On De-Linking
Aunt B. has an entry up, about the call to de-link Twisty.
I’ve got very little stock in that conversation, as I de-linked Twisty months ago.
But, I do find Link Psychology to be pretty damned interesting. People get sort of… weird about links. And, Blogrolls can be more than just a list of links—they can declare what clique you’re attached to, or what clique you wish you were attached to. Where you stand. Who you are.
My policy here is pretty simple.
- You only get linked on the front if you’ve got a working feed, because my blogroll is generated by Bloglines. So, if you’re on my little flip-out menu, then I read your blog. Every time you update. (Psst, Heidi, the 21st century is begging you to leave Diaryland. Begging.)
- Now, this is where the Bizarre Link Psychology comes in: I don’t link to A-Listers.
- If you put Nine Pearls on your blogroll, I’ll link back if/when I see it.
- If I’ve linked to you out of the blue, it’s generally because I like what you write. And, I’ll leave comments and what-not, and generally buzz around your blog. And, usually, if you don’t link back in a few months, I take you off the list. Not a public de-linking with an announcement and drama or anything. Just pruning.
So, I suppose what that means is that if I’ve linked to you out of the blue, then I like what you write, but I’m also fishing for a link.
I am not Link Jesus, giving links away and expecting nothing in return (except for links under “Fun Stuff.”)
In a way I suppose that sounds really calculating and awful, but really, I promise it’s not. It’s just that I look at blogging as a “community” where we all talk to each other. If you are not interested in talking, then what’s the point? I don’t need to go around conversing with walls.
My blogroll isn’t so much an “endorsement of the views therein.” My blogroll is a list of people I talk with. The degree to which “you are the company you keep” is totally up to whoever stumbles across the list.
From Aunt B.:
I won’t delink to someone just because I disagree with their commenters, because I don’t believe a person ought to be held responsible for their readers.
I will, and I do. Hugo Schwyzer is an excellent example. I cannot talk over there without having to deal with MRA’s. I do not wish to be part of a conversation full of men bitching about the ex-wives. Or, men that think most rape victims are lying. Or, men that think abandoning their children is a good idea if they don’t get their own way. That shit drives me nuts. Doesn’t mean I think Hugo should be thrown down a well. Far from it. Just means that he’s decided that his MRA readers are very important to him, and I’ve decided that my mental health is very important to me. But, since I can’t be part of that conversation without getting really angry, I’m sure as hell not going to link to it.
As for Twisty—she’s a hypocrite who, for the most part, won’t engage honestly with anyone. It’s not that I, in particular, can’t talk to her. It’s that there’s simply no conversation to be had over there. You either agree with her, or you get called a stupid sexbot that’s keeping women down. She’s not conversing. She’s sermonizing. And, her parishioners are a measure of the church as a whole—a church which is apparently very anti-transgender, among other things.
And I’m also unsure how it gets decided that so-and-so is an important feminist blogger.
Traffic. Simple as that.
And once one’s a big important feminist blogger, how it is decided what things you’re held accountable for. I think we have a tendency (humans, not feminists) to make rules for how folks ought to behave and hold them to those rules, without ever informing folks of those rules or even discovering if they consent to being governed by them.
Do they have to consent? I mean, let’s assume that you’ve decided that “Good folks don’t kick each other!” Then someone comes along and kicks you in the shin. Do you wonder if they “consent” to your rules? Or, do you just think, “Ow! What an asshole!”
There is a difference between having a difference of opinion, and having an interaction with an asshole.
A difference of opinion looks something like this:
A: Blue is awesome!B: I like Red. Blue gives me hives.
Sure, it’s not really nice. But, ain’t no one obligated to sweet and endearing at all times.
An interaction with an asshole looks more like this:
A: Blue is awesome!B: Anyone that likes blue is a Knob Polishing Tool of the Patriarchy, with no ability to see true objective beauty. It’s people like A that directly lead to women in Cambodia being raped, only she’s way too stupid to make all the connections that my enlightened state has given me the Magical Glasses to see. And, she’s happy about all that rape! Look at her dance for meat-eating oppressors! She likes blue! She’s standing on my neck, preventing me from saving the world!
Slight difference, there.
I think a lot of this goes back to trying to figure out how to wield power effectively. For so long, we’ve been fed some bullshit line about how our power comes from our willing submission to men and that women who want to or attempt to wield real power are bitches who’ve overstepped some important boundary and who need to be put back in their place.
To use an argument I’ve heard elsewhere: No one is trying to ban Twisty from the blog-o-sphere. No one (that I’m aware of) has written notices of complaint to whoever she’s hosted with. No one has tried to hack her, or DOS her, which did actually happen with Bitch|Lab here recently.
The current complaint isn’t that Twisty has too much power. The complaint is that Twisty is hosting very nasty, bigoted conversations under the guise of feminism.
I think we’re slowly coming to terms with the fact that this is not the case, but we’re still stuck in this rut of an idea that “power” equals “power over”—power that rules the group, not power that protects and trains the group to protect itself against outside threats. There’s strength that keeps others weak and strength that helps others be strong.
Several months back, though, I had some pretty angry words with Amanda from Pandagon over actual “power-wielding.” In blog-land, power means “traffic.” The women with the traffic are the women with the power.
How big is your megaphone? How high is your soapbox?
Amanda’s is probably the second biggest in this neighborhood.
My argument at the time was that pulling a Feminist-style Fark on an unsuspecting nobody was just plain mean. Telling a couple of hundred people, “Hey, look at this loser!” is cruel.
About a hundred years ago (read: 2001-2003) I ran a pretty popular diaryland site called Unsent Letters. Near the end of it’s run, I was up around 500 to 600 visits a day (drop in the bucket, I know.) In it’s final months, I heard the following sentiment pretty frequently:
“I didn’t read that link, but wow, what a dumb ass!”
In other words, I’d rant about something, and people were blindly agreeing with me.
It creeped me out. Badly.
It happens a lot once you hit a certain traffic level. When you have enough influence, you become an Opinion Maker. You might not mean to. And, really, you might not care one way or another.
But, it does happen.
And, the responsibility you take for it depends entirely on what you accept as your own level of Asshole Behavior.
The real question isn’t a matter of fort-building versus people lifting. The real question is: Who’s “fair game” for a beating?
Personally, if you write for the MSM, you’re fair game in my book. If you’re roughly operating at or above the same traffic level I am, you’re fair game. (Probably shitty of me, but) If you’re someone that I regularly talk to and you’ve said something insane, you’re fair game. If you’ve personally attacked me, or someone that I think is awesome, you’re fair game.
That’s where I am at.
And, that’s pretty much what I hold other bloggers to without their consent.
And, I honestly don’t think it’s too far off the course for what’s “average” in this wider circle of blogs. The rules are different in some places (Ever spend much time around The Cotillion people? Or the Stop the ACLU crowd? I can’t even figure out what’s going on there.)
So, what recourse is left for a person who’s complained but doesn’t feel like their complaints have even been heard, let alone taken into consideration? All you can do is delink, I guess.
Pretty much.
I suppose the real question is “what’s represented by de-linking?”
If linking is a personal statement of endorsement, is de-linking condemnation? If links are like currency, does this work sort of like a boycott?
Are you de-linking because you don’t like “the product,” or are you de-linking because you don’t like the practices behind “the product?”
tags: internecine drama, internet
Others link to me sometimes… I tend not to link to anyone, not out of interest so much, but out of laziness. It also makes me feel more egalatarian this way (or I can explain it as such :)
— Chris Dec 26, 07:05 PM #
Eh. I say to my real-life friends that blog—if you want strangers to read what you’re writing, you have to link to people and/or leave comments. Otherwise, you just end up with pervy Google hits and that’s no fun.
— Veronica Dec 26, 07:30 PM #
I used to have my links on my home page but then I got a clue and realized that people take linking very seriously. That’s when I moved them to another page, still available to the public but not so much in your face. I have essentially two blog rolls and I’m very careful about who gets put on the first one because they’re not likely to be taken off, those are the people who I consider more than just reads or acquaintances. The only reason I’ve taken people off so far is if they stop blogging, taking them off for any other reason would, to me at least, be significant.
I wrote an entry the other day about how little site traffic keeps the jerks away, but it holds true for controversy as well. Sometimes I wish for more traffic but then I read about the troubles that popular bloggers have and I think it’s better to just quietly blog in my little corner of the webosphere where I know where my commenters are coming from. They don’t always agree with me, but for damn sure they’ve never been anything but respectful. I value that more than loads of traffic any day.
— patricia Dec 26, 07:38 PM #
I run from the “cult” blogs.
Their traffic, their power, is often used in a way that mirrors hegemony.
— chasingmoksha Dec 26, 07:43 PM #
That’s why I leave comments, though sometimes that doesn’t work.. my content is usually dry enough to avoid the pervy hits :)
— Chris Dec 26, 11:15 PM #
Yes, well, you’ve seen my blogroll. I’m a bit of a hoarder, at least when it comes to you know lists, information, books, people (sort of?); at some point i guess i just went with it.
obviously i don’t converse with everyone on there on a regular basis. some of those links i think are mostly archives anyway. i link because, “hey, i like, and/or this person has something interesting to say that i haven’t heard before, and/or is saying it in a way i haven’t heard or particularly well, and/or i just like this person.”
Delinking: i’m not great at “pruning,” i tend not to take off moribund looking blogs unless they’re actually taken offline.
I’ve only removed a handful of blogs for other reasons. the longer someone’s been on there and/or the more i have invested in them, the more they have to do to piss me off to get me to take them off. sometimes i link someone on a whim, check back later and, “oh, dear, that’s not really on, is it?” and they’re off again.
i have one large-ish blog that’s been on again, off again; i feel guilty because they linked me, first, but…we’ll see.
there was another one where we had a sort of friendly relationship, including emails, i’d been a regular on her board since way back; and i still feel a twinge of guilt about delinking, i don’t think she’s a bad person (same with the other one), but…there was shall we say a tipping point. With cases like that it’s not so much a single incident as a series of them; as i was saying elsewhere, i sometimes think of it like a bank account (of goodwill, social capital, what you like); you can usually (re)gain as well as lose; but there’s a certain level beyond which the net ratio of “that gives me a warm glow” to “that pisses me off” can’t fall, or off they pop. no, it is not an exact science.
but at any rate, i just figure that even if i don’t get to every single link on there, it’s a resource, it’s a way of saying, “hey, i find so and so interesting,” and someone else who’s passing through might well click on any given link and like it, so, in that sense i think it’s still a community function.
— belledame222 Dec 26, 11:37 PM #
Oh, and: I don’t really link people based on do I agree with their overall ideology. That’s been increasingly true, in fact. It is true that in general i tend to link to people who range on the left side of the spectrum, roughly; but it covers a pretty broad range, and there are a couple of people who probably consider themselves more rightish one way or another.
Mostly what I look for is: does this person demonstrate curiousity, flexibility, empathy; and i do tend to weigh how people respond to the people in “front” of them (i.e. people talking directly to them) than how they talk about large groups of people as an abstraction, in debate mode, as it were.
— belledame222 Dec 26, 11:43 PM #
Hugo i put back because i saw he was at least willing to change his mind about something, and does seem to try (“he tries,” deep mournful sigh, in my granny’s voice), in his own way, to engage. i find his worldview far more alien than that of the two above-mentioned people, but
1) i hardly ever go to his blog, so am less attached to what goes on there (every once in a while i check in; he was the first Christian pro-feminist i found, and i find his take on things, his background, different enough to intrigue, too alien in some ways to really piss me off)
2) the other two ultimately i delinked because, well, what i said: it had to do with how they were being with the people they were talking to far more than how they talked about generalized “issues.” specifically, they had gone into “blahblahblahGINGER” mode too often or too egregiously for my taste. i don’t like people who don’t listen. i
reallydon’t like it when people shut down on a thread, particularly when it involves mischaracterizing a group of people who are disagreeing with what you have to say, politely. In short, I don’t like what looks to me like disingenuousness. And I don’t like people who turn into walls when it suits their convenience, particularly if it’s about an issue i feel strongly about, of course.— belledame222 Dec 26, 11:59 PM #
I’m really sloppy with my blogroll. I bet half the links are dead! I probably should be linking more of my readership; I should probably get on that.
It’s tricky though. My recent inappropriate thoughts about death notwithstanding, my blog is supposed to be about PLEASURE. There are many blogs that I frequent (Angry 365 Days a Year, Biting Beaver, and many others) that I do not blogroll because although I get a lot out of reading them sometimes I simply want my blog to stay on focus. I don’t want other pleasureseekers to experiment with my blogroll only to find themselves in a cesspool of vitriol! Not a hedonistic pleasure!
So what to do about you-know-who? I still love her. Reading her and looking at her foodie photography are still hedonisic pleasures for me. So I guess she stays.
I don’t want everyone on my blogroll to share my politics. In fact I mix things up on purpose. For instance, I have anti-porn and anti-sex-work bloggers on my blogroll, but I also link to a few courtesans. I also prefer to link to other women. Chris Clarke and Figleaf are two notable exceptions.
I probably need a few thoughtful conservatives on my blogroll. Anyone know any?
— The Hedonistic Pleasureseeker Dec 27, 07:33 PM #
Thoughtful conservatives? You might actually try running through The Cotillion “ladies.” Some of them are bound to be thoughtful, though all the ones that I used to read have quit blogging.
As for Twisty… you comment over there, don’t you? Brave you.
And, for the record, I read quite a few more blogs that I link to. Bloglines has that whole “keep private” option.
— Veronica Dec 27, 09:22 PM #
And, Belle, your blogroll is long. But, not as long as the Republic of T’s. He used to have all that stuff on his front page, too. I think he linked to everyone that ever commented for the first year or so.
— Veronica Dec 27, 09:56 PM #
My blogroll is my reading list. I do think a blogrolling is an endorsement, even if someone’s politics are different, that’s fine.
But with Twisty, in my opinion it’s become more than just disagreeing. I’m sick of the blogosphere degenerating into personal attacks that always seem to originate over there.
I enjoyed the blogosphere so much more before I read Twisty, and before I read bloggers that read Twisty. Now it’s all so nasty and hateful.
That sounds kind of whiny, but there it is.
— plucky punk Dec 28, 02:34 PM #
Veronica, I do still comment over there. In fact I even received a nod from Twisty for Not Losing My Shit. I don’t know if it’s because I’m mildmannered, or if some affective disorder makes it near impossible for me to be offended by anything.
Come to think of it, I’ve been kind of Spock-ish lately.
— The Hedonistic Pleasureseeker Dec 28, 04:02 PM #
Vanessa—there’s a certain “poisoning the well” effect, yeah. It’s fucking annoying.
Hedonist—If she nodded that you don’t lose your shit, that means she’s at least aware that you’ve got every reason to do so. Ya know?
— Veronica Dec 28, 04:32 PM #
Yep. That’s a classic bully “compliment,” too. “hey, you can take it; you’re all right.”
not an aspersion on you, hedonistic, you understand; just, i’ve seen that transaction before.
— belledame222 Dec 28, 10:31 PM #
and YES, poisoning the well, fucking EXACTLY. she’s a troll. a really sophisticated, clever, popular…troll.
— belledame222 Dec 28, 10:34 PM #