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I availed myself of their appeals process three times, was rejected without
explanation each time, and the third time they told me that I had used up all
my appeals and to shut up and go away. These pronouncement were
accompanied with several Dire Warnings of what would happen if I persisted or
attempt to evade the might hand of Twitter Justice.
So here's a thing you need to know about bloggers like me.
When you're a little guy, an independent blogger with no bylines
anywhere and no affiliations with any coastal Liberal networks, the only PR
you get is the PR you drum up for yourself. And, of course,
word-of-mouth carried into the world by lovely people.
Self-promotion. Or what A-List bloggers used to disparage as "blog
whoring". Unseemly. Wait your turn kid. And so forth. Much of which was motivated by the fact that the A-Listers already had friendly contacts in the
legacy media and paying gigs in the legacy media, and/or were already
networked together and would drive traffic almost exclusively to one another.
And traffic means revenue, from fundraisers, advertisers and
regular contributors. .
I remember how difficult it was to get people to notice my blog when I first
started out. "Build it and they will come," apparently only works with magic
baseball fields. The only way to get anyone to notice my blog was to get
them to link to me and that was not always easy. I linked to other bloggers
and clicked on those links hoping they would notice my link in Sitemeter. I
sent emails to other bloggers asking them to take a look at my latest piece
or to add me to their blogrolls. I instituted my "Liberal Blogrolling
Policy" offering to exchange links with anyone who linked to me. As more
blogs began to link to me and add me to their blogrolls, a curious thing
began to happen. More people came to my blog from those links and from
Google. And many of those readers then visited the blogs that I linked to.
Though it cost nothing to link to someone, I realized that on the Internet
links are capital. Every link has value. And when two bloggers link to each
other, they both profit.
The idea that links are the capital of the blogosphere seems so obvious that
you would think an economist like Atrios of Eschaton would have realized it
long ago. And as he is a progressive who has accumulated quite a bit of link
wealth, you might also think he would be in favor of redistributing some of
that wealth instead of just letting it trickle down. So when he announced
last year that he was declaring February 3 Blogroll Amnesty Day, and other
bloggers followed suit, I assumed he meant that he was opening his blogroll
up to the masses. I sent him a polite email pointing out that his blog was
on my blogroll and I would really appreciate it if he would add my blog to
his. I never heard back from him.
When February 3 rolled around, many bloggers discovered to their horror that
instead of adding new blogs to his blogroll he was throwing many off,
including some bloggers who were his longtime friends. Blogroll Amnesty Day,
it turned out, was a very Orwellian concept. Instead of granting amnesty to
others he was granting amnesty to himself not to feel bad for hurting others
feelings. Though Atrios has stubbornly refused to acknowledge that he made a
mistake, some bloggers who initially joined him, backtracked. Markos of the
Daily Kos instituted a second blogroll that consisted of random links from
diarists. PZ Myers of Pharyngula now has real Blogroll Amnesty Days where he
invites anyone who has blogrolled him to join his blogroll. And in the wake
of the bloodletting quite a number of smaller blogs, like my friend skippy
the bush kangaroo, changed their own blogroll policies and now link more
freely to others...
As I am reminded every time I take a turn doing Mike's Blog Roundup over at
Crooks & Liars and go looking for the latest word from the smaller Liberal blogs...the Liberal blogosphere is a mere shadow of its former self. Defunct blogroll links hugely outnumber live, recent ones. Most of the bloggers who were around back then are gone now. Moved on,
lost interest, or died.
And yet traffic is still currency, especially for those very few of us who are
still around and still have no bylines anywhere and no affiliations with
any coastal Liberal collectives. And the cheapest and most reliable means of
self-promotion out there for someone like me is definitely Twitter.
Virtually no one shows up at my blog front door based on a link or a like on
Facebook, but when Twitter cut me off, my traffic dropped by 60-70% almost
overnight.
I write new stuff or doodle up new graphics almost every day, but spontaneously stopping by
someone's blog to check out what they've been up every day to is just not how humans
operate. Jon Swift was right; "Build it and they will come,"
apparently only works with magic baseball fields. It does
not work for blogging, People need to have a link and an
enticement placed in their hands where they are. Often repeatedly. And if what you're offering
is more than a single click away, they won't come.
In the world as it is, promotion is absolutely necessary. If you need proof,
just head over to The Bulwark note of how they use every column, every
podcast and every appearance on any media platform at their disposal to
relentlessly promote their own people, their advertisers and their
various paid subscription offers.
That's what they've got.
What I've got is Twitter, and the podcast I do every week with my wife. and,
as I mentioned, the word-of-mouth put into the world by you lovely
people. So when the Twitter cops suddenly decided to toss me out forever
for no good reason, that really stung. Tangibly. And so for about a year I
have been off that hellsite. Still writing because that's what writers do (he
added tautologically) but for a much smaller readership.
So how did I get sprung from Twitter jail?
I have no idea, but I do know how bureaucracies operate, and I figured that
after a year there was a decent chance that the pissy, digital ribbon clerk who
decided to kick me out and keep me out might well have either quit or moved on to bigger
and better things at Twitter, Inc. because nobody stays in that kind of
martinet/traffic cop job for long. So, to quote Lester Freamon, I guess they
just forgot about me.
Some new person reviewed my new appeal, dropped me a note that I had, in fact, not violated any Twitters rules And just like that, after returning some of my personal effects...
...they sprung me.
So, since I had never violated their terms of service to start with, the question remains, "What was the real reason I was cast out of Twitter with such aggressive finality in the first place?"
And like so much in life, the answer is, I'll never know for certain.
But I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with me engaging in the transgressive practice of asking impertinent questions of important people and remembering inconvenient truths in public without the benefit of clout-heavy friends in high places or a blue check or anything.
Which, if I remember correctly all these years later, was the reason I got into blogging in the first place.
Yes, as Skippy the Bush Kangaroo reminds us all, it is that day once again. The day when we wee bloggers celebrate being officially cast out by the Big Bloggers because you can't get to heaven in a rocking chair, 'cause a rocking chair won't get you there.
...The idea that links are the capital of the blogosphere seems so obvious that you would think an economist like Atrios of Eschaton would have realized it long ago. And as he is a progressive who has accumulated quite a bit of link wealth, you might also think he would be in favor of redistributing some of that wealth instead of just letting it trickle down. So when heannounced last year that he was declaring February 3 Blogroll Amnesty Day, and other bloggers followed suit, I assumed he meant that he was opening his blogroll up to the masses. I sent him a polite email pointing out that his blog was on my blogroll and I would really appreciate it if he would add my blog to his. I never heard back from him.
When February 3 rolled around, many bloggers discovered to their horror that instead of adding new blogs to his blogroll he was throwing many off, including some bloggers who were his longtime friends. Blogroll Amnesty Day, it turned out, was a very Orwellian concept. Instead of granting amnesty to others he was granting amnesty to himself not to feel bad for hurting others feelings. Though Atrios has stubbornly refused to acknowledge that he made a mistake, some bloggers who initially joined him, backtracked...
And so once a year we field-gleaners "Look up! Link down!"
and remember that there are no small blogs, only small font sizes.
Or something.
So please treat yourself by visiting these fine blogs today!
Betting on News, AOL Is Buying The Huffington Post By JEREMY W. PETERS and VERNE G. KOPYTOFF Published: February 7, 2011
The Huffington Post, which began in 2005 with a meager $1 million investment and has grown into one of the most heavily visited news Web sites in the country, is being acquired by AOL in a deal that creates an unlikely pairing of two online media giants.
The two companies completed the sale Sunday evening and announced the deal just after midnight on Monday. AOL will pay $315 million, $300 million of it in cash and the rest in stock. It will be the company’s largest acquisition since it was separated from Time Warner in 2009. ...
Arianna Huffington, the cable talk show pundit, author and doyenne of the political left, will take control of all of AOL’s editorial content as president and editor in chief of a newly created Huffington Post Media Group. The arrangement will give her oversight not only of AOL’s national, local and financial news operations, but also of the company’s other media enterprises like MapQuest and Moviefone. ...
Look up, Link down indeed.
And speaking of B.A.D, William K. Wolfrum explains why it is just a terrible idea...
Each year around this time, I'm contacted by a small cadre of political bloggers looking to push something they call "Blogroll Amnesty Day." The idea behind this day is for big, important, A-List, nationally recognized bloggers like myself to give out links to small, unimportant, D-List, not-recognized-in-ther-own-home bloggers. Beginning this year, B.A.D. (as the cool kids call it) is dedicated to the memory of B.A.D. Co-founder Al Weisel, a gifted writer and satirist who blogged under the name of Jon Swift.
Now, in theory, B.A.D. is a nice little socialist plan dedicated to encourage everyone to read Marx and wear drab clothing. Essentially, I am supposed to mention such bloggers as the angrily communistic Litbrit, or the anarchistic Fabulously Jinxed, or the angrier communisticier anarchisticier The Hunting of the Snark.
I havetwice taken part in B.A.D., mostly out of pity for co-creator skippy the bush kangaroo, who has long suffered from the nightmare of ShiftandCapsLockaphobia. This year, however, I have decided I will not be involved. You see, B.A.D. is un-American. And I will not be a part of it.
This, my friends, is the New American Way. Limited media ownership is what America is about. Freedom of Speech still reigns, but in a corporate-owned nation, that speech has now been bought and paid for by the select few. Independent small blogs and bloggers - such as Odd time Signatures, Freak Out Nation and Gay Persons of Color - are acting in a purely anti-American way when they try to add their voices to the limited media narrative.
And bloggers like the charmingly misguided Batocchio...
Blogroll Amnesty Day also requires shout-outs to Blue Gal, who's always promoting small blogs, and to the indefatigable Mike Finnigan, because at Mike's Blog Roundup, every day is Blogroll Amnesty Day.
There are many worthy blogs out there, and it's nice to step off the beaten path occasionally and read someone new. So here we go:
Confession Zero: Mark Prime's latest site for poetry is... Confession Zero.
Failed Empire: Thoughts on American imperialism, and how to kick the habit.
Mikeb302000: "Guns, politics, capital punishment, movies and music."
We Are Respectable Negroes: "Happy, Non-Threatening Colored Folk... Even in the Age of Obama." Just the team to protect us from socialism!
Godless Liberal Homo: Yet again, the blog name sells itself – but if that doesn't sell ya, surely the post title "Boehner, Other Rightists, Trying to Protect the Fetuses of Child Molesters." should do the trick.
Welcome to Potterville 2: Currently considering the hypocrisy of Ayn Rand and Rand Paul... and also examining the recent State of the Union speech.
Mister Tristan: Reflections on long-distance running, culture, and current events.
Poor Impulse Control: I'm guessing from the blog title that author Tata is a fan of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, but Tata seems both nicer and more artistic than an Inuit assassin who kills with glass harpoons and has a nuke for a sidecar. But it's always the quiet ones...
... For all that I've been working 7 days a week, 12 or more hours a day since early December, I have had time to check out a few heretofore ignored or nearly-ignored blogs, which I've just added to the blogroll. I must confess that I lack Jon Swift's generosity of spirit, for what I want to see in blogrollees is not a series of posts that simply reprint, or link to, stuff that others write. I want to see WRITING. It doesn't matter if it's about politics, or pop culture, or cats. If the writing is smart, and it's entertaining, I'm there. So in celebration of Blogroll Amnesty Day, and lifting a glass high in praise for Al Weisel, who enriched the lives of so many people who didn't even know him, here are our new blogrollees:
... So, in that tradition, I have selected five blogs that I think are worthy of attention; blogs that you may not find linked at the big places like Huffington (now a member of the AOL family) or places that get more hits on a post on a brownie recipe than they might get in a year. I chose them for my own reasons, but please feel free to add to the list via the Comments, and please take a moment to stop by and read their work.
And the inimitable Blue Gal (who is -hint! hint! -- holding a fundraiser)...
... Small and newbie bloggers please be aware of the ironclad rule that you are not allowed to make "hey no blog is as small as mine" jokes regarding Blogroll Amnesty Day. The rule is, straight from the queen of the indy blogs herself (ahem), that you are not allowed to complain or mention your blog's low traffic until you have been posting daily for a year. If you're little, link other blogs that are new or still growing their audience, and encourage them to practice their craft daily. Then, show them how.
Here are some blogs from my blogroll that have posted recently. (I haven't checked their traffic numbers because I rarely check my own). Enjoy:
That day whereon we little folk rise early, get down on our wee, dimpled knees and celebrate the glorious anniversary of that glorious moment when certain glorious A-List bloggers finally got shut of the smelly, little monkeys amongst whom they had been ingloriously trapped,
grabbed a glorious horse...
rode off with the glorious girl...
to a glorious future free from...
Oopsie
OK then, well, let's just never mind that shall we?
Instead, how about going around and giving these folks a little pat on the ass?
Or admire the patience of a "Ramshackle Beauty" who has been banging away on the side of the angels six years?
Or give their optic nerves a workout on the gray-on-black font scheme jungle-gym, the "Leftwing Nut Job" has waiting for you?
Or be led on a personal hazmat-slog through some of the less fragrant and scenic territories on the Right by "The Free Republik", after which "From Laurel Street" will have a little tonic for your soul waiting on tap?
A year from now, I'm sure I'll have jangled up the events of this week sufficiently that I'll remember it as the week that the Supreme Court finally ruled on the Blogroll Amnesty Day case, which was then used by a Massachusetts teabagger to club Air America to death.
Thank goodness I'll have this awesome podcast to refer to if I ever want to remember what really happened.
That day whereon we little folk rise early, get down on our wee, dimpled knees and celebrate the glorious anniversary of that glorious moment when certain glorious A-List bloggers finally got shut of the smelly, little monkeys amongst whom they had been ingloriously trapped,
grabbed a glorious horse...
rode off with the glorious girl...
to a glorious future free from...
Oopsie
OK then, well, let's just never mind that shall we?
Support the day at Jon Swift's house (despicable conservative though he is) and enjoy the vituperation (which I do believe is the proper term of venery in this instance) of petite powerhouses he is gathering up.
Join the Shrill Krill Kult and enjoy the day with a little e.e. cummings:
all ignorance toboggans into know
all ignorance toboggans into know and trudges up to ignorance again: but winter's not forever,even snow melts;and if spring should spoil the game,what then?
all history's a winter sport or three: but were it five,i'd still insist that all history is too small for even me; for me and you,exceedingly too small.
Swoop(shrill collective myth)into thy grave merely to toil the scale to shrillerness per every madge and mabel dick and dave --tomorrow is our permanent address
and there they'll scarcely find us(if they do, we'll move away still further:into now
