INDCJournal: Confessions of a Link Whore

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May 01, 2004

Confessions of a Link Whore

Posted by Bill

As I lay here in the warm afterglow of my last "Instalanche," glancing at April's traffic stats, smoking a cigarette and feeling a bit warm, sticky and confused, I'm also ... ashamed.

You see ... I'm a link whore. That's right. A prostitute. For links.

Now, I don't mean to go around implying that I perform sex acts for links, though ... well, let's just say that I'm not ruling it out ... but I've done just about everything else. I've comment spammed; e-mailed other bloggers, begging; shamelessly mocked great Americans in caption contests; considered duplicating all manner of crazy schemes to get links; personally stalked Glenn Reynolds.

I'm not a bad person, per se, but part of me really didn't know any better. I saw a yummy cookie, I wanted yummy cookie goodness, so, much like an animal, I tried to get it in the only way that I knew how. There are just some concepts that one doesn't fully understand until you actually have some blogging experience. For example:

1. I didn't know how ridiculous it was to e-mail Reynolds and Tim Blair in January and say "Hey, long-time reader - I have a blog now with no content, could you put me on your blogroll? Thanks."

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

2. I had little idea what that silly trackback thing was, what it meant and how instrumental it would be in spreading the INDC gospel. Surprisingly, I don't think many people that have blogged for months understand this concept yet. Get with it.

3. It didn't cross my mind that it was unethical to track down Andrew Sullivan in a Dupont Circle, ahem,"bookstore" and pretend to be gay while coyly mentioning my blog. He shot me down, anyway.

4. It took me several rounds of comment spam to grasp the fact that early frequent commenter "penis enlargement pills" wasn't a devoted, if somewhat kinky, fan. (Big letdown, that one)

5. And I didn't fully realize how fortunate I was to have Dean Esmay's help in setting up my blog and tossing me a few early links, considering that he was a vaunted "Mortal Human" and I was merely an "Insignificant Microbe." I didn't really know what the hell the Ecosystem was, or that I even had another reason to feel inferior about something. Thanks, blogosphere!

Maybe this all points to the fact that I'm a sleazy, ignorant and slightly sociopathic man. And maybe it says something about the blogosphere; that all of us self-absorbed little digital egomaniacs are wrapped up in a cocoon of our own clannish specialness. An attitude that says "Oooh look at me, I'm a blogger. Watch me blog. See how many 'Unique Inbounds' I had this week?"

Face it, most readers come into our sites, scan the headlines and pop back out again in less than 10 seconds. They could care less.

So now that I have a few regular readers, a regular friendly troll (Hi Don) and am spared the psychic torture of staring at triple goose eggs every time I peek at the Awstats, comments or trackbacks, would I take it all back? Given the choice, would I surrender my newfound traffic in a bid to reclaim some infinitesimal shred of dignity and self-respect?

Hell naw! Once a whore, always a whore!

Linkee-linkee-link-link-linkeee-link-link-linkeee-leeeeee!

Linkee?

...

Linkee?

Sssh. Just hold me.

Posted by Bill at May 1, 2004 09:48 AM | TrackBack (17)

Comments

Regular reader -- absentee lazy blogger (yeah, yeah, i'll get back to it)... one of the reasons I'm reading you is because you do RSS/XML and I have pretty much switched to that -- bloggers like Sullivan of whom I can't find an RSS link are getting read less and less. (I find it funny now to start reading all the "RSS is evil" articles now that it is bcoming mainstream, so to speak).

I also needed some sites in my local/DC area section of my RSS Reader. Politically agnostic (a dreaded moderate) but I'm finding the rightward blogs seem to have more of a life to write about than the leftward blogs which just seem to spew out hate against the "dummy" in the white house. I can't tell you how many blogs I threw out of my RSS reader because they were too one-dimensional.

Anyway, keep it up and don't feel bad about being a link whore and just ignore the stupid ecosystem (it reeks of high school but as if the guys who picked their nose were running the heirarchy rather than the pretty teenage girls - yes, I saw Mean girls last night).

Posted by: Jim H at May 1, 2004 11:42 AM

Okay, so stalking Sullivan's kind of not an option for me, but everything else, probably, I've done.

It happens. It's not that you're trying to be a dick, you just don't know better. And I still get a little annoyed when some high-traffic bloggers feel the need to direct withering scorn at people who break the rules of etiquette out of ignorance.

Posted by: ilyka at May 1, 2004 01:16 PM

Well ... I made up the part about Sullivan. See what a snake I am?

Posted by: Bill from INDC at May 1, 2004 01:24 PM

For what it's worth, once I set up a blogroll you'll be on it. (It's worth nothing.) Me link you long time.

Some of the mistakes I've made include the lack of content (a problem to this day). Mainly I screwed up trackbacks. Note to neophyte bloggers: turn auto-detect trackback links off. I had a post that I made quite a few changes to, not realizing that when it said "Pinging site whatever", that it was creating a new trackback link. Somewhere there's a post with about 7 trackback links from that post. D'oh.

Posted by: dorkafork at May 1, 2004 03:29 PM

Bill, you ignorant slut.

No, wait. That's "Jane, you ignorant slut." Nevermind.

And Jim, Sullivan's Daily Dish can be picked up through RSS here.

Posted by: Boyd at May 1, 2004 06:10 PM

Damn you Boyd, damn you straight to Hell.

Where's my link?

Posted by: Bill from INDC at May 1, 2004 06:36 PM

I give good links!

--|PW|--

Posted by: pennywit at May 1, 2004 06:57 PM

so, exactly what kind of sex do i have to perform to get onto the blogroll?

Posted by: mlah at May 1, 2004 09:47 PM

I want to be a link whore too!

It's pretty bad when one's husband is a Mortal Human and the best he gives you is a limp-wristed off hand, oh and Rosemary has a blog now.

What's up with that? Heck, I even had to add myself to his stinkin' blogroll.

Pathetic, eh?

Posted by: Rosemary the Queen of All Evil at May 1, 2004 10:28 PM

mlah - done. Now get some of those gals in the pics on your site over to my house ...

Rosemary - I'd say an ass-whoopin' is in order.

Posted by: Bill from INDC at May 1, 2004 10:46 PM

I agree. I was tempted to start a revolt but I think Queen's lose their heads when revolutions occur. So, I changed my mind. :-)

Posted by: Rosemary the Queen of All Evil at May 2, 2004 12:07 AM

Does it make you feel better - or stickier - that we get an absolute ton of traffic through you? Does that make you a linkwhore pimp?

Posted by: Dr. Kate at May 2, 2004 11:42 AM

Where's mah money, bitch?!

Posted by: Bill from INDC at May 2, 2004 12:43 PM

Bill, shed your shame. Whoring is good for the soul. It's the second oldest profession (lying politician is the oldest). Be proud and be glad you're not in the OLDEST PROFESSION. ;)

Posted by: Allan (Barking Moonbats) at May 2, 2004 01:22 PM

I admit it -- I'm a link-whore too, but I only do it to feed my Sitemeter-crack addiction ...

Posted by: Captain Ed at May 2, 2004 03:06 PM

A little poem in honor of our own DCBill:

There once was a blogger named DCBill
Inbound uniques gave him a sexual thrill
once it was clear he would fellate
the hits came in a spate
turning tricks for his links--what a shill!

After awhile DCBill was a bit torn
"Would Glenn Reynolds respect me in the morn?"
so down again he went
till his esteem was all spent
Next stop: political amateur porn!

Posted by: Steve the Llamabutcher at May 2, 2004 09:01 PM

I'd ROTLMAO ... if that poem didn't hit so close to the mark ...

help me ...

Posted by: Bill from INDC at May 2, 2004 09:10 PM

Sooner or later, we scraping bloggers are going to look around and see that some people ARE actually making money doing something remarkably similar---amateur porn people.

And then it will onlyl be a matter of time before someone comes up with the "Porn & Politics Blog" or something, and its "kah-tching!"

Frank J. is slowly moving there, but someone is going to combine, say, Instapundit, with, say, Jane's Guide.

Posted by: Steve the Lamabutcher at May 2, 2004 10:26 PM

I wish I'd seen this too ... so let me blatantly beg for links to voluntaryXchange (http://voluntaryxchange.typepad.com/).

Just this week I've got: Bjorn Lomborg's dust-up with Scientific American, neanderthal genes goofing up our heads, what will happen when GMail meets ambient technology, and why Kofi Annan is public enemy #1.

Posted by: David Tufte at May 4, 2004 04:34 PM

That, my friend, is known as "comment spam." I think that I'll do a post about it.

Posted by: Bill from INDC Journal at May 4, 2004 04:47 PM

Boyd: Bill, you ignorant slut.

No, wait. That's "Jane, you ignorant slut."

Jane: Hey!

Posted by: Jane at May 7, 2004 04:37 PM