Jack Shedd's Big Contrarian has quickly become one of my new favorite sites to check out. A recent post on what he's calling debris struck me as something I would like to say but am not nearly eloquent enough to get out effectively.
Essentially he's asking the blogging community as a whole to knock it the fuck off with all the mindless bullshit that gets attached to each and every blog post or article. Think of all the stupid, useless crap you generally see in sidebars. I agree with his assessment that social integration has just gone a bit too far, it doesn't belong everywhere.
I think Twitter is probably the worst offender. I still don't understand the positive press it gets, especially from intelligent, respected writers. I understand the use for someone that really wants to share boring mundane details of their life, and I think it's effective for open-source software to post quick bits about updates, and I even think it's cool as a lightweight liveblog. But beyond that I wish people would quit attaching their twitters to their sites. Debris.
I'm glad that someone put this out there. It was essentially what I was shooting for with my site design. While I'm not super happy with everything about it (look for an update in the coming months), I think the general concept of a debris-less internet is hunky dory.
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Daniel
Jun2708
I agree on my own part. I don’t know about anyone else but I won’t my own site to stay about my site. There is really no need to add all these other applications in there, unless you’re gaining revenue from it. I guess mine isn’t quite so uncluttered but at least it’s self referencing.
Pasquale
Jun2808
Twitter gets me loads of hits, but that’s the only thing I plug in. It’s got me contacts from AnimationMentor (ILM and Pixar), and from a few other places.
Then again, I tweet about things like yesterday when I ate kanagroo,emu, and crocodile in one mouthful in a video chat.
Screw links to digg, delicious,stumbleupon and all that crap though. De- personalizes it all.