It’s amazing that what shows up in the dashboard list, under Other WordPress News. Mostly it is articles about running your WordPress site but sometimes (and increasing so) it’s just another drivel non-article. The latest one from Matt is Favourite Women Bloggers?

The most bogus dashboard link ever?

Women do pretty much everything these days. Many of them blog, some of them professionally. So I ask: Why do we need to hold them up as a special group of bloggers worthy of note, especially in some patronising, “ah look how well they’re doing” kinda way? Although actually it looks more like gratuitous self-promotion than anything else.

So here we have a sort of moral choice for the bloggirls, especially given the content of these sites, which are aimed at promotion or youth culture or women in business. Do I accept that the only reason I got myself in this article is my gender, and be happy about it, or do I strive for true equality and say no? Well I guess, actually these ladies have all learned the first rule of marketing bullshit, oft miss-quoted (and if I may say so, totally erroneous) – “any exposure must be good”. Or some such tripe.

Matt just re-links to someone else’s article, which quotes him (Is the irony of doing so little actual blogging himself in WordPress lost on him?) Who cares. The aforementioned article is little more than a list of women but, most importantly, because they are women, there must be pictures. Much more important for us to see them to judge their worth, than read their actual blog itself. Why are these peoples favourite women bloggers? This was not clear at all in most cases. There is no depth at all to anyone’s choices. Picture, link, name, half a sentence about the blog, a bit more if its a good cause. Finito. No actual explanation of why there are being picked. For example

Michelle Thorne is a thinker, about free culture and a whole lot more.

Sadly, and ironically as this is all about exposure, not the pornstar. This says nothing about the person, her site or why Mike liked this blog. I expect he liked it best because he got three lines himself and a link to his business. Nothing personal Mike, but holy crap “a whole lot more”. Did you have real work to go do?

Surly dashboard is about WordPress and “Other WordPress News” about promoting what’s good about it. That most people choose to write superficial drivel with the sole purpose of “being known” themselves is already blogged to death. You can read that crap just by randomly typing words into Google. You might even end up here. This is not something that should be seen as, in any way, good. Dashboard should not become another mouthpiece for patronising piffle. So cut it the feck out.