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Scandalous Ranking on ‘Top 50’ Website List
One of the most exhausting features of the political Internet is the “Outrage of the Day” culture it perpetuates. In order to generate traffic, blogs hype even the most minor of scandals to SHOCK and APPALL their readers into leaving furious comments and angrily sharing the post with friends and family.
The Outrage Industrial Complex on the Right will launch a half-researched story on a little blog which gets fed to the larger sites, appears on talk radio the next day, and (fingers crossed) Fox News by week’s end. Then the Left reacts to it with mockery and contempt, which gets fed to MSNBC, and (fingers crossed) “The Daily Show” the next day they tape. That’s when the original blog insults Jon Stewart for getting all the details wrong and the cycle starts again.
It’s a pretty good content-generation system if your heart can take the stress and your brain can stand the dumb. Now that all the bloggers are on Twitter and Yik Yak (and whatever the crap Meerkat is), the firehose of outrage is blasting 24/7.
For all these reasons, as well as my delicate constitution, I’m not a fan of outrage culture and only allow my passions to roil over real, life-or-death outrages. Such as our recent website ranking.
A so-called conservative outlet released a so-called list of the so-called Top 50 Conservative Blogs. They listed Ricochet at… um… well, at a ranking considerably below the logical choice of Number One. If memory serves, we were ranked somewhere below “Teenage Republicans for Spiro Agnew” and “Anarcho-syndicalist Horticulture Fortnightly.” Seriously, check out this outrage.
What say you, Ricochetti? Were we robbed? Because I think we were robbed.
I’ll check back in a few hours. I’m heading to Whole Foods so I can flip over a Volvo or two.
Published in General
I’m glad to see Protein Wisdom listed at #22. Jeff Goldstein is a truly outstanding blogger. And seeing Gateway Pundit at #17 is heartening, too. Both me and lapsed Ricochet member Andrea Ryan have guest-posted there in the past.
It should at least have made it ahead of “Conservatives for Palin.”
Well, at least we’re rated higher than Dick Morris.
Maybe we would have ranked higher if this site had fewer RINO squishes. Ideological purity, people!
(for the squishes: I kid)
After that headline, was mildly disappointed we did not make a list of top-fifty scandals.
If we was robbed, what happened to Steyn?
Are the authors of said article fully aware of their mothers’ various moral deficiencies?
Well we’re ahead of Dick Morris.
Here’s an idea, addressed to whomever is running this Ricochet joint we all love:
Each week let’s do a weekly guest blogger, by inviting one of these folks on the list. Have them do a guest column and a little Ricochet back and forth in the comments.
That will be a great way to get their readers looking in on us.
Strict code of conduct for those.
What do you think, editors?
The sign was supposed to say Spinal Tap and Puppet Show not Puppet Show and Spinal Tap.
Tommy, Tommy, Tommy…your idea is great, civilized and rational. It has no place on the internet.
I propose we gin up some traffic with scandalously photoshoped depictions of our rivals doing untoward things to farm animals.
wait, what? I only just figured out what Twitter is and now you mention “yik-yak” and “meerkat?!” Damnit.
oh, my. We’re listed below some pretty obscure websites (many of which I’ve never heard of).
Yes, I agree. That’s sad.
Welp… see ya’all later. I’m going to go pitch my next post to the Weasel Zippers. Maybe then someone will notice me.
Who the H#%% abdicated and left Newsmax in charge?
Please correct me if I’m mistaken, but you seem to be making this observation as if the phenomenon you describe is somehow a recent innovation:
“A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not.” – Henry Fielding
“Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.” – George Bernard Shaw
“When we hear news, we should always wait for the sacrament of confirmation.” – Voltaire
“There is hardly any generation in history that did not think it lived in perilous times.”
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.” -Thomas Jefferson
“Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” – Mark Twain
We were mugged, stabbed, shot, beaten, had acid thrown in our faces, and burned to a crisp. As George Carlin said “police suspect foul play.”
When the mob in the Reagan masks show up they’ll be sorry.
“What do we want?!?”
“Civility and a Code of Conduct!”
“When do we want it!?!”
“I said, when do we want it?!?”
“Thursday? The weekend would be nice…”
No justice. No peace.
Past the first 10 or soi’d never heard of most of them. How do they judge these things anyway? By traffic? How about quality? By that standard, we’d definitely be number one!
This is a blog?
Seriously, I wouldn’t describe Ricochet as a blog.
You’re 100% right. Let’s give the editors a week to implement my idea, and if they don’t, we’ll do yours.
The Revolution starts in the Member Feed!!!!
Oh I think sites like Instapundit and The Corner are of comparable quality. So is The Volokh Conspiracy, which I was surprised not to see on the list. But I’ve generally not heard of most of these, so I don’t know much about the quality of the bulk of them.
Is that the same Newsmax owned by Christopher Ruddy who donated $1M to the Clinton Foundation?
Good call, Cato.
Instapundit? Really? What a stupid name, that’ll never catch on.
Also, who cares about a bunch of vagrants hanging out on The Corner? Get some jobs, losers.
Ok, august members of the blogging community, (and all you others!), a Ricochet is louder than the shot that first leaves the barrel, so you’ve been warned! As was mentioned already, I haven’t even heard of some of these sites. Come on, how many of these sites have people willing to PAY for the privilege to post and interact with other posters? How many websites actually have face-to-face meetings and gatherings? I’m throwing down the gauntlet right now—I want to know the criteria used by Newsmax to determine the rankings. Does anyone know?
Who cares.
It’s Newsmax. Nobody reads it. They couldn’t even break into Their Own “top 50.”
I’m going to have to offer a dissenting opinion here. Ricochet is not a ‘blog’. Ricochet is…*checking header* ‘conservative conversation and community’. When you talk to people about becoming a member, you don’t say “join the blog” you say “join the conversation”.
If we were ranked low on a list of top 50 conservative websites in general, I’d be equally outraged (possibly outrageously outraged). But since Ricochet was ranked low in a category it doesn’t technically belong in, I’m taking it as more proof that it is just. That. Good.
To some extent, this site may not rank as highly because it does its best to control the vitriol that you get in comment sections on other sites. By definition Ricochet’s membership requirement functions as a gatekeeper. Consequently, we may very well get less overall traffic because of that. You need to want to be civil to be a member of Ricochet.
They lost me when they ranked the Freepers in the top five.
Why didn’t American Thinker make the cut?
I respectfully disagree. You only have to be willing to be civil to be a member of Ricochet.
You may want to be the biggest jerk in the history of jerkdom and remain a member, as long as you can routinely keep a lid on it.
Trust me on this one.