Ah, the mystical wonder of the A-list. For years, it was the Golden Calf at the End Of The Rainbow and the Prize That Was Beyond Reach in the Land of Nirvana. And stuff. The A-list was where the Beautiful People resided – the people with perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect code and perfect blog entries. Of course, the downside was that in reality they were mostly lonely, anti-social geeks who needed to get out more. Life is cruel like that.
But now, finally, the truth can be told …

And the truth is this. There never was an A-list. However, there was A List. (Do you see what I’ve done there? Do you? It’s kind of crucial, so please pay attention). The A-list myth arose because of one uber-geek with particularly bad handwriting, who was prone to adding an excessively long cross-stroke when he wrote a letter A. One day, somewhere in America (well, let’s face it, it probably was somewhere in America) this uber-geek wanted to tell the few friends he had about these ‘kewl’ new weblog things, in the hope that they would join him in his slightly self-obsessed virtual world. So he found a piece of paper and a pen, and he wrote A list of blogs. But due to the aforementioned cross-stroke and especially bad handwriting, all those who read it misinterpreted it as A-list of blogs. Such an easy mistake to make
And the rest, as they say, is hysterical history. Sorry, yes, I meant history. The rest is history.
Here are a few good reasons why you should take a moment every day to celebrate not having an A-list blog:
• No performance anxiety.
• Not having to invent an interesting life to write about on your weblog.
• No huge bills for excessive bandwidth use at the end of every month.
• No horrendous moments when you’re travelling on the bus and realise that two complete strangers are talking about what they read on your site yesterday.
• Nobody wondering if you’re real, or whether you’re actually the creation of some second-rate author who is down on their luck.
• Not having to waste precious hours of your day finding unique links on the web.
• Finally, and most importantly of all, not returning sixty-seven pages of results when your friends, colleagues, family or (heaven forbid) YOUR MOTHER type your name into Google.
I can’t overstate that last point enough. If none of the other reasons convince you, remember that the reason you never want to be A-list is because YOUR MOTHER WILL FIND OUT ABOUT YOUR WEBLOG. That’s your mother. Reading your weblog. Calling you up about your blog entries every other day. Wondering why she never gets a mention. Wondering why you say all those cruel things about your Auntie Beryl. Wondering why you wrote about being at a wild party when you told her you couldn’t visit her because you were seriously ill with a nasty dose of Tibetan Yak Fever.
I can tell that you don’t believe me. Aim for the A-list, then. See if I care. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Next thing, she’ll be learning HTML, and then you’ll never hear the end of it.