Thursday, January 11, 2007

Ain't no Julie Andrews

I guess I've been blogging long enough for this to happen by now... Have you ever stopped loving a blog and wanted to just slowly back away from visiting and commenting on it, but didn't quite know how? How about remove it from your blogroll because it no longer represents you or your interests? How about stop conversing with said blogger because you have absolutely nothing in common anymore? Yah. Well. That's happening for me.

Q: Do I have the testicles to take the blog off my blogroll?
A: I don't have testicles.

I sound like a total bitch, don't I. *sigh* Real me, right here. Not all kittens and lollipops.

13 comments:

Jen said...

Just stop commenting and wait a few months and hopefully they'll forget all about you. My 2 cents, anyway.

Anonymous said...

Just remember that some of us are relying on you - nay, trusting you - to lead us to worthy reads. I'll spend an afternoon on your blog just so I can traverse your "can't live without" blogroll.

Poppy said...

Jen, thank you for that advice.

Gecko, I'm confused by yours. Does that mean I have a duty to leave blogs on the roll even if I don't like them anymore, or that I have a duty to remove the ones I don't care to read?

Anonymous said...

I dunno if I'm saying this without sounding mean, but it's late, so I'm just going to quit editing.

The internet is still anonymous, for the most part. You can easily take advantage of that.

If it were my blog, or if it is my blog, it wouldn't matter to me. No offense; I only mean that I'm going to keep reading your blog whether you come to mine or not. The blogging and blog reading is purely for enjoyment, and when it's not fun anymore, I'll stop doing it. :)

So yeah, just stop commenting. Take the person off your blogroll. It's not like they were paying rent for that space anyway! Hehe.

OH! One last idea! You can switch over to the new blogger or change the color of your sidebar and say that some names got lost in the shuffle and you didn't have them saved. Not the most honest way to do it, but it was an idea.

Poppy said...

Kristen, I found your advice incredibly sensible. So, however it seemed mean to you didn't come across for me. The author of the blog I no longer care to read doesn't read my blog anymore. I can tell from statcounter. Now that I've said something in a post, if I just remove it then the entire internet will know who I meant. So, I have conveniently placed myself into a hole, which I subconsciously enjoy doing to myself.

Perhaps I should just file everyone's blog in the alphanumeric list, then no one will notice if one goes missing. :) But, I really like letting people know that I love their blog, so maybe I'll just scale back the blog obsession section to truly reflect my current tastes and just have a blanket "I'm sorry if you're not my favorite read anymore but someone else loves your blog" statement.

Avitable said...

Oh GAWD! No! Don't take me off! Please! I promise to be better! *sniffle

Oh, you're not talking about me. Then fuck 'em. Just remove them. I don't even use my blogroll on my blog anymore. I use Bloglines exclusively, which means that when I do a redesign, I'm getting rid of the blogroll entirely.

Oh, and it took 15 minutes to post a comment. Damn Blogger.

Poppy said...

Avi ~

I've started using bloglines too because I saw that you were using it exclusively to check my blog so I figured it was nicer to only visit you when bloglines told me you had a new post. Sometimes it foregets to tell me someone has a new post, though, so I don't 100% trust it.

I always considered blogrolls as serving a double purpose. Sure, they remind me of who I like to read, but that's what bookmarks inside of folders are for. More importantly in my eyes is the promotion of other awesome blogs. If you take away the blogroll you take away the, "look, this blog is cool" part. If a blog doesn't roll anyone at all I'm hesitant to bookmark them because I don't know the reason behind it.

And, I can't BELIEVE you're taking me off your blogroll. Bastard! :)

Avitable said...

That's a good point. Maybe I will keep it to highlight the few blogs that I read religiously.

Anonymous said...

The latter, Poppy. There are only so many blog reading hours in a day. You have a duty to yourself and to others to be truthful to your readers so that we can trust your blogroll. I say, if you are not reading them, take them off. On my former blog, which shall remain unnamed, I had two blogrolls to separate my daily reads from the occassional. Your blogrolls say something about you, as does your magazine collection and the books on your dining room bookshelf.

P'nut said...

I agree with Gecko, Kristen & Avi. I regularly clean house, as you may have noticed.

Sometimes I'll come across a blog and love the first few posts I read, bookmark it, and go back to find I don't really enjoy the blog as a whole, so I get rid of it.

If folks don't post for long periods of time (I check daily, btw, but my limit is 2 months) I will remove them. This doesn't mean I don't keep them bookmarked and check back once in a blue moon, I just take them off my site so that I'm not directly people to possibly defunct blogs.

I used to separate my faves into daily reads and monthly reads but I combined them all. I also used to put them in order of how much I liked them, but it's just easier to maintain when it's alphabetical.

Anonymous said...

When I first started blogging, I had small circle of people that I read and that read me so I felt obligated to keep anyone that had me linked on my blog roll if I didn't read them anymore or if I didn't agree with their thoughts and ideas anymore.

I have since gotten past that...if I am not reading a blog regularly (which means I am enjoying it) and they don't have me linked either, they are history without a worry. I even dropped off one my close friends because she never reads my blog, never updates her blog and when she redid her links list...I was left off. Oh well, I doubt she will even notice.

Anyhow, I figure besides my family (who all seem to have blogs now), I am not emotionally tied to anyone and if I lose interest, I feel okay about changing things up. I also don't like to have things on my blog that don't represent me correctly. I recently dropped a blog that was just not my thing too many times to ignore it anymore...oh well.

Good luck in your restructuring...

Anonymous said...

When I said it wouldn't matter to me if you remove my blog from your blogroll, I didn't want to come across as mean and have you think that I don't care what you think. It was more of a "I'm coming back to read your blog whether you link to me or not".

Maven said...

Bottom line?

It's your blog and your blogroll. If you're no longer reading or enthralled with a blogger, what's the commentary? Where's the conflict? Just delete them off your sidepanel/blogroll and be done with it.

I've done this several times, with no fanfare... and I have been confronted only once about it.