Where Bloggers Go to Die

So I poke around a lot on the Internet, and I’ve noticed that some bloggers have lists on their blogs of other people’s blogs—like-minded, I presume—that they invite you to visit. Sort of an honor roll of anointed fellow-bloggers, you know? And that’s fine. But if you want to look like you know your head from a turnip, it’s important that every now and again you weed through that blog roll and check if the links work, and maybe whether that blogger you’re recommending to your readers has posted anything in the past, oh, six years.

Consider Joey Sweeney over at Philebrity. Of the 15 blogs he invites you to visit, one doesn’t have any posts, one leads to a blank page, one goes to a multilingual review of online casinos, one promises the blogger will return at some point (“srsly”), two have moved, and two last posted in 2008. Helpful, Sweeney.

The batting percentage of the Daily News’s Will Bunch, over at Attytood, isn’t much better. Of the 16 listings under his “Blog Roll: Philly/Nation,” one has a 2004 copyright, four go nowhere, one hasn’t posted in a year and a half, and one left the house in 2008. I didn’t have the heart to go on clicking through the long, long list of suggestions he has in the other categories; I already felt like I was in a morgue. For real fun, click on the suggested-links lists on the dead blogs; it’s like the levels of Inception in there. Or maybe like the girl on the Land O’ Lakes box holding the Land O’ Lakes box with a picture of a girl holding a … yeah.

Gentlemen! A lot of folks start blogs. Not that many stay with them. Once in a while, you have to clean house, even if you don’t have that many people over. And if you’re going to introduce us to your friends, make sure they’re still alive.