“... because the stakes are so small.”

The beginning of that quip is, of course, “The reason academic politics are so vicious” But the observation is probably just as true of any number of realms of discourse, including (Ohmygawd!) the Blogosphere. From Scott Lemieux over at Lawyers, Guns & Money, via Memeorandum, I finally got around to reading up a bit on the internecine crisis of blogroll purging. Seems that, especially in the Leftosphere, so-called A-list blogs have been purging their blogrolls of many of the so-called B-list blogs, much to the consternation, gnashing of teeth and general whining of the latter. Or something like that.

By A-list and B-list it is presumably meant how popular the blog in question is and that, in turn, is measured by how many hits the blog gets, how many other sites link to it, list it on their blogrolls, etc. The metaphor that springs immediately to my mind, especially this time of year, is the various rankings of NCAA teams, and not only how the “majors” have unexcitingly dominated this year’s basketball tournament but especially, also, the Division I-A football schools versus, well, everyone else.

Them that’s got tries to keep it, of course. I’ll strive valiantly (if unsuccessfully) to avoid noting that redistribution of wealth of any sort is one of the more annoying perennial obsessions of the Left, but the notion that there is any merit to the practice of endlessly listing the blogs one has visited once or twice, or of one’s friends, or especially of sites one is angling to have list you back strikes me as both self-defeating and childish. I can speak, of course, only for myself (hence the title of this blog), but I almost never click on a blog from a blogroll in the first place, and the already slim chances of my doing so are inversely proportional to the length of the blogroll in question. If everyone is interesting, no one is. “All are winners and all must have prizes” is a philosophy best left to nursery schools, failed socialist states and, of course, Wonderland.

My own minor efforts to bring order out of chaos being in operation all of three days now, I’d guess that makes this blog a strong contender for Z-list status. (Unless, that is, the pecking order descends below the alphabet, in which case I’m sure I’d descend right along with it.) The fact is, though, life is too short to fret over such matters just as it is far too short to read blog after blog after blog, ignoring in the process what still passes for real news and, oh yes, the real world, as well. Yeah, I’ve got a few sites listed on my blogroll, and the list will probably grow (and occasionally be trimmed). But they’re sites I actually visit frequently in my own net cruising. Indeed, a few may not even qualify as blogs. So what?

My policy (and, hence, my advice) is to link to a site in a blog entry when doing so assists the reader in understand what I’m writing about or I believe the reader will enjoy or profit from reading that site or site entry. Beyond that, I link only to acknowledge - the proverbial “hat tip” - how and where I came to start thinking about the topic in the first place, as in the first paragraph above.

In blogistry, as in life itself, if you’re doing something simply for recognition or influence (let alone for money), chances are you won’t enjoy it, won’t do it all that well and won’t get either. If you do what you like and therefore do it as well as you can, chances are those other things will take care of themselves. Some of them that’s got, got it ‘cause they got there first; but none of them kept it for that reason alone, let alone because they joined the Million Man Mutual Admiration Society.