What's the story, optional Cory?

February 1, 2012 8:37 AM

So after reading the recent posts in the Blue and MeTa about Cory Doctorow, I've come to wonder if there are any really worthwhile alternatives to BoingBoing out there.

I'm sure that what they post is to be found in more pared-down and specialized blogs, tumblrs, etc, but what I'm looking for are similar sites, with their own voice and character linking up stuff and things that need perusing and checking out.

Metafilter, of course, is already option #1.

posted by erskelyne to computers & internet (20 answers total)

neatorama ?
posted by exois at 8:41 AM on February 1

Reddit springs immediately to mind. Lots of sub reddits that function as aggregates for very specialist topics.

Mental Floss and The Presurfer also work well as aggregates.
posted by Jilder at 8:52 AM on February 1

Laughing Squid comes to mind.
posted by doublesix at 8:55 AM on February 1 [3 favorites]

Dark Roasted Blend
Gizmodo
Wired Danger Room


But really, if you like BoingBoing then keep looking at it. Who cares what the faceless hordes think?
posted by Burhanistan at 8:55 AM on February 1 [6 favorites]

Second Neatorama.
Maybe Slashdot and Lifehacker? More specialized, yes, but you could always integrate multiple feeds into a Google Reader tag.
posted by lord_yo at 8:59 AM on February 1

The Awl! (and sister site The Hairpin, which is nominally for ladies but can surely be enjoyed by people of any gender.) Most of their writing is original content, not links, but it's funny and intelligent.
posted by jeudi at 9:01 AM on February 1

http://www.kottke.org/

And keep reading Boing Boing. I do. Yeah it can be irritating occasionally, but so can anything.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:45 AM on February 1 [1 favorite]

Also, Very Short List is good.

Arts and Letters Daily is another viable alternative.

And here's an actual clickable link to Kottke.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:57 AM on February 1 [1 favorite]

I gave up on all the 'A" list sites, (Except for this one!) When they occasionally write something truly interesting, it's linked and forwarded around so much that it's impossible to not see it.
posted by COD at 10:05 AM on February 1 [1 favorite]

The Daily What is a pretty good "things to see on the Internet" place, and I think it is run by a MeFite, if I'm not mistaken.
posted by Rock Steady at 10:10 AM on February 1

I enjoy Brain Pickings -- a little book review-heavy, but lots of interesting stories, facts, and leads.
posted by EmilyFlew at 10:37 AM on February 1 [2 favorites]

Generally, I am not impressed by most "link blogs" - to be popular, you can only survive if you get pageviews, which in this day and age means posting a huge amount of content that a small amount of your audience are going to retweet or facebook or similar. This means they tend to post far too many "top lists" and lose their distinctive voice.

Only a few still manage to retain their distinctive quality and voice. Andrew Sullivan for politics I think is one - kottke has been previously mentioned, though in his case he maintains his quality by having grown his audience long ago when the market was not so competitive - and as a single person outfit he can afford to only post a few times a day.

I am more of a fan of less "daily" roundups that take time to see what links actually "stick' during a week and are genuinely interesting.

Om Malik posts a "7 things to read this weekend" series on GigaOm - which is consistently interesting.

For videogames, the critical distance blog produces a weekly roundup of gaming criticism, which is consistently interesting.
posted by Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory at 10:59 AM on February 1

I gave up on all the 'A" list sites, (Except for this one!) When they occasionally write something truly interesting, it's linked and forwarded around so much that it's impossible to not see it.

I'm finding that this is true more and more often, especially with social media. Kottke and others were a great resource back when it was still kind of hard to search and/or share interesting things. They are less useful these days, though I still check Kottke on a daily basis (I don't bother subscribing to the RSS anymore, though, and haven't for years, because probably 90% of what he posts is either uninteresting to me or I've already seen it).

That said, I will nth Kottke and Slashdot.
posted by asnider at 11:11 AM on February 1

I've been reading Arts & Letters Daily since dinosaurs roamed dial-up, and recommend it highly. The links on the left are worth hitting, too.
posted by cyndigo at 11:29 AM on February 1

Things Magazine is one of the best sites around. Loads of interesting links and with a similar tone to MeFi.
posted by blaisedell at 12:46 PM on February 1 [1 favorite]

Not quite the same, but Futility Closet is pretty good stuff.
posted by jferg at 2:29 PM on February 1 [3 favorites]

Please provide links to

the recent posts in the Blue and MeTa about Cory Doctorow

to better understand why you might

wonder if there are any really worthwhile alternatives to BoingBoing
posted by segatakai at 9:46 PM on February 1

Blaisdell! Things never made it into my RSS for whatever reason and they had fallen off my horizon, but they the best!
posted by mwhybark at 11:43 PM on February 1

When I was looking for BoingBoing-alikes, someone suggested Coilhouse. More of a directory of weird things and weird fashion, which is cool, but not many posts these days....

It was Cory himself who posted an article entitled "Overcome information overload by trusting redundancy". An interesting idea that you will eventually see/hear about most things because the worthwhile stuff is all linked-to, blogged, re-tweeted etc, so you don't need to stress about missing things.

My internet life is becoming more askmetafilter-centric
posted by guy72277 at 7:47 AM on February 2

You might try the Tthor mailing list at tthor.com. Once a week rundown of what the must-see stuff was that week. Aimed at techies and developers, only one of which I am.

I also like the Cool Tools blog at kk.org/cooltools, which is all over the map as far as topics go.
posted by kostia at 11:22 PM on February 3