Since the ancient times, the soothsayers of our culture have prophesied that the coming the apocalypse and the return to the light of the One True God would be heralded by the final completion of the redesign at lukelog. And now that time has finally come. Please, my children, let there not be rioting in the streets – for our good grace will see us through these final days…
If I told you that there was a kind of person who wrote on a regular basis, was obsessed by the internet rankings of their writing, commented regularly on the work of other writers and tried to artificially improve their own “position” by writing bad things about other people, what kind of writer would you think of immediately? Webloggers, by any chance?
This position on weblogging has been lurking in the background for a while now, but has been recently brought out into the harsh light of day in an article I commented upon (in a rather uncharitable fashion) a few days ago [Deconstructing ‘You’ve Got Blog’].
But actually I wasn’t talking about webloggers at all. There’s an article in the Guardian today about people who write novels and their relationship with Amazon. The article, under the title of, “Look, I’ve sold one more copy!” describes activities that professional novelists undertake which will be immediately familiar to the owner of any weblog. Here are a couple of examples:
What better than to keep an eye on your children – and at the same time, those of your competitors? Checking your book page on amazon almost feels like working.
Why is it so compulsive? Well, for starters it updates your chart position every hour, on the hour. Not only that, but the “people who bought this book also bought_ xxx” section connects you to your nearest rivals for comparative purposes.
Of course, what one would never do is order lots of copies to influence the chart position because “you can always cancel it later”.
But the chart is only the first half of the story. Next stop is the comments section. Oh my God!
I think the time has come to accept that people who write weblogs are, at the end of the day, just acting as writers. And that writers will always care about how their work is doing, the people they feel in competition with, as well as be in awe of their forebears and heroes. These things are not just going to end because we’re writing in a new form, for a new medium.
But equally each of us, individually, has a responsibility to ourselves and to the medium we work in, to try to submerge the baser parts of our territorial, competitive and aggressive instincts and to get on with the business of writing entertaining, involving and intelligent pieces for our respective audiences – whether they be our fellow webloggers, the readers of the New Yorker or the world at large. Despite its flaws, this vast unformed writing community is something I’m still proud to be a part of.
[Deconstructing “You’ve Got Blog” was a response to an article You’ve Got Blog, as originally published in the New Yorker. Link via linkmachinego. The whole matter is currently being discussed at great length over at metafilter].
Could someone please explain this to me. Newsblogger says at the top of the page: “New feature: Customization! Now you can select which categories you’d like to appear in the drop-down on the left.” Well… how?
[After much further discussion with Jason and Meg (completely independant of one another), I now understand how to get this working on a Mac. If anyone wants to know, drop me a line.]
“Hey kids! Come over here! No really – I’m not disturbing at all! My overcoat? Yes I know it could do with a wash, but I wouldn’t say it’s a ‘dirty mac’ as such. Oh, all right then, ‘mucky’ perhaps, but certainly not dirty… Anyway – have you heard the word on the street? Oh, you’re in for a treat, my little petals. Have I got something for you. Forget smack, skag and crack – this is the future. The current thing is ‘fables’. All the cool kids are doing it. No, I don’t need counselling. Hey! Where are you going? Come back! I’ve got some ecstacy as well… Darn it!”
Damn it. I’ve done it again. This time Matt Haughey wants me dead [On Regional Metafilters]. All I can say is that I’m really sorry, Matt.
“I think that we should be thankful that people care enough about Metafilter to suggest these ideas as ways of enhancing something they respect rather than wandering off and setting up something in opposition. I think that speaks buckets about the sense of community, integrity and the amount of respect that we all feel for what Matt has accomplished.”
Another Tom design project: Time Out / FT Shopping Homepage.
Meg starts an appeal for someone to do a site:
“… devoted to the tracklistings of popular compliation albums (I’m thinking specifically here of 80’s faves Now That’s What I Call Music… and Superchart.”
I completely second this – I’ve been looking for something like this for ages, with absolutely no luck whatsoever… Tell you what – if any of you have any of these albums at all (80s only please for the moment), mail me and I’ll compile a list.
Does anyone have Now That’s What I Call Music 9 or an album called something like Hits 6 from the same year? Or alternatively an album released which was called The Greatest Hits of 1986. They all came out around in the UK around 1987/8 and I’m trying to replicate them in MP3 form so that I can relive a strange bit of my adolescence which I’d forgotten all about. If you have a tracklisting somewhere, mail me.
Please excuse the redesign. I’m really just mucking around, trying to find a calm centre to build stuff around. I’ve had such a weird weekend – had a couple of arguments, a couple of “calm discussions” (ie. arguments where you’re not allowed to shout), travelled to Oundle to visit my younger brother, got delayed on the trains, got rained on for a bit. I’m spending more money than American presidential candidates. Weekend over. Now I need a break…
The post beneath this one is extremely badly written. This is due to me writing it while frustrated and at nearly two in the morning. Apologies to anyone who was expecting my normal degree of coherence.