Blogroll Thoughts

So I was interviewed last week about my blog by a highly intelligent woman, who I'm lucky enough to call a friend, who's writing a master's thesis about "journal-style blogs."  She asked me a bunch of good questions about why I blog, the ways my blog is connected with my sense of identity in other realms, my relationship to my readers and to the authors of the blogs I read.  It was fascinating, and it made me uncover and articulate some thoughts and patterns about this odd practice of blogging. 

The part of the conversation that was most interesting to me was when she asked me about the blogs I read.  Instead of a sidebar of links to other blogs, I have a link directing readers to my Bloglines subscriptions.  That's for a couple of reasons.  I think blogrolls are confusing.  Are they a list of what the blog's author reads?  What the blog's author thinks his/her readers would like?  What the blog's author wants his/her readers to think he/she reads? I've written about my blogroll dilemma once or twice before.  To simplify matters, I just show the blogs I'm currently subscribed to, and as my reading habits change, those changes are transparent.  There's a larger universe of blogs I check in on periodically but don't subscribe to for one reason or another. 

Somehow in there we talked about the concept of endorsement.  I guess I feel like having a blog in my blogroll is a little bit like an endorsement.  The blogs that are problematic for me are those I enjoy reading, but where something irritates me -- I suspect I wouldn't like the author, for example, or I feel like the author is using the blog to try to project a persona he or she likes better than his or her true voice. 

I've written before about what I look for in a blog.  I want a good writer, a sense of voice, a glimpse into the mind and life of the writer.  I want authenticity, not contrivance, so I deduct points for bloggers whose posts seem carefully composed. [The exception is the always-good Outer Life, who writes a good blog essay, and the delightful Topic Drift, a crisply written, crabby dose of nonsense several times a day.]  I want regular posts, not too long, but no filler, please, no statements about how you can't think of anything to write about or how you are bored or how you're too tired or stressed out.  Jeff Jarvis has made me realize I don't want too-frequent posts. 

Anyway, she then asked me what kind of relationship I feel I have with the authors of the blogs I read.  Hmmm.  I looked at the list of blogs I read regularly and found myself saying, well, I've gotten to know him through blogging and now we're organizing a conference together, and I met him for lunch a couple of weeks ago, and she's become a trusted email friend, and I talk on the phone to him regularly, and this person I don't know and have never met, but this next one is a regular AIM pal of mine who I've gotten to know over the last eight months, and this one here I've not met but we've exchanged enough personal email that I think we're real life friends, and this one's definitely been converted to real life friend, this one sent me something in the mail, and this one and I tried to meet for coffee but haven't connected yet, and of course this one and this one and this one were real life friends before, and these guys weren't ever friends but we've met and worked on a couple of things together.  Just going through the list I realized there are very few bloggers I read regularly who I haven't connected with in real life.  Interesting.   

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