Sunday, October 24, 2004

WARREN KINSELLA - SELF ADMITTED NON-BLOGGER

As I always sort of suspected, Warren Kinsella admits that he's not really a blogger. In his first post dated October 22 (no perma-links remember, more on that to come) he writes,

One, I don't give a rat's ass about obtaining, and keeping, a charter membership in the "blogging community. That's why I don't do things that all of these bloggy folks do - "permalinks," "RSS feeds," archiving what I write for more than a year, blah blah blah.
As Kinsella points out, his web site has never really been a blog in the technical sense because it lacks these things. The absense of permalinks, and an RSS feed are particularly annoying to other bloggers. Kinsella obviously doesn't care, and that's fine. At least he has now admitted that he's not running a blog. But why is he writing?
What I write is aimed at the outside world, not the blogcult.

As I, and probably many others always assumed, Kinsella uses his site as personal advertising and promotion for his own image. He knows how to manipulate the system and does it well. Hence the whole recent libel debacle was simply more manipulation on Kinsella's part I'm sure.

But this is counter to the reason I, and I suspect most other bloggers, blog. We're not specifically seeking attention, of course we like it when one of the A-list bloggers links to us sending our one-day hits through the roof, or when we, or another blogger we know, are mentioned in the mainstream media. But fundamentally we blog because we enjoy the medium and the discourse it creates. Kinsella admits he doesn't really care about this. Fine, at least he's being honest. But he's not a blogger.

Finally, Kinsella writes,
Some bloggers, found on my intro page, are there because I think they're interesting. When they stop being interesting, I take them off.

Ouch. Kinsella used to link to me on the aforementioned page. He no longer does. I guess this blog has ceased to be interesting. I'm shocked to discover my lack of relevance.

Posted by Matthew @ 2:45 p.m.