Blogs have voices

There are blogs on my RSS feed list that I agree with and there are those I don’t always agree with, but the factor that determines whether or not I delete them from my google reader is the voice of the writer. It took me a while to realise this, but when I caught myself skipping posts on one blog, while pouring over very similar posts in another, I came round to this way of thinking.

“It’s taken me a lot of years, but I’ve come around to this: If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people. If you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.” – Isaac Jaffee, Sports Night, episode 3.

As an example, I’ll deal with Apple geekery blogs in an effort to give a clear example of what I mean. The daddy of all Apple-related blogs is John Gruber’s Daring Fireball, and while Gruber can come across as arrogant, it’s usually because he’s usually right. I like his voice and find myself sniggering at some of his less kind posts. In the same vein, there’s the less well-known Curious Rat who also has a voice that speaks to me. Of all the blogs in this post, it’s the one most likely to be unknown to you until now, and you should check it out if you like your posts towards the acidic end of the scale.

Then, we get to the ones I agree with whose voice just doesn’t work with me, for whatever reason. There’s Shawn Blanc’s blog that I think you may like even if I don’t and there’s 52 Tiger that just annoys the shit out of me. In both these cases, the reasons these blogs are in the to be deleted pile is because of the voice of the writer and not the content. Shawn is most likely just culturally different while Dave Caolo is probably just a dick[ref]Not really, I don’t know the guy. However, his writing doesn’t appeal to me and I disagree with his views on some stuff. His contact page even has the wrong Twitter account listed, and that just infuriates me.[/ref], and I say that without ever having met either writer.

Then, in the middle are the guys I just read for fun. There’s Bynkii of Angry Mac Bastards who just makes me smile and Marco Arment who I disagree with on a few points[ref]This post was inspired by disagreeing with one of Marco’s posts.[/ref] but writes enjoyable posts.

Volume of posts doesn’t seem to matter as much as the quality, but those who post really long posts get punted off to Instapaper.

Anyway, I’m now petering out and staring to ramble, but that’s ok, because that’s my voice.

Comments appreciated, even if they’re to tell me how wrong I am or that I missed a decent geekery blog.

Update: Dave Caolo has fixed his contact pages.