This has been left in my drafts folder for a couple of years at least. I wrote a post on the top X blogs meme a couple of years back when I had del­is­ted my blog from Google. What sur­prises me is that it’s still going. My guess is that no one reads the posts apart from the blog­gers, so if you’re a new blog­ger you’ll not know how old the scam is and be chuffed that someone has included your blog.

Still it con­tin­ues so here’s my list of reas­ons why I don’t want to be on a top X blogs list.

1. You don’t have any interest in the blogs you list, your blog is just a series of blog lists.
2. You don’t have any interest in the topic either.
3. …and that’s why your list is a mix of good and dire blogs.
4. You don’t care about the qual­ity of your lists.
5. …because if someone links to it to cri­ti­cise it, you have a link and that’s all that matters.
6. You’re using my name on what is effect­ively just an advert, which might be com­pet­ing against my university.
7. …and you some­times send stroppy emails if I don’t l link to your advert.
8. Not only do your lists give spuri­ous cred­ib­il­ity to some cranks…
9. …they also ignore genu­inely good blogs that deserve far more atten­tion than mine.
10. And finally, put­ting me on your list marks me out as the kind of per­son who’s going to fall for the same stunt that you’ve already pulled X times.

But the thing that most annoys me is that des­pite all this, if I’m told I’m lis­ted there’s still a 50% chance I’ll look to see who else is lis­ted des­pite know­ing it’s a scam. Curse my narcissism.

Pos­ted to clear some­thing from my drafts folder after a tweet by @threepipeblog.