Brad Coy sends news that I have been named as one of the Inman News “25 Most Influential Bloggers” for 2008. I don’t know this first-hand, since you have to be a member of the Inman Secret Handshake Club to gain access to the “Special Report.” Not quite true: You can also buy the thrilling “Special Report” for only $79.00. That’s only $3.16 an influencer.
But wait: The price just went up to $3.29 an influencer, since, as with last year, I am renouncing this denomination.
I’m sure the people who named me to this list thought they were offering me some sort of distinction. To the contrary, I see it as a diminution of the work we are doing here. Among the influencers are people I see as being active exponents of knowing evil. The rest are decent-enough folks, but I don’t see them, for the most part, as being stout advocates for anything that I regard as being good or vital or important. Nice people, but they’re just people.
Influence by itself is a meaningless standard of value: Fifty million Frenchmen can be as wrong as one. For the most part, the people in the RE.net whose opinions matter most to me already write here — and, of course, those great minds are all but entirely omitted from Inman’s list, even though their influence is more-positive and more-consequential than many of those included.
But none of that matters. What matters is this: I am either right or I am wrong — as are you. Agreement means nothing, endorsement means nothing, beauty contests mean nothing, dipshit lists like this mean nothing. All that matters is the quality of your thinking and and quality of your writing. The world is made by minds, not mobs, and I don’t want my name to be used to contradict that proposition.
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