Geek blogger worship
Karmcity posted a story about how some of our most prominent tech/startup bloggers are assholes.
The reason they’re able to be assholes is because in their world — our world — they’re worshipped like gods. If you think they’re assholes, stop contributing: and that means stop reading their content and stop linking to it. Even when it sucks, and even when you disagree. There are plenty of great reasons why you’ll never see me (or any sites I edit) link to their garbage.
I don’t think much of Mike Arrington* and haven’t read any of his sites in years. If I accidentally open a link to his site, I cringe and close it faster than I’d close Goatse. I don’t think Scoble knows what he’s talking about (update!), so I don’t pay attention to him, either. And I don’t even know who Steve Gillmor is (for all I know, he could be great).
I haven’t missed anything important.
This is my industry, and I’ve lost nothing by ignoring these people and their publications. There’s so much high-quality content being published that you can afford to delete the inferior information sources from your feed reader.
Geeks and tech-business people will continue to worship these blogger prima donnas, their egos will inflate further, and the quality of their material will decline as they farm out their actual work to unskilled, desperate kids willing to write a few fluffy blog posts per day for nearly nothing. The geeks will continue blindly believing everything they write. The business people will continue thinking their audience is bigger, more valuable, and more influential than it is. Trust me. This will never change.
But you don’t have to be a part of their world. Just don’t support them in any way whatsoever. Don’t read their sites. Don’t link to their sites. Don’t read interviews of them by other publications. Don’t read content they’ve written for other sites. Don’t attend their speaking engagements. Don’t attend their events. Don’t buy their books. It’s that easy.
* I almost didn’t write this post, then I almost deleted it before publishing, because I didn’t want his name on my site. But I’ll make an exception for this, since I think it’s an important message.