Sometimes I read links to awesome posts about cool stuff where the person does such a good job of describing the content at the other end that I don’t feel the need to click through. This is probably a bad thing. A few weeks back Kottke linked to a post about how to write an incendiary blog post. His post was good. I shared it via google reader, and thought nothing further of it.
Then Amy linked to the same post and I read the original. It’s funny. You should read it – and make sure you check out the comments too…
This sentence claims that there are many people who do not agree with the thesis of the blog post as expressed in the previous sentence. This sentence speculates as to the mental and ethical character of the people mentioned in the previous sentence. This sentence contains a link to the most egregiously ill-argued, intemperate, hateful and ridiculous example of such people the author could find. This sentence is a three-word refutation of the post linked in the previous sentence, the first of which three words is “Um.” This sentence implies that the linked post is in fact typical of those who disagree with the thesis of the blog post. This sentence contains expressions of outrage and disbelief largely expressed in Internet acronyms. This sentence contains a link to an Internet video featuring a cat playing a piano.
Here’s my favourite comment…
“This comment is by a trolling Jehova’s Witness who is filled with brotherly love for all the other commenters, but knows without meeting any of them that they all deserve to burn in hell forever. Fortunately, anyone willing to read this far is already jaded from way too much time spent reading comments.”
The moral to this story (other than that you should read both Amy’s blog and Kottke.org) is that you should always click through to interesting links.