thoughtmechanics

I have a few idiosyncratic principles that, for whatever reason, I’m rather proud of. They are the kind of things that I don’t usually mention because I try to follow “mom’s golden rule” that says if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. But then, what’s the point of being a blogger if not to piss some people off from time to time? That said, I guess I should give some examples. For instance, I’m proud of the fact that I’ve never purchased a Nirvana CD, I’ve never seen an episode of Survivor, I’ve never played in a cover band, but most recently I’m proud that I’ve never been part of any kind of Internet clique.

I guess I’m talking about these blog network sites/clubs where the membership is displayed in the form of some kind of icon or logo. Examples of these are the 9rules Network, Erati, BlogMedia, Weblog Empire, Weblogs Inc., Blog Logic, Maxira, etc. The list is long as it is lame. Perhaps it’s easy for me to be cynical regarding these networks seeing as how Thought Mechanics gets more link love then any of them (at least according to Technorati), but even if TM wasn’t popular, I still don’t think I’d try to join a blog network. For me, blogging isn’t about popularity, it’s about having a creative outlet for my writing, music and design. TM got its popularity because of the crap loads of code written and released to the public free of charge. But even before I was creating Wordpress themes and plugins, I was writing open source software because that’s what it’s all about for me–giving back to the community. Sure, the recognition is cool, but that’s not why I do it.

As a matter of fact, readers of this site may have noticed the disappearance of Google ads when the new design was launched just prior to January 1st. Yes I’ll miss those nice little monthly checks from Google, but the consulting money related to helping people build custom blogs and sites is a tad better than Google ad monies. I’m certainly not trying to impugn people who join these networks, they are just trying to put themselves on the map in what has become a deep ocean of blogs–hell, who can blame them. But as far as TM is concerned, tain’t gonna happen.