Long long ago, I used to write a post whenever I messed with my blogroll. Then I stopped partly because blogrollin' got all political and shit, and mostly because I realized that writing a post about the links that I add or subtract is boring. But also a little bit because I started noticing the Noz Curse.
It didn't quite happen every time. It probably didn't even happen most of the time. But I have a human brain, and the human brain looks for patterns all the time (which is why we have conspiracy theories). And the pattern I was seeing is that whenever1 I found a blog that I liked and added it to the list on the right, that blog would stop putting up new posts. That is the Noz Curse. By blogrolling a site, I just might be killing it.
So I have this other rule that once a site enters the blogroll, it is entitled to stay until an entire year goes by without a new post. Which is what made the Noz Curse even more annoying because that meant that I would clutter up my blogroll with inactive blogs. I would keep checking back on them, initially hoping to see if any new posts had popped up, but then later hoping that nothing new appeared so that I could cut the site as soon as that first anniversary of the last post rolled around. In one case, a blog went inactive for just over eleven months, then posted something, and then stopped again, which meant I had to give the site another freaking year.
So in that sense the Noz Curse is a double tragedy. First, it means that a site in which I saw such promise and interestingness stops being promising or interesting just as I got around to noticing. Second, my blogroll is burdened with this freeloading link that isn't contributing to the bloggy goodness as it is supposed to for perhaps as long as a year.
Which is why I fear for Inanities. I only discovered that one because of the This American Life story that I listed to a couple of weeks ago. Since I added it, nothing new has happened. Then again, if I just paid attention to the date stamps of the posts on the first page, I would have noticed an almost five month gap (July 27, 2013 to December 18, 2013) and perhaps thought twice about adding it to the blogroll. But I didn't notice it and so I judged it solely on the basis of the quality of the posts, not the frequency. Unfortunately, the frequency may be the problem. The author just doesn't post much--but definitely more than annually--which means this blog will torture me on an ongoing basis.
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1- By "whenever" I mean not every time, and probably not even most of the time, but it felt like most of the time because every time it did happen I would say to myself, "SEE! IT HAPPENED AGAIN" and my human brain would note that incident more than all those other times that it didn't happen again and I didn't say anything to myself. Or at least I think so. I don't actually remember all those not-happening again-instances because they didn't fit the pattern I was looking for., but I nevertheless believe they happened because there are active blogs on my blogroll. Stupid human brain.
It didn't quite happen every time. It probably didn't even happen most of the time. But I have a human brain, and the human brain looks for patterns all the time (which is why we have conspiracy theories). And the pattern I was seeing is that whenever1 I found a blog that I liked and added it to the list on the right, that blog would stop putting up new posts. That is the Noz Curse. By blogrolling a site, I just might be killing it.
So I have this other rule that once a site enters the blogroll, it is entitled to stay until an entire year goes by without a new post. Which is what made the Noz Curse even more annoying because that meant that I would clutter up my blogroll with inactive blogs. I would keep checking back on them, initially hoping to see if any new posts had popped up, but then later hoping that nothing new appeared so that I could cut the site as soon as that first anniversary of the last post rolled around. In one case, a blog went inactive for just over eleven months, then posted something, and then stopped again, which meant I had to give the site another freaking year.
So in that sense the Noz Curse is a double tragedy. First, it means that a site in which I saw such promise and interestingness stops being promising or interesting just as I got around to noticing. Second, my blogroll is burdened with this freeloading link that isn't contributing to the bloggy goodness as it is supposed to for perhaps as long as a year.
Which is why I fear for Inanities. I only discovered that one because of the This American Life story that I listed to a couple of weeks ago. Since I added it, nothing new has happened. Then again, if I just paid attention to the date stamps of the posts on the first page, I would have noticed an almost five month gap (July 27, 2013 to December 18, 2013) and perhaps thought twice about adding it to the blogroll. But I didn't notice it and so I judged it solely on the basis of the quality of the posts, not the frequency. Unfortunately, the frequency may be the problem. The author just doesn't post much--but definitely more than annually--which means this blog will torture me on an ongoing basis.
------------------------------------------------------------
1- By "whenever" I mean not every time, and probably not even most of the time, but it felt like most of the time because every time it did happen I would say to myself, "SEE! IT HAPPENED AGAIN" and my human brain would note that incident more than all those other times that it didn't happen again and I didn't say anything to myself. Or at least I think so. I don't actually remember all those not-happening again-instances because they didn't fit the pattern I was looking for., but I nevertheless believe they happened because there are active blogs on my blogroll. Stupid human brain.
