Me Link You Long Time

A Carnegie Mellon study ranks Don Surber as the internet’s number 2 most informative blog?

Why yes. Instapundit is number 1 of course, Michelle Malkin is number 5 and the widely read Boing Boing is number 9. Liberal Atrios doesn’t show up until number 10.

Keep reading.

First, a word on conservative blogs:

1. By and large, they’re shamelessly self-referential link whores. Now liberal bloggers link to each other too, but conservatives elevate it to the level of Olympic sport. If there’s one thing conservative bloggers love more than Ronald Reagan, it’s linking to other conservative blogs. If Michelle Malkin farts in the shower, Don Surber links to a story about it. Then Instapundit links to Don Surber’s link. Then Michelle Malkin links to Don Surber’s link to Instapundit linking to Don Surber. And so on. If you don’t believe me, spend some time reading Surber’s blog. You’ll notice a pattern. I have no doubt that Don Surber lays awake a night thinking of excuses to link to Instapundit.

Now this would just be trivial if it weren’t for…

2. Conservative bloggers just make shit up. All the time. A carry over from talk radio, I guess. Like Don “Canada’s violent crime rate twice is ours” Surber. (I would link to his original post, but it’s mysteriously 404.) They’ll link to anything and everything that supports their argument without giving a second though to whether it’s true or not. So what happens is a lesser know blogger publishes a total falsehood. Then Surber links to it. Then one of Surber’s minions (or Surbots, as I call them) links to his story. Then others. And eventually it’s approvingly linked by the motherload of conservative traffic, Instapundit (and why wouldn’t he, since Surber links to him all the time too). And before you know it, thousands of little dittoheads are running around thinking that Canada’s violent crime rate really is double ours. If you search around you can find several awful examples of this kind of thing happening over and over, most recently with the Frost family and SCHIP. It boggles the mind.

But what doesn’t boggle the mind is how Surber’s blog, and conservative bloggers in general ranked highest in this study. It’s actually a study of Cost-Effective Outbreak Detection in Networks — like how to best detect an outbreak of something, like cholera, spreading though a network, like a city water supply. The researchers applied that same algorithm to blogs, to answer the question “Which blogs should one read to be most up to date, i.e., to quickly know about important stories that propagate over the blogosphere?” The methodology favored blogs that link to other blogs, and that other blogs frequently link to. There was no way to measure if any of the stories these blogs linked to were like, actually true. So naturally, conservative bullshit clearinghouses like Instapundit, Malkin, and our own Don Surber ranked highest.

That’s right folks: a heroically ignorant douche-nozzle like Don Surber can publish a complete and utter falsehood, and it will spread through conservative channels just like a disease.

Is it 5 o’ clock yet?