Bloggers: Deep Thinkers or Ratings Whores?

Steve Rubel, a digital marketer at Edelman, posts on a disturbing trend he sees in his tech-blogging world, a turn from deep thoughts to semi-trivial posting in a quest for attention, turning the blogosphere into -- his working term -- the Lazysphere:

The Lazysphere - a working definition - is a group of bloggers who I won't name by name, but you can spot them a mile away. Rather than create new ideas or pen thoughtful essays, they simply glom on to the latest news with another "me too" blog post. Their goal is largely to land on Techmeme and sometimes digg - perhaps Google in an archival/Long Tail perspective. These sites - and Twitter too - have perpetuated a lot of lackadaisical writing. The Attention Crash is another factor at work here. People don't have as much time to think....

Somewhere circa 2006 the tech blogger mindset shifted - at least among the majority. People who used to work hard creating and spreading big ideas resorted to simply regurgitating the same old news over and over again, often with very little value add. It's almost like we stopped the real work of reading, thinking and writing in favor of going all herd, all the time [Steve Rubel, "The Lazysphere and the Decline of Deep Blogging," Micro Persuasion, 2008.01.08].

Sound familiar? The only finger I point this morning is at the mirror. I like to think I'm capable of some original and sustained thinking, but I've also done my share of attention-seeking and headline-whoring. Sometimes I've written about South Dakota's singing meteorologist, not because the fate of the republic hinges on his next job but because people are still Googling him furiously at work and will boost my hit count. I've posted the occasional blip just to get back toward the top of PP's feed list (at least until Bob Ellis posts ten more daily blasts of bad theology from the pretend preachers at Focus on the Family -- o.k., so I did point a finger). Despite the secretive and probably bogus math behind them, I've checked the BlogNetNews SD Influence rankings mroe than once. I thrilled at the appearance of my Clinton-Muskie-moment post on the CNN blog page, which got me 35 hits in an hour (that's a record here), when I should have been ashamed to engage in the same sort of mindless, policy-dodging, soap-opera-style soundbite politics that I criticize the mainstream media for.

Steve Rubel makes a New Year's resolution to quit the Lazysphere. As inspiration, he offers a list of "Blog Thinkers."

I don't do resolutions (except when I'm judging debate ;-) ). I don't plan to reserve comment here until I have a really, really deep thought that can turn into a 3000-word post (Todd doesn't dig those, anyway!). But I will keep Rubel's concerns about the Lazysphere in mind. As he notes, bloggers are apparently subject to the same pressures as the mainstream media. We* criticize the MSM, we say we're better than the MSM. But we love ratings, too, and we'll pander to the common denominator. We love being at the top of the charts, and sometimes, we will write something less than the most thoughtful or original material -- or just plain crap -- to get there.

-------------------------------------------------
*"We" is a terrible over-generalization here. The temptation to pander to the lowest common denominator afflicts "us" bloggers to varying degrees. Northern Valley Beacon, for instance, appears free of such juvenile urges and doesn't seem to give a darn about anything but the truth. I leave it to fellow bloggers to weigh (and talk about!) their own writing and motivations.