The Stink of the Link

NYRB reviews blogs through a review of books about blogs:

Political blogs are among the trickiest to capture in a book because they tend to rely heavily on links and ephemeral information. But even blogs that have few or no links still show the imprint of the Web, its associative ethos, and its obsession with connection—the stink of the link. Blogs are porous to the world of texts and facts and opinions on line. (And this is probably as close as I can come to defining an essence of blog writing.)

Bloggers assume that if you're reading them, you're one of their friends, or at least in on the gossip, the joke, or the names they drop. They often begin their posts mid-thought or mid-rant—in medias craze. They don't care if they leave you in the dust. They're not responsible for your education. Bloggers, as Mark Liberman, one of the founders of the blog called Language Log, once noted, are like Plato. :-) The unspoken message is: Hey, I'm here talking with my buddies....

Buddies?

When the blog boom came, the tone of the blogosphere began to shift. A lot of the new blogs—though certainly not all of them—weren't so much filters for the Web as vents for opinion and self-revelation. Instead of figuring out ways to serve up good fresh finds, many of the new bloggers were fixated on getting found. So the very significance of linking began to change. The links that had once mattered were the ones you offered on your blog, the so-called outbound links pointing to other sites. Now the links that mattered most—and still do—are those on other blogs pointing toward your blog, the so-called inbound links. Those are the ones that blog-trackers like Technorati count. They are the measure of fame....

Finally, I think I get the superhero fixation. It's the flying. It's the suspension of punctuation and good manners and even identity. Bloggers at their computers are Supermen in flight. They break the rules. They go into their virtual phone booths, put on their costumes, bring down their personal villains, and save the world. Anonymous or not, they inhabit that source of power and hope. Then they come back to their jobs, their dogs, and their lives, and it's like, "Dude, the ball."

Superheroes? Not me. I'm Scubadog!

You don't know the temptation this gives me to metablog, and I'm either a lazier fucker than I used to be or angrier than I used to be or.... wait for it.... an angrier lazier fucker than I used to be, but I.... must.... not..... metablog.....

Though this:

• I am here for me and mine (my "buddies") as my constant alienation of everyone interested in one of my obsessions but not the others attests.
• If I've blogrolled you I don't expect a blogroll back. I blogroll for bookmarks. If I had blogrolled you and your link has disappeared, it's not that I no longer like you, it's that I no longer read you.
• PSST! Blogs are dead.

     *

• Conason finds himself in the same dilemma I do.
• Is Bill to Hillary what Cheney is to Bush?
• End of hegemony?
• Free fall?
• More anti-Billaryland.
• More anti-Billaryland.
• Clinton fatigue.
• Friday Hope Blogging (make this a regular stop)
• Poorman's new book!
• Statistics? Dough!
• Yes, it would take a mighty effort, but it can be done.

   *

No FMF this week. Apologies, but my heart isn't in it. Have this:

A SIMPLE GIFT

Robin Robertson

She came to me in a dress
of true-love and blue rocket,
with fairy-thimbles of foxglove
at the neck and wrist,
in her hair she wore a garland
of cherry laurel, herb bennet,
dwayberries and yew-berries,
twined with stems of clematis,
and at her throat she'd threaded
twists of bryony stalk, seeds
of meadow saffron and laburnum,
linked simply in a necklace,
and she was holding out
a philtre of water lovage,
red chamomile and ladies' seal
in a cup, for me to drink.