exploded all over the internet and evolved into a new thing.
btw, the site looks like a hacked together piece of crap trying to look like a magazine.
Question everything
At least Wikipedia isn't being defaced/spammed as it was in one of those earlier SEO contests. It would be pretty funny if after all this publicity, they went ahead and DID publish a magazine. Read more of their thoughts in their blog.
BTW, I noticed that Hulk's Blog isn't listed. ;-)
Hulk might have to SMASH 'em!
Yesterday's Voyager update: Still in space, moving away from us at a good clip.
Today's Voyager update: Still in space, moving away from us at a good clip.
Tomorrow's Voyager update: Still in space, moving away from us at a good clip.
Friday's Voyager update: Still in space, moving away from us at a good clip.
Saturday's Voyager update: Still in space, moving away from us at a good clip.
Sunday's Voyager update: Still in space, moving away from us at a good clip.
That should hold you at least until Monday. We can give you more updates then, okay?
You get to see how, well, frankly stupid and ignorant they really are. I predict that within a year, most celebrity blogs will be closed or handed over to their agents to manage with the rest of their publicity.
Deleted
in our society, for Americans at least. One of the things that I have noticed about blogging is that it is quite hard for people who take unorthodox views to get any attention. The vanity that is often involved in blogging ends up causing people to shy away from real debates because they want to be flattered, not challenged. Blogging seems like a sexy thing to do for a lot of people more out of a sense of a dellusion of grandeur than any desire to write intelligently.
I'm a political blogger of sorts, but I could really care less what happens in the Republicratic oligarchy on a daily basis. Most bloggers that I have seen that do write about politics end up obsessing about such mundane shit that they have no power over. Really, Bush's nominees aren't that interesting. Ideologically he is a continuation of the triangulation centrism of Clinton except with a pragmatic approach to using our military abroad against terrorists. Whoever Bush chooses won't end up being a true conservative, but rather a closet moderate or left-liberal like Clinton and half of Reagan's appointees. Until the LP, Reason Foundation or Cato vouches for some of those guys I won't give them more attention than a passive yawn.
Part of the reason I read so few blogs is that I don't want to read what amounts to a political soap opera. That really is what it is all about in the end. Most bloggers act like housewives obsessed with the Young and the Restless and Days of Our Lives.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
But I'm glad to see Roland Piquepaille didn't make the list.
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
there would have been mention in the comments of one of the well established blog ranking websites. Figuring out who's who among bloggers based on anything but traffic and click-through rate is subjective to the point of meaninglessness. Ironic that something as unreal as advertising is about the only thing that offers any measure of the reality behind the hype about blogging as a new media.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
I mean, my life is boring and sucks, but I still would rather do almost anything than read the inane crap that people write in their "blogs" (lame-ass nonword).
We apologize for the inconvenience.
And ego stroking at it's worst, for the most part.
Margaret Cho rocks!
I saw one of her movies and I laughed so hard I cried.
Maybe she cannot break out of the C-List because her stand-up comedy subjects include sex, sexual politics, homosexuals, transvestites, and tolerance.
So mass appeal just isn't in the cards for her.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
If I had mod points I'd give them to you.....unfortunately, most slashdotters are too young to remember how much fun usenet used to be. I was a big fan of alt.sysadmin.recovery and alt.mensa.flame.flame.flame
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
n/t
I hate the word blog or blogging or I wish these people so hopelessly behind technology would take their blogetry and shut up. I wish the media was as smart as they think they are. "Christ, you mean if I put my worthless 2 cents on a webpage everyday, I can pretend it's important? Wait, others can do this too, it's like there's a big web of pages full of information that anyone in the world can read! I must join two words togther to form a catch phrase thus cementing this movement in the Big Book of Overrated Fads." Years earlier: Computer geek: "Hey, I made a log on my web page. Now I'm going to do something useful."
It must be really out of date--how am I supposed to understand what people are saying? ...Hey wait a minute, are you just making those up?
I read Slashdot for the articles.
...today, I learned that I am not alone in every so often having the urge to publicly post nothing of any value in case one out of six billion people on this planet care to read it.
I suddenly don't feel so bad anymore.
Of course, this merely confirms my long-standing belief that the Internet has become the fastest way for more people than ever before to say less than ever before.
(insert pointless rambling here)
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
I'm glad Zeldman made the list though...I think that's the only name I recognized in all three lists.
I really could not care less no matter how hard I tried.
Where's Seth Finkelstein?
Wil Wheaton definatly is more interesting than Margaret Cho. Talk about a self-hating asian. I've never seen a chick talk more about dicks than when I watched one her comedy special, or I should say the few minutes I watched it.
-- 4 8 15 16 23 42
Clearly the list is fraudulent. Maddox is on the B list? I've never heard of most of the A list but I'd think getting a book deal off of having a well read blog would put you on the A list of blogging. Afterall, that's the point of having one.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
My favorite blog at the moment has to be boingboing.net
...they're all smart, funny and cool. If my best friends had time to get together and make a blog, it would look like this.
It's a collaborative blog from the likes of:
- Cory Doctorow, one of the best voices in contemporary SF, and a co-founder (iirc) of the EFF.
- Xeni Jardin, tech culture journalist and regular contributer to Wired and NPR. (oh, and not that it matters, but she's spectacularly cute)
- Mark Frauenfelder, writer and illustrator.
- David Pescovitz, well-known science and tech writer.
- John Battelle, web search pundit.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
What I find hilarious is how this thread is stuffed to the gills with people who rushed a post on Slashdot to tell the world that people with blogs are pathetic for thinking their opinions are important enough to publish on the web.
What are you talking about? I set my threshold to 5, and it's like sitting at a table with the philosopher kings here.
(Sorry, not a flame, just friendly jab. Sirs.)
I read Slashdot for the articles.
First ask, are they famous because they blogged or did they blog because they're famous?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
It seems this is all the rage in todays pop culture. An undying sense of "reality" through celebrity. It's an oxymoron to be sure and hopefully another quietly exiting fad. I mean, not to sound elitist, but when I find a blog as well written as the NY Times, perhaps I'll be intrigued.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
What are you talking about? I set my threshold to 5, and it's like sitting at a table with the philosopher kings here.
:)
Had I not already posted in this thread, I would mod that comment up as "funny."
Not because it was all that hilarious or anything... I just think it would be nice if he could read his own posts once in a while.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
You can always read your own posts.
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
What does the slashdot crowd think of their choices?
/. crowd member thinks we should stop giving entries in the Contagious Media Showdown more help than they deserve.
This
You haven't read my blog, then, have you?
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
PJ is shiniest blog celebrity in recent days.
What I find completely devoid of humor are all the different ways people modify the phrase "pot calling the kettle black." Really, it never was funny.
Hmmm... I used to be roomates with an A-List Blogger. I'm going to put that on my resume right away.
-- oh.... so..... sleeeeeepy.
How about we remove from the gene pool anyone who runs a blog, writes into a blog, or even uses the term blog?
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Ok, this isn't even close to being an accurate list... Surely they would have included *MY* blog on the A-List if it were ;)
--
www.nitemarecafe.com
I know that a lot of people hate him. But if you're going to make a list like this based on the notoriety and possibly the amount of hits on the site Tucker Max has to be near the top.
I would have put him on the A-list for sure; he broke 100 million page views a couple months ago.
Real_men_don't_need_spacebars.
His blog is often very amusing (at least for those that understand our British humour).
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
Juan Cole was listed as a "B-list" blogger, but he should be on the A-list.
For the uninformed, Juan is a University of Michigan professor who collects information from various Arab Web sites and posts them in his blog. If you want to take a read at what's really happening in the Middle East, check out his blog http://www.juancole.com/.
He's definitely against the U.S. involvement in Iraq, so he's definitely biased. And I would prefer he stop some of the partisan crap that spews from both sides (his recent Photoshop pic of Cheney on a body-builders' body comes to mind), but the information he provides is well worth reading.
Fuck off.
Thank you.
Isn't the last thing this world needs is the extension of celebrity bullshit?
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
That's an original one. Post the list of your Friendster friends and call it the list of top blogging celebrities.
Or isn't it considered a blog?
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
It's been a while, but in enders game didn't enders brother and sister manipulate politics and elections on "the net?" Isn't that where blogs are going? Some how I doubt it will happen that soon. I do like how science fiction predicts the future so well sometimes.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
Can someone please explain?
/. where only one person can submit and moderate.
It seems to be nothing more than a forum in which only the owner is allowed to start a new headlined thread. A
Or am I just getting curmudgeony with age?
Perhaps making one would get me fame and fortune?
They seem to be the hot new thing.
Adding an old DECtalker for text to speech and coupling to podcast(which I do grok and can't understand why it's not being exploited in many ways that it could be) would be kind of fun.
OK, you tell me what makes a blog something that will make people say, 'well isn't that special' and I'll do a BLOG meets PODCAST site.
Could start it off with a RANT about the idiots at home depot telling me that I couldn't buy vermiculite because it is used in making BOMBS and then calling the security guard... One of a million good stories waiting to be told.
I use to read Wil's blog every day but of late it seems all he does is whine about stuff. Tried again today and he was whining about being sick. Crap, I can get that at home from my wife.
They ought to be using an Artificial Intelligence program to generate entries?
The Pjammer Chronicles --
Here is a sample English phrase:
This is a sample sentence about blogs.
In bloggie, this becomes:
Blog blog blog blog blog blog blogs.
But on a more serious note, this is what all the recent media coverage about blogs sounds like. It has become ridiculously overexposed. I remember that one time I wasn't able to open a single newspaper without finding a front page article about what a "metrosexual" was. I'm hoping that the same thing doesn't happen to blogs, which have many uses when they are used instead of talked about.
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
Submitted this as an ask slashdot but figured might get some input here, in case it's another editors REJECT!
/. wizards of internet communications for the scoop on the good stuff.
Senor_Programmer writes "I'm always getting these wild and crazy ideas but I'm both lazy and wanting to implement well. So, have come a begging all you
Here is what I want to to.
I want to set up a combination podcasting and blogging site.
weblog > text to speech > podcast
I'm looking for FOSS suggestions-recommendations to employ in this silly endeavour. Stuff I can glue together with scripts.
What do you say?
1)Blog. Personal and some friends but don't want to be tied down if it gets popular.
2)Text to speech. Something with tailorable voices would be nice.
3)Podcasting, see '1'.
Once running would also like to have a go at a speech to text input for the blog. It's a natural once the text to speech part is there becase it makes training easy. Shoud be trainable for multiple users so that once a user is identified or identifies himself the past training results are available. So, suggestions for speech to text would be nice too. With speech to text and picture phones, it's possible to update the thing easily on the go, once the speech to text is trained.
If anyone wants to play with me on this project, speak up."
So...erm... why isn't Zach Braff not listed? I know he updates his blog on the Garden State website quite regularly. Not worthy of even the C list?
"Dre don't get as high as me.... I'm Cheech and Chong" - Snoop Dogg
The only blogs I ever read are located at cvs.sourgeforge.net. None of these guys seem to write there.
Based on what? His entries are about as banal as any other's, and his writings pale compared to Sterling's (yes, apples and oranges). Perhaps his left-leaning self-important tone carries the day...
"This is pathetic. In such a short time, a community has taken everything despicable about celebrity worship and reimplemented it on the Internet. "
How true it is. How pathetic it is.
Well, when the web came along, everyone thought the web would be this big amorphous blob with no discernable center, just a sense of egalitarianism in which everyone was as important as everyone else. But no one could see their way around, and some sites had more content than others, but most importantly this upset the establishment, who quickly moved to have portal pages like msn.com and aol.com and such that controlled what most people saw first. Soon order was restored, and the establishment was on top again.
Now blogs have sought to re-organize the media into an egalitarian space where anyone's opinion is as good as anyone else's. And now there's a move by establishment media to have blog portals, and rankings of blogs, and whatnot. This is good because not every blog is worth the time. It's bad because you're substituting someone else's opinion for your own. But it's good because we have finite lifespans and can't devote our whole lives to having an opinion on everything. But mostly it's really good because it restores order and says that establishment media still has a place in the world, and that that place is, as it always was, to tell us what information we want and what information we don't.
Really, this is a victory. It means you don't have to decide for yourself. And we're a culture who doesn't like to do things for ourselves, right? That sounds too much like work. And who wants to work when one can press a button and not have to think...? I, for one, am thrilled that this easy information about who's on the A, B, and C lists is available to me. Think of the time it's going to save me. Can we get these guys to sort through Slashdot and give us A, B, and C lists of topics, too? Why, there's just no end to the time savings they could be to us if we'd only utilize their services properly...
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
I agree with you. I clicked on some of the "A List" links and found mostly news aggregation sites. One of the random "A List" clicks had the top posting as a link to The Onion, the second link on the same page to a CNN type story. Why does an amateur news aggregation site make "A list" while people who are making original material like Bruce Sterling and Maddox get delegated to the B list? The list doesn't even include Robert X. Cringely Robert X. Cringely, one of the original bloggers who blogged on the internet before these people who wrote this crappy list ever even knew what the internet was. I guess it doesn't matter because Cringely, Maddox and Sterling will keep writing their original material about relevant things while "Blogebrity" and it's "A list" keep writing about their toothpaste woes, or what brand of shoes they like, hoping for some venture capital so they can sell out without ever having contributed one iota of anything, original thought or otherwise, to society.
Or as Maddox would say, "It doesn't matter, bag my groceries"
Too bad more of us don't do so before hitting "Submit". :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The only name I recognized was Wil Wheaton. Who are the rest of the bunch? It looks more like a directory listing from Blogger. Just a bunch of names.
This space for rent...
I wouldn't want to be part of any club that would have me.
Slashdot has so much fucking astroturf now it could host the next Superbowl.
Great idea. You posted to your LJ about it yet?
Tech Public Policy stuff
"Whine whine whine, Blah blah blah" "I have an opinion, everyone look at me." "This is stupid, and your stupid for reading it."
And that shall account for almost all posts from here till wednesday. Except for the true gems.
If you don't like it, don't read it.
Slashdot may now resume.