Parasitology of Blogging

Professional bloggers are, at best, symbiotic parasites. In the sea of the internet, blogging is a million lampreys sucking on the bloated cephalopod of a giant squid feeding upon the tiny Nautilus of a single unique thought.

Case in point: check out this excellent chart by Ben Fry, which entirely appropriately I found via the excellent Mental Floss, who explains:

In Fry’s image, he presents blogs in a list from left to right, with the more popular blogs starting to the left (at the far left are Boing Boing, Engadget, and PostSecret). Colored lines connect the blogs when they link to each other, with the color of the line getting brighter as it approaches the source of the article being linked to. Different colored lines denote different topics (technology, politics, etc.). The cumulative effect demonstrates the intensive interlinking of blogs, and shows a cascading effect as content starts at the major blogs and is linked to by smaller blogs down the line.

It's an interesting chart that emphasizes what most pro bloggers already know: most of the time, their role is that of a professional regurgitator. It's an odd dichotomy: amateur bloggers are the ones who produce the vast majority of original content on the Internet. Professional bloggers, on the other hand, serve as a human filter for the internet according to a subject and their own passions, because (and here's the rub) pro blogging only pays in volume.

This is something we have struggled with, and I expect will continue to struggle with, at ToM. Our subject is broad: our role is ultimately to show the reader what's cool. We've tried to set ourselves apart in this regard by a heavy infusion of personality and by eschewing subjects we have nothing to say about: to emphasize the personality in the role of a blogger as an internet filter. It doesn't change the fact that we're generally parasites, but at least we're trying to be the toxoplasmosis over the tape worm.

Linkology [New York Mag]

Edit: Actually, Annalee and I are discussing the meaning of this in the comments. I may have jumped the gun: it seems to be saying something a bit more nuanced in actuality.