Michael Arrington is a blind man; the blogosphere is an elephant

When Michael Arrington speaks, tech bloggers listen. Today, mixed into a post on other bloggers raising money, he revealed his view of the elephant that is the blogosphere.

I rarely quote such a long passage, but I made an exception here since it's part of a longer post that has a different focus.

And writing good content is only half the battle. You have to figure out the complex, dynamic web of politics between bloggers and mainstream media before you post to know where to get support. And you’ll need support in the form of links from other prominent bloggers. An early push can take a post and make it a headline on TechMeme, which leads to page views and notice by sponsors. But since blogging is almost by definition a conversation between bloggers, fights tend to break out over emotional issues. Cliques develop. Can you count on them to support you down the road?

Personally, I’ve found that if a fight is necessary, fight clean and fight hard. Make it as bloody as possible and end it fast, with no loose ends dangling about. Leave no lingering emotional stone unturned. When everyone gets up and dusts themselves off, the issue should have been resolved one way or the other, and both sides should be happy to shake hands and tango another day, even if the handshaking is done privately. Those that aren’t capable of doing that tend to push themselves to the outskirts of the blogosphere, where their main job is to lob in attacks at random intervals, pursuing long forgotten insults.

So today, at best, I’d describe the blogosphere as a frontier town with no lawman (I mean, O’Reilly has a badge on, but no gun and no jail). You can do just about anything you want, but the politically savvy folks tend to arm themselves to the teeth and gang together to protect their property. Everyone else is in the middle of chaos, either fighting blindly for attention or politely asking (by linking early and linking often) if they can join the big Gang.

And now that the big guys in the Gang are being injected with capital, hiring tens of employees and expanding their businesses, they suddenly have a lot more to lose. Linking is never done just because. Rather, links are your political capital that must be expended appropriately. Don’t link at the right time and in two weeks when you’re pushing your own headline, you’ll wish you had. When you stop seeing other blogs as people you admire and want to discuss things with, and start to see them as your competitor, your brain shifts and you stop linking the way you had previously.

Luckily, the newbie bloggers are there to fill in the links when they’re needed. That’s why, if you are a mid-level blogger, you are likely courted by the bigger blogs looking to get your support. If you know what’s going on and are willing to play the game, you can see your blog rise very, very quickly. Choose the wrong blog, though, and you may find yourself alone and lonely in your forgotten blog.

Wow. That's certainly not my view of the blogosphere. (In case it matters: yes, Blogcosm is still new, but I've been reading blogs since more or less the beginning.)

I have 2 explanations:

1. there's a reason that the story of The Blind Men and the Elephant is a classic. It captures the hard truth that each of us only sees part of the whole.
2. people tend to project their own views onto others. Arrington sees blogs through the lens of politics and bloody fights, so he assumes others do to.

How much does each contribute? That's impossible to know.

Some context:

One frequent criticism of Arrington: he posts rumors without fact checking. Today's post is a case in point. Rafat Ali of paidContent.org calls him out:

Mike, Despite your apparent cold war with us, all it would have taken you to get the facts is drop me an e-mail. Instead, you got it wrong on all counts:: TechCrunch reports that our company is looking to raise $2 million to $3 million and that we are also considering selling the company. I can’t say this clearly enough: he is wrong on ALL counts.

For bloggers in fields other than tech: who is this Arrington guy anyway? Answer: he rocketed TechCrunch to the top of the tech blogosphere with obsessive coverage of Web 2.0 startups. The blog currently sits at #2 on Technorati's list of top blogs (by unique incoming links over the past 6 months).