And Rightly So!

Beth found a write about the Underground Blogosphere.

THE WHAT?? The writer at this site defines this as:

The Underground Blogosphere is an intricate web of hundreds of thousands of emails that bloggers send to each other every day. In essence, they are “pitching” their latest posts in hopes of getting a link. Sometimes, bloggers are genuinely looking for good feedback, but more often than not all they are just looking for traffic.

Hmm. I don’t think this is quite true. Many bloggers have formed alliances and through email we find ways to support one another and offer encouragement. In the few groups I belong to, there is very little link whoring going on. I have been part of groups who do allow a lot of this site pimping, “rescue me from my nasty commentors” bulloney. I have belonged to groups whose members used the group as a stepping stone to get “popular”. I don’t know…that stuff turns me right off.

The Cotillion Group has it’s own private email list, where members-all women- talk about everything and anything, most of which is not related to blogging. Sure, we are together because of our blogs, but over the past year we have become more than that. We laugh, cry, vent, scream, someone is also always there (online) if someone needs a shoulder to whine on. There is a lot of personal life issues talked about and advice and opinions are asked for…We get pissed off about current events and share these feelings full throttle.

South Park Republicans is another group that has it’s own private email list. Much of the talk here is about current events and sharing ideas and thoughts about these events. There is also a fair amount of personal life issues that are spoken about and it has become a group of good friends, who came together through blogging. We tell dirty jokes and bash and tease each other. This group is made up of men and women. It’s fun and I see very little link whoring here. As with the Cotillion, there is almost always someone online who can be reached to for support.

I am honored to be a part of both these Underground groups. I don’t see anything wrong with this either…it’s new to me, this world of blogging and I’m still learning. I am not an elite blogger and have no intention of ever going there. There are days when I wonder why do this…and why bother. I refuse to become a link whoring blog slut who uses these groups as a means to move up the ranks of the Blogosphere. No way. It’s just not that important to me. The friends I have made through blogging though ARE much more important to me though. I am amazed at the caliber of writers I keep company with too…most of the people in these groups are prolific writers and they SHOULD be elite bloggers.