The Meme That Ate the Blawgosphere

First, let me provide a definition for "meme." I can't think of a more appropriate site (for an Internet meme) than the Glossary of Paper Chain Letters, which provides the following:

"As defined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976): 'a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation.' 'Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.' In this sense, chain letter components are memes."

You can see a typical chain letter-like reaction in Robert Ambrogi's recent post about having been tagged by the Blawg Review's Simply the Best meme. He says,

"I truly hate these things. The anonymous editor of Blawg Review (who I don't hate) has started a meme he calls Simply the Best. He's tagged his top 10 law blogs; each of them, in turn, is supposed to tag theirs, and so on, until we end up with one great big group hug. I've now been tagged..."

Despite his feelings, he did go ahead and list his top 10. It's easy to relate to his reaction and to his decision to go ahead and create a list.

And now I find myself in a similar situation. Scott Vine of Information Overlord kindly tagged me in his list. However, he changed it from a top 10 (Simply the Best) list to a "who do I read that I think may have been overlooked by those that I read that have been meme'd ??" I think you could have used a few more question marks there Scott. Scott goes on to say,

"Abbie Mulvihill is a wonderful source of information, and was a blogger I missed when she stopped blogging for some time. Is her blog a 'blawg' or not? Open to interpretation I guess, but for the purpose of this list, it is a yes."

Very nice words, but for some reason, I stalled out on "Is her blog a 'blawg'...."

Gasp. I had never considered that AbsTracked might not actually classify as a blawg. This comment caused me to (as a good friend of mine often says) clutch my imaginary pearls. If not a blawg, than what? A blig?!

I had to find out. So, I contacted the woman credited with coining the term "blawg." I am referring to attorney/blogger (blawgger) Denise Howell of Bag and Baggage (and lots of other great stuff). I asked Denise if she had a definition for her term. She kindly provided one for me. Denise says a blawg is a:

"Law related blog, or blog by someone in the legal profession that is not necessarily or 100% law related."

"Law-related blog." AbsTracked is a blawg. It says so right on my header, "links will generally be related to the topics of law...." Sigh of relief. Thank you Denise.

Oh, and as for my list...well, this post is long enough. So, I'll dedicate my next post to my top 10 list...or maybe it should be lawst....