Un-Tagged

A few days ago Bernita flattered me big-time in the process of tagging me. Nevertheless I decided to wimp out of accepting the tag. All the blogs I visit regularly (not that many, confessedly) make me think, including Go Fug Yourself.* That's why I keep going back. Of course the purpose of the tag isn't to hail some blogs while dismissing others to the outer darkness, but to let people know about blogs they might never otherwise stumble upon. I'll be lazy and say click on my link list.

However, mulling Bernita's tag also got me thinking about blogs in general. About half the blogs I read regularly are political, "big" blogs that everyone has heard about (where "everyone" = "US political junkies"). Most of these, however, are not really blogs at all, at least not in the sense that Rocketpunk Manifesto is a blog. They may have started as true blogs, but they've evolved into something else, Beltway ezines or political players in their own right. If I comment at Bernita's there's a good chance she'll reply; if I comment at Daily Kos I may get a hundred responses but probably not from Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, aka Kos.

"Big" blogs are not part of a conversation in the way that smaller ones are - they can't be, simply because they are big. I imagine that everyone writing a litblog hopes that they'll hit it big and the world will flock to their blog, but something would be lost in the process, and that something is the ongoing conversation. It's like the difference between a club performance and a stadium concert.

For now, at least, it's good to be playing the club circuit.

* Because I'm writing about a royal court, and court ladies could make the Fug gals seem gentle by comparison. Though the entire late 16th century desperately needed a serious fugging, and never got one. What were those people thinking?