about my blogroll

I'm flatterred that some people actually think being on my blogroll is desirable enough to request reciprocity, but I regret to inform you, my three dear readers, that it just doesn't work that way here. My blogroll is not for anyone but myself - it's purely functional. It doesn't exist to promote this blog, but to help me find interesting stuff. It also changes regularly - for example I use to have Suman Palit, Thomas Nephew, Zack, and even Glenn on there. It's not that I don't still read these blogs (and many, MANY others, it's just that at present, for a number of reasons, I don't need to visit them directly. They may get excerpted by other blogs, show up in my Technorati refers, or just happen to be bookmarked or in my IE history.

Getting on my blogroll is not about reciprocity. I'm not on Kevin's blogroll, or Atrios's, or Billmon's, or Steven Den Beste's, or Radley Balko's blogrolls (and I have never asked). Getting on a blogroll is not why I blog - and I don't even have a counter on UNMEDIA to tell me how many visitors I have. I'm completely ignorant as to whether I actually have more than three readers (hey, they could be inventing false names and arguing with themselves in my coments, like Locke and Demosthenes from Enders' Game. Peter, if you're reading, I swear fealty to the Hegemony. Hire me.). But I read them, and find them informative and interesting, so I want to link to their sites.

And some blogs on my blogroll are there because they are people I know, not just words on a page (which is the extent of the reality of most other bloggers to me, especially pseudonyms). Insert Eric's NPC Theory here - I like having a window into my Real Life friends' minds. So few of whom are actually geographically nearby, nowadays...

I blogroll because I want to read, not because I want to recommend reading. And I blog because I want to write, not because I want to be read. Does that make sense? If there weren't any of you, I'd still be doing this. Sometimes it actually helps to pretend that there aren't any of you at all, in fact.

So if you were on my blogroll and are offended that now you aren't, or added me to your blogroll and are now eagerly awaiting reciprocity, please don't be offended. I rotate through blogs on there all the time. Its purely random, subjective, and ephemeral. It's just a function of where i feel like going.