and she said.. "how you interpret the dream is probably more important than the dream itself"

Blogging 101

Sometimes people don't get blogs. Moms.. Dads.. Bosses.. Ex-Girlfriends.. even best friends. It can be simple:

whatever man, I just don't get it

it can be off the cuff:

That blog shit you do is weird, man

it can be snotty:

That computer shit is so lame. Why don't you come to Abercrombie with me?

And it can be rather seething:

Look, I don't understand why you have to drag my name through the mud in front of millions of strangers and all for what? HUH? What? Why do you have to do this to me? Do you hate me THAT MUCH?

And sometimes, even, it can even come from a blogger:

from rampantsmaats: What the shit. Tony Pierce linked us yesterday. It seemed kind of ironic to me. Rachel is talking about him all the time. Personally I have a hard time reading people who I don't actually know. I suppose I know him better than lets say the girls from Madpony since he actually lived in IV and I will safely or unsafely assume attended UCSB. But that is besides the point. I don't get what the big deal is. He is just a guy. That writes well.

But it all comes down to one thing: misunderstanding.

To the simpleton, I say: "Wake up man and smell the roses. Get off the couch and stop playing those video games. Look around you. There are people. Interact. Commune."

To the seether, I say: "Release the hate. Let it go. Chill out man. Go hang out with the simpleton. Be friendly for once and open your eyes to the creativity in the world."

And to the blooger, I say: "Why read anything at all? Why read this, here, right now? I am - as you say - just a guy - and I don't even write well. You don't know me. You didn't know Alex either - but you stopped to talk to him. You interacted with him. And now look. A stranger becomes a friend. If we all thought like you we'd be a world full of hermits and no phones because it takes social networks to build physical networks like phone systems and the internet and the interstate highway system."

Blogging is a dynamic, live form of published journalism. It's not hardcoded or static. It's not like a book that you read over and over. The closest we can get to a real-world comparison is that of a letters to the editor page in a newspaper. It is, essentially, about community.

For a long time I questioned the practice of blog-linking at the end of posts such as is practiced by the likes of Moxie, Tony, and even sometimes Anti. At first I thought it was a bit whorish and unseemly, like a handout from the soup-kitchen and a grade-school popularity play at the same time. I might have been wrong. Those characteristics might be part of the mix but it's a lot more than all of that. It's telling your buddy "Hey, I met this cool chick today." It's telling your mom "I found this amazing flower shop on my way to work." It's mentioning, in passing, the little things you stumble upon in life that are worth pointing out.

News Flash: Everything in life is a grade-school popularity play. That's the first thing you should just get over. It's just the way it is because we are social creatures susceptible to social currents and waves and always always comparing. So throw that out the window as an uncontrollable feature of the landscape. Ignore it. Work with it. Work around it. But don't hate the playa, hate the game, if that's your MO.

Rampant Intellectualism - Doc Searls - Hunter S. Thompson

side note: if i'm going to start playing the linking game, i'm going to do it with a little purpose. all links following posts will contain titles which are excerpts from the blog in question - so make sure to hoover over the link and see what I'm linking to.