Blogrolls are a very interesting and key part of blogs. They create the connections between people, allow for an articulated presentation of one’s social networks. They allow for people to navigate from blog to blog to find one another. They allow other sites that track the “value” of a given blog to see who connects to who. Really, they are great for anyone interested in fashion and blogs.
But they also cause other problems. First, i had a hard time creating a blogroll. I read a lot of blogs, many of which are private or Live Journals, Diary Lands or otherwise. I also read a lot of professional blogs or the personal blogs of my professional connections. My readership is quite odd – friends, colleagues, Ani DiFranco fans, people that i don’t even know.
When i was creating my blogroll, i didn’t want to list my friends’ blogs out of respect – they aren’t asking the world to read them. Those who did participate in listing culture were public, professional. Thus, my blogroll quickly became odd – it was a collection of the professional blogs that i read and those that i felt as though i should be reading more often. Plus, there were people who asked to be on my blogroll and then there were those who were upset because they weren’t listed (even though i read their blog daily). It became weird, outdated and nowhere near representative of me.
Seeing as this is the most personal of my public blogs, i decided that there is no need to list off some strange aspect of my identity in order to feel socially appropriate. I appreciate my readers; i really do. But i’ll also be honest that i’ve been quite weirded out by how many more people read this than i imagined would. But it is public, and i have met some amazing new folks through the blog world. So very strange….
