Bloggers create their own lords

Today’s posts is a slight departure from the world of work and business, which is what I usually spout about, but bear with me, there is a point to this.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about people needing hierarchy, arguing that, where there is no hierarchy, people will quickly create one. Some people took issue with me but I came across something earlier this week which supports my theory. It’s the curious phenomenon of blog awards.

Someone has probably already done this, but you can draw an analogy between the blogosphere and the colonisation of the New World. Both were seen as places where people could do their own thing, free from the constraints of established authority.

Seventeenth century farmers fed up with tugging their forelocks and paying rent to their lords made for America, where they could own their own land and everyone was just called Mr or Mrs. In the same way, people with ideas who found themselves excluded or not represented by existing media, found a new outlet for their thoughts in blogging. Like America, blogging was egalitarian. Jack was as good as his master and, provided you had the talent, you could rise to the top.

That was the myth, anyway. But America was not the land of idealist pioneers that the Pilgrim Fathers’ legend would have us believe. After the original settlers had established themselves, Old World money flowed in, establishing the tobacco barons of the South and the business aristocracy of New England. By the time of the War of Independence, American society was well on its way to being almost as hierarchical as the European societies its people had left.

After the wave of original pioneers, the Old World began to colonise the blogosphere too. Most newspapers now have blogs and writers who already had a following and a reputation have started to make names for themselves as bloggers. They didn’t have to start from scratch, like most bloggers. They brought their audiences with them. This gives them something that a lot of bloggers want – traffic.

Such a blogger is Iain Dale, journalist, author and founder of Politicos Bookshop, whose blog has over 400,000 views a month, making him an instant aristocrat in the world of blogging. And, just as the farmers of eighteenth century America deferred to the powerful New England aristocrats, today’s bloggers are beating a path to Iain Dale’s door. Why? Because they want to be on his Top 100 list.

Despite their claims to have repudiated the Old World, Americans, at least until the mid-twentieth-century, desperately sought approval and recognition from it. Europe was seen as where it was at and rich Americans married their daughters off to British aristocrats for the cache of an Old World title.

Many bloggers, too, while professing to hate the old world of the ‘Mainstream Media’, still want its approval. A mention in an article, a column in a newspaper, even, dare to dream it, a book deal, are their unspoken ambitions. Which is where Iain Dale comes in. Get one of his Top 100 blog awards and you might get recognised by one of the thousands of people who read his blog, some of whom are the barons of the Old World. Hierarchies start when someone has accumulated a reserve of wealth and power which he can then use to bribe or coerce others. Iain Dale has a reserve of fame and contacts which other bloggers want a piece of.

Just as America grew its own hierarchy, the world of blogging, despite all its egalitarian and libertarian pretensions, is doing the same. Grand Dukes like Iain Dale will hand out knighthoods and lesser honours to their favoured followers along with some crumbs from their tables, and in return, the rest of the bloggers will defer to them, reference their posts send them more traffic and generally bolster their positions at the top of the pyramid. Then next year, there will be an even more frenzied scramble to make it onto The List.

This post is not meant as an attack on Iain Dale. Some may criticise him for undermining the ideals of blogging but to me, titles, awards and other blandishments are a feature of any society, as are the people who set themselves up as the arbiters of such things. Like all societies, even virtual ones, the world of blogs is beginning to establish its own hierarchy. That’s not Iain Dale’s fault. It’s just what human beings do.