Mr. Me Too

So, yeah, I guess you've all heard by now that Time Magazine has awarded "You" (meaning, like, YOU!) with its coveted Lebowski Achiever Person Of The Year honor. Predictably, the announcement resulted in a chorus of widespread chortling from the snarkalicious, media-obsessed denizens of The Blogosphere™. Of particular interest was the vociferousness with which those eager beavers over at Radar pounced on the news; you'll find no arguments here that Time copped out by not just deciding to run with the YouTube dudes as their choice, but your Uncle Grambo isn't really sure said decision warranted three individual critiques in just over 24 hours. But after taking some time to digest and process this curious editorial call, a realization dawned on me: I'm not out of order, Radar's not out of order, it's the whole freaking system that's out of order!

The system of which your Uncle Grambo speaks is the reprehensible dictate that (I believe) Nick Denton originally ordered that demanded the bloggers in his stable file X number of posts per day ... or else. Once word of this proclamation leaked, other media companies quickly followed suit (after all, media companies are nothing if not obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses). And while I'm all for keeping content fresh (in theory, if not in actual practice), don't we all agree that seeing 30+ posts per day on our favorite sites is overkill? The residual effect that this mandate has had on The Blogosphere™ is palpable; we've long since passed the mythical point where quality and quantity were able to live harmoniously together. Nowadays, the immensely talented folks at places at Radar and Gawker are slaves to the grind who serve the in the stead of the Almighty Page View rather than their readership. Which is not to say that these folks don't do exceptional work; that's the farthest thing from the truth. But using the Radar example above, readers suffer by having to wade through three disjointed ruminations rather than one truly kickass post. Know what I'm sayin?

The worst part, my friends, is this. Now that Pandora has opened this box, your Uncle Grambo is afraid that there don't appear to be any opportunities for us to turn back the clock. "Am I going to stop reading these blogs?" Unlikely, but that's not what's really important. The key issue, which effects both the editorial and business operation sides of the blog bizness, is this: "Am I, as a reader, going to pay as much attention to the site?" In this reader's opinion, that question has already been answered.