April 20, 2007
"The day I killed a blog" happened early in my career, when I was young and altruistic. Thanks to the generosity of a few big bloggers, I'd achieved some moderate success moving up the Ecosystem, (which has since diminished) and I thought it would be nice to spread the love. Pay it forward, like the movie says.
So when I came across a brand new blog, down at the unicellular microbe level of the Ecosystem, I thought I'd give the blogger a boost by linking to one of her more interesting posts. She was new, seemed like a nice lady, and though not the best writer around, I thought she could improve with some exposure. I, in my benevolence, decided to give her that exposure. I chose to link to a post in which her thesis was, "I'm a liberal but I support the Iraq War." (This was back in the day when one could say that type of thing with a straight face.)
I sent the chick some traffic, that was true. But unfortunately she couldn't handle the attention. Being a liberal who supports the war is not a prescription for attracting friendly commenters. Apparently there was enough variety in her viewpoints to piss off everybody who went there. I didn't actually get a chance to read any of the constructive criticism that I funnelled to her comments section, because her site was taken down after about a day of abuse. In the words of Carl the gardener, she quit the game.
So that was how I killed a blog. I love my commenters. You're the only reason I kept this thing going for so long, and I look upon this blog experience as a four year conversation with some really neat people. But when I linked to that little blog, I felt a bit like Hernán Cortés meeting the Indians. You're all a pretty exuberant bunch and some folks just don't have the natural immunities necessary for blogging. Some folks get a readership and then realize they didn't really want to be read in the first place.
Do I feel bad about what happened? Probably not, because although lots of people can say they started a blog, I can say that I killed a blog too.
Posted by: annika at
10:29 PM
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