I discovered today that Uncle Keith over at A Riot is an Ugly Thing linked me in his blogroll. I almost danced around my office. I love it when I get linked. I feel validated. As if blogging were a real form of writing that carries some weight in terms of the writing profession overall. I know that is not true. Most real employed writers cast disdainful glances over the tops of their specs or down their long pointy noses at we rebels who take the publishing thing into our own hands and blog. Still, Uncle Keith writes a witty blog and it’s an honor to be linked to it.

Because I was pondering links today, not just due to Uncle Keith, I did a tag search of the topic. I wondered what others thought about links and linking. I know since discovering my Technorati listing that links help one build something called “authority” which simply means the number of legitimate links a blog has to other sites. This authority is responsible for one’s ranking among a shitload of other blogs. Not a technically or politically correct way of putting it, but there are millions of blogs out there. There are more blogs than newspapers or magazines. They outnumber radio and television stations too, I bet. And they reach millions of people, or they could if millions of people where interested in being reached. Some have tens of thousands of views a day and I find that my mind buckles and my soul starts looking for the nearest bed to crawl under at the thought of that. I nearly had a panic attack the day I provoked the few hundred Angelina fans into checking out a tongue in cheek titled piece I wrote about women and unrealistic beauty expectations not long ago. Though my husband knows me better than I know myself and insists that I would “learn to deal” should I ever become a consumable blogging flavor, there is a shy fat girl in me always who would need smelling salts daily if that should ever happen.

Most of my links are informational ones. I have sites and literary magazines listed for my own use and for any writers who stumble across here hoping to find publishing opportunities for fiction or poetry or whatever. I have the widow blogs (which I recently discovered is a term that at least on of them takes issue with but misses the point that I label them for the convenience of those searching for information and not because I feel that the people who write these blogs are one dimensional. I am/always was far more than just that one event in my life). And then there are the links to sites that are just darn good reads. Funny. Thought provoking. Interactive. Writing should be all those things and more. Some are blogs my husband loves to read to me. Johnny Virgil for instance is even more funny when he reads it aloud to me than when I read it myself. Same holds true of Pulp at Gil Meche. There are others that I found and read when I have time to catch up, which isn’t daily but I do set aside time to read and I really try to comment because that is something about blogging that is so very important. More than people realize. Here is a writing medium that begs for audience participation and readers should respond. It’s kind of their job, in my opinion.

Which brings me to a blog I stumbled on today. The entry was about linking to sites that don’t return the favor. Now, I don’t advocate linking blogs simply to get linked. Unless you are providing a list for information purposes only it’s better that you read or have a some sort of cyber acquaintanceship with the blog or blogger. I link people because I know them from somewhere else. Like Konnie at It’s Cheaper Than Therapy. She and I go back to BabyCenter when we were trying to conceive and posting on the message boards there. Many of the widow links are connections from the YWBB whose posts I read and blogs I found on that particular journey in my life. One of my biggest referrers from there is Tanja. A Dutch ex-pat in the U.S. who is a wonderful writer and is working on her teacher’s certification. She is a keen observer. The blog post I read today talked about bloggers who snub you despite your being a reader/commenter of long-standing. I have had my share of that. I have linked people who do not have me linked in return. It hurts frankly but just because you have found something in another’s blog that speaks to you doesn’t mean that the blogger will take to you in kind. We can speak to each other without being heard in return. And too there are instances where a certain blogger has a particular theme to their blog with links that reflect that, and your blog simply doesn’t fit in.

The blog universe, just like the real world of social interaction we all learned about back in our high school days, is full of clichés and in crowds that we all can’t have membership in. Some of us will be popular and cool and some of us will still be geeks even in our own ethereal worlds. Not fair, but who said we were building a more equitable place to dwell here on the ‘Net? I try to remember that it’s not all personal despite the sometimes cozy feeling we get when we read and comment and are responded to in turn.