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Thursday, July 14, 2005
Way too many blogs?
It occurred to me tonight as I was reading my blogroll that it's really starting to get out of hand. I currently have 121 total feeds on my list. Broken down, about 30-40% of these are written by anthropologists, philosophers, academics, and other scientists. The other large chunk is political blogs encompassing conservative, liberal, progressive, and radical view points. The rest are news feeds, delivering headlines and other non-opinion bits that are of interest to me. I have only recently (in the past couple of month) began reading academic blogs and they take up most of my time. As a result, political blogs, which I started reading first, have started to become unread as I devote more attention to the scholarly realm of the blogosphere. Afterall, I can only read so many Malkin posts before wanting to urinate on my CPU.
Over the past several weeks, I have spent on average at least one hour a day just reading other blogs. It becomes increasingly more time consuming as my blogroll grows at the rate of one or two blogs or feeds a week. No problem yet, as it’s only summer and I don't have any real obligations other than my optional summer job at the yacht club. Currently, I can hardly bring myself to not at least read every post title in my anthropology and philosophy lists every time I check Bloglines (at least once a day for my day to feel "complete"). When they pile up over the course of a day or two, this usually means a rapid scanning process until something pops out at me (that's how you know a blog is good).
I fear, however, that come Fall when I am knocked over the head with the hammer that is graduate school, I will spiral into an ugly episode of blog withdrawal. What will happen when I'm not able to devour and absorb every tasty Savage Minds or Pharyngula post? I can picture myself waking up at night in a cold sweat, rushing to the warm glow of my computer screen and making sure that I haven't missed something that Brian Leiter has written.
I write the above paragraph partly in jest (my addiction really isn't that bad), but I do find myself spending awkward amounts of time reading blogs and posting on my own. Previously, when I was "addicted" to Radiohead message boards I now find myself swimming in a sea of blog posts about everything from evolutionary theory to the latest opinion on how Bush is trying to turn the US into a Church. I'm confident I'll be weaned off my obsessive blog reading when I am intellectually stimulated as a graduate student as opposed to a blog junkie. Same addiction, different drug.
Posted by Will at July 14, 2005 12:27 AM in Internet and Blogging