You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.
Anyway, what I realized first is that these lists are not "top lists," in the sense that they're rankings. They are in no way claiming that these are the best blogs around. Rather, and I think this is what most people forget, these are lists which are speaking specifically to a site's influence. Boing Boing, for example, tops so many lists because it's reader base goes out and blogs the links they share, giving them credit in return.
With that fact in mind, just creating these lists is pushing forward the very things blogging claims to be standing in opposition to: Mainly the mass influence of a few mainstream media institutions. These lists create a cycle. First you develop yourself as influential, then everyone touts your influence, thereby making you more influential and further separating you from the rest of the pack. Now I don't have a major problem with this because I believe that the number of voices available on the infinite internet spectrum has the ability to outweigh these few, increasingly influential, blogs. However, I do think that this stuff needs to be discussed. It needs to be admitted that these lists are propagating an ideology that many of us are fighting as outdated.
Am I crazy, or are too few people talking about this part of it?