More on Linkposts

I tend to avoid a lot of the "best" blogs because they are filled with a whole lot of posts that are just links to other blogs (I call these "Linkpost" blogs). It's information overload and most of the information is highly time-wasting and irrelevant.

With their emphasis on traffic and the "wow-factor", it can feel a whole lot like hype. "This is cool! And so is this!" over and over. Like staring at an infomercial for too long, until you begin to realize that there's nothing behind the smoke and mirrors.

Occasionally something cool does pop up. Unfortunately, what each person considers "cool" is so widely varied that any attempt to consolidate it is doomed to failure.

Linkpost sites are no more than collections of what one person, or a few people, think is cool on other sites. I don't consider all the stuff in Boing Boing or Engadget cool; just a fraction of it, about the same amount I consider cool when I read the original sites themselves. What you need is a list of what is REALLY cool in all of these cool linkpost sites.

I'm sure you realize where this is heading. I make a list of what I think is cool from all of these sites. So do a hundred other people. Nobody agrees exactly with what one particular person finds cool, so after reading all of the summaries someone condenses all of the summaries, and so on.

All you can really do is flock around people whose ideas of cool match yours to a slightly higher percentage than what is typical.

Aside from game sites, one linkpost site that hits cool for me is Techdirt. I don't always agree with their assessments, but the topics are about what I want to see covered.

Another one that I discovered recently that is just inside my radar is lifehacker. It slips in and out, actually. Sometimes I'm just about to stop following it because it is wasting my time, and then it comes up with a few good articles. Two of the latest ones it linked to are Conversational Terrorism, an article about the unethical language we use to "win" conversations, and Are you ready to clean up your life?, one version of a checklist containing important steps to create a healthy lifestyle. I am considering adapting the latter article to create one for the gaming community.

I am far more enthusiastic about sites that actually have content. It's like listening to an original album by an artist, rather than to the greatest hits of the seventies.