It’s not you, it’s me.
Well actually, no, it is you. You’re just not giving me what I need in this relationship.
I feel guilty about it. Really, I do. We’ve had such good times in the past. But you’ve changed. You’ve turned self-promoting or just boring. And maybe it’s selfish, but I just don’t have room for someone in my life that’s a time suck without giving anything back.
Unsubscribe.
There, it’s done. Whew. I just culled the writing blogs in my feed reader this morning by more than half. The need has been there for a while now. Every day I sit down and open my Bloglines and click through all the new posts. More often than not, I’ll skim a line or two and click on to the next one. And I realized that on many of the ones that I subscribe to, I’ve been doing that for months. I haven’t seen anything new or interesting in their content in ages. Or they now only post info about their upcoming appearances or latest release. I don’t like total self-promo. There were also several romantic suspense/mystery type blogs that I read religiously for the last several years, but since I’m not writing in that vein now (though I may again someday in the future), I’m not keeping up with the trends in that genre. Given that my free time is limited and that the internet is already such a dangerous time suck, it had to be done.
I do feel guilty. Some of these blogs I’ve been reading since I discovered blogging. In a way it does feel like breaking up with a friend or significant other. But really, if I’m not getting anything out of what I’m reading, why should I waste the time to keep reading? Sure, there’s the possibility that I’ll miss something great, but that’s just a chance I’ll have to take.
Since I’ve gotten into Twitter, it’s changed a lot of my blog reading habits. Rather than being limited to the blogs I subscribe to, I’m exposed to all kinds of interesting content from across the web via my favorite tweeps. If there’s something REALLY REALLY awesome out there, chances are far more likely that I’ll hear about it that way if it generates enough buzz.
What about you? How do you decide who stays and who goes? Or are you one of those people who just lets your feed reader build up to scary numbers like 2000 posts and just clicks “Mark all read”?
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Oh funny you would blog about this today. I was thinking about this yesterday. Not not much with blogs but with twitter but for the same reasons.
I went through the Great Blog Weedout awhile ago. My criteria for eliminating was content and frequency. I quit going to blogs that was simply self-promotion and blogs that were updated once a month.
My new thing is going through my twitter folks. Some authors tweet only to promote themselves or their friends. Yes, yes, yes, I know you all have books coming out this yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that. So I might be hitting the unfollow button soon.
This should say:
“Yes, yes, yes, I know you all have books coming out this month because you tweeted about it yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.”
Must of hit the wrong button when I was typing.