We’ve tried to explain M3 to our friends, but it’s just too tightly targeted. It’s an inside joke about inside jokes. Ultimately, that’s both good and bad. It’s bad, because it’s hard to attract new readers, since anybody who might get the jokes is already reading – but it’s also liberating, in that we don’t have to worry too much about explaining things to the readers we do get. The truth is, we generally don’t even have to provide *links* to the sites we’re referencing. For example: We were self.blogging the fact that, according to A List Apart, we are officially quoteable industry insiders as of issue 95. At the end of the post, we thanked Jeffrey Zeldman for including us. Now, if you read M3 with any regularity, then you are most likely a part of the internet community in which Mr. Zeldman is well known. You almost certainly know the address of his website, and may even have a link to it in your favorites folder. We don’t have to *bother* linking him. Sure, if we were posting about a specific entry in Glamorous Life, we’d provide a link, but for the average daily entry – you can get there faster without us. The same goes for Lance, Kottke, and a host of others.
M3 is based in Hollywood, where the mark of a really cool club is that there is no mark. No awning, no sign, nothing. If you were really supposed to be there, you’d just know about it. In the interest of becoming more exclusive and insular, we’re going to try an experiment. We’re not going to link directly to the cool kids. We’ll *mention* them, but not link. That way, only the really cool insider types will get the full entertainment value from our posts.
Today is a perfect example: Armin has some scathingly funny things to say about the people that get up in arms every time someone writes a “weblogs suck” parody. He manages to articulate what most of us probably think, but can’t quite put into words. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t miss the sidebar!