Speculations On Blogging

Two bloggers wrote me this week, asking permission to reprint my story "Fishing With The Old Man" in an anthology of "the blogosphere." I dislike that word almost as much as "cyberspace."

Interestingly, they didn't find the story on All This Is That[tm], but on three other blogs that mine blogs for articles they like. . .these blogs all gave credit and even reproduced the All This Is That[tm] copyright notice. This has also happened with some of my jobs stories, the one about egging cars, a political rant, and some of the poems and art as well. That's fine. It's not like they're cutting into my profits (the income from this blog totals between twenty cents and a dollar a month from ad clickthroughs).

Blogging, at times, becomes a world of funhouse mirrors, reflecting off each other; an incestuous, inwardly referential blog to blog world. Blogs anthologizing blogs. Blogs writing for, to, and about other blogs. Blogs mining other blogs (as I sometimes do...including yesterday, when I referred to another blog that published an article about Al Gore's presidential prospects).

It's a little like poets--if you buy a small press poetry magazine, there's a strong chance that most of the other purchasers or subscribers are all poets too. It is fascinating how many people utilize the NEXT BLOG button, and just surf through whatever random blog pops up next. I can tell about those in my traffic reports because those people all come from other blogspot blogs. Because the story appears without the usual formatting, they probably took it from the newsreader site feed for this blog (jackbrummet.blogspot.com/atom.xml). Click here to read the fishing story.
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