I’m unsubscribing from Memeorandum.

Reading Dave Winer this morning made me realize I’m just falling down a dark hole. It’s the same hole I was in in the 1990s when I posted about 100,000 items on various newsgroups: in a group the writer is in control, not the reader.

I miss my RSS reading. Reading RSS makes me smarter, not snarkier. Why? Cause I choose who I’m going to read. Pick smart people to read and you’ll get smarter.

Hint, the smartest people in my RSS are usually the least snarky. Why? Cause they could give a f**k about all the traffic.

Why is all the snark going on? Cause everyone wants traffic. Why did I call this the John Dvorakification? Cause he figured out in the 1980s (yes, he’s been at this so long) that if you attack a community (particularly the Apple one) that everyone will get all up in arms and will start talking about the attack. That translates into traffic. Traffic = advertising dollars.

Last night I spent a couple of hours in Second Life and found myself getting smarter again. Why? Cause I was hanging around with smart people and discovering a new world together with them. I was discovering new music in a record store there. I was learning new things. Experiencing new things. And there wasn’t any snark. And no one was begging me for a link. I’m so tired of that.

So, what do I mean by this?

Let’s go look at my feeds. What’s the first post I see? How about this one from Alex Feldstein. He links to images from the Hubble space telescope. S**t. One post and I’m already getting smarter.

Let’s keep going. Bob Lewis teaches me how to deal with a backstabber. Two-for-two. Neither of these got on Memeorandum.

Next. 43 folders has a post on 2 ways to make RSS readers smarter. Hey, you RSS guys paying attention?

Brian Noyes writes that .NET Rocks is talking about data binding and other geeky stuff (and that there’s a new .NET Rocks TV show too). On Memeorandum? Nope.

The Agile Management blog links to Brad Appleton who has great articles on Feature Driven Development and UML in Color Domain Modeling. I’m reading those two now and they are teaching me a lot more than Memeorandum has.

Over on the Software Marketing Resource blog I learn that Krugle is a new source-code search engine and that Windows Marketplace will help software developers market their software.

Andy Lark says that PR legend Harold Burson is blogging. I didn’t see that on Memeorandum either.

John Ludwig praises a football fan’s blog (hint, it’s very geeky). John’s a VC. Listening to VCs typically makes one smarter, if not richer despite the belief that VCs aren’t very smart.

Rob Fahrni, a software developer, has links to the operating manual for the Haunted Mansion at DisneyLand.

Anyway, it’s the little things in life that make you smarter. The little things don’t show up on Memeorandum. They do show up on RSS. Which is why I’m still subscribed to 847 smart people’s feeds.

Sorry Gabe, I’m not gonna look at Memeorandum for at least a week. The Sunday Snark just pushed me over the edge.