One man and his blog
Recently I heard the expression ‘one man and his blog‘* to summarise the same material being posted to every single blog on the internet. It’s perfectly true and you often see that same funny/colourful/slow mo/band video or series of images posted around. It’s usually referred to as ‘going viral’ although you don’t tend to hear that term so often now.
It is a bit of a problem though as a lot of people look at the same kind of sites either via a Twitter feed or an RSS feed. Sites like Kottke.org, Boing Boing, Colossal, The Retronaut, PetaPixel, Devour, It’s nice that, DesignBoom, Dezeen, Co Design etc usually have rich pickings for people looking for ‘cool stuff’. I also have a few nerdy ones that I occasionally find some good stuff on such as DaringFireball, ParisLemon, ShawnBlanc and Marco.org.
Sometimes that image/link/video is everywhere for a very good reason, it’s insanely good. But then most of the time it’s just good. Deciding what sets something apart in terms of interest and quality is difficult and nine times out of ten I add it to my Instapaper queue and come back to it later. Sometimes this can be days or even weeks before I reconsider it. Is it really worth posting? But then I consider my site as more of a scrapbook or journal really. Something for me, but also something that others might discover.
The other argument is perhaps, just because its everywhere why shouldn’t I post it too? I’ve often found that outside of the tech circle there’s far less penetration of some of these things. I often start a post with the words, It’s already been all over the Internet but…. As a way if excusing a repeat i guess for those who have seen it. I always find that there’s someone who will comment or engage with it as they missed it first time or it want in their circle online.
I think the key to all of this is making your site about your interests and what engages you. Sometimes that will overlap with the masses but often it won’t. As soon as you post cool shit because others will like it then I’m not so keen. Be yourself online I guess.
*Quote from Lawrence.