Blogroll Conundrum

I haven't yet created a blogroll. They are simple, but somehow, I am caught in a conundrum: What's the purpose?

Don't let the blogroll be the mechanism to exhibit that you read "intelligent" voices. That makes most blogrolls look the same. Make it a mechanism for discovering unique and diverse voices. There's no point in putting Seth Godin and Daring Fireball on the blogroll, as anyone who reads blogs would know them anyway.

In my early blogging days, I included blogs from my real-life and online friends on my blogroll, and they reciprocated. That was blogroll etiquette. The only intention behind this space then was to find new people that people I know know, if you know what I mean. Soon, however, it turned into a status game of flaunting one’s reading list rather than engaging with new voices and ideas. Discovery stopped being the purpose.

My blogroll should be a list of writers I want more people to read. They need not be the best writers. Not even the writers that I like reading from the most. Now that I think about it, that can be my blogroll. That should be my blogroll. Who's to stop?

Time to stop overthinking.