I am SO IMPORTANT.

I am, as many of you know, a Jew. Don’t act so sympathetic – there are worse fates, which I’m coming to. I am also a blogger (one of the English language’s uglier nouns), a status I attribute to a certain faculty with words, an ability to make people laugh, and extremely liberal usage of the word fuck, which as anyone from Lenny Bruce to Quentin Tarantino can tell you is the road to comedy El Dorado. So I am a Jew and a blogger. Some would call me a J-blogger, which is among the aforementioned worse fates.

You see, despite being a Jewish blogger for one of the Internet’s most popular Jewish blogs, I have this strange affliction: I don’t find myself, or my fellow Jewlicious bloggers (as much as I love them), or this website, or the entire wide world of Jewish blogging itself, at all significant. What am I? Some guy with no qualifications talking about things I find personally interesting – although, as is quickly becoming the theme of this post, it could be worse. I could be somebody with no qualifications other than giving birth devoting an entire blog to the every skinned knee, vomitus and naive utterance of my oh-so-precious Jewish offspring, which is an alarming trend in the…ugh…J-Blogosphere. (It could be worse still – I could be one of those people who read blogs like that.)

But my conviction that being a Jewish blogger is about as fundamentally significant as my appendix apparently puts me in the minority. Because a group of Jewish bloggers have created a Jewish blog…devoted to the Jewish blogosphere. I keep getting that feeling like when you’re watching TV and the characters on TV are watching TV – you know, the feeling that makes you conscious of every passing irreplaceable second of your short life being pissed away. Or, to phrase it differently for you Holy Yidden out there, this is the blogging equivalent of Tosafot – commentary on commentary on commentary on the original. Except most Jewish bloggers aren’t nearly as inscrutable as the Talmud, rendering a blog commenting on the Jewish blogosphere about as vital as a third nipple.

But that didn’t stop our intrepid bloggers, who were wrapped up enough in the shining mantle of J-bloggery to deem it worthy of a (somewhat poorly written) Wikipedia entry. I would comment on the Wikipedia entry, but somebody already did, within the entry itself: “Many of the above refences including this entry were initiated by relative latecomers to the sphere, ‘newbies’ who are their own self made audience concentrating on petty social clotch with a less than intellectual outlook from the original j-blogosphere.” Note for you wounded conspiracy theorists: I didn’t write this. I have no idea what a clotch is.

Anyway, the J-Blogosphere Blog (it hurts me to type it) so far discusses such pressing and worthy issues as the real life repercussions of the Jewlicious/Jewschool rivalry (trust me, they mostly involve Mobius and me burning spliffs and watching Samurai Jack), the effect of events like Jewlicious @ the Beach (essentially a bunch of twenty-something Jews feeling REALLY SUPER COOL about BEING JEWISH), and of course “the T-shirt controversy on Jewlicious that raised the blog issue of what type of self-expression is appropriate for Jewish blogs.” I have no fucking idea what T-shirt controversy they’re talking about, and I write for Jewlicious. Maybe they mean Christ Killer? Anyway, what kind of blather is “what type of self-expression is appropriate for Jewish blogs”? What the fuck? Do we have a Va’ad Bloganut now? An overseeing committee to make sure self-expression on Jewish blogs (isn’t ALL blogging self-expression?) remains “appropriate”? What’s next, hechshers? Am I going to have the Badatz come knocking on my door to ensure that everything I write contains no dangerously inappropriate self-expression before Jewlicious gets a stamp? If Badatz says no, are we good enough for the CRC, or does the Grandmuffti’s flagrant atheism mean we’ll have to settle for a Star K? Are we going to have rabbis trotting around with self-loving lists of must-read Jewish blogs? Are we going to become even more self-important and transform from bloggers to journalists? Should we maybe ask the Arabs what their feelings on the matter are?

People. People. Calm down. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s be realistic. The only people who read Jewish blogs are Jewish bloggers and anti-Semites. This in essence means that the J-Blogosphere, and any attempt to invest importance in it, is an enormous circle jerk, with people who hate you circling around and spitting on you – and frankly, that’s very weird. Any Jewish J-blog reader who isn’t already a blogger him or herself will become one in a matter of days, because if there’s anything the blogosphere has taught as all, it is that you could be the most boring person in the world and still have 500 loyal readers who say “THAT’S SO TRUUUUUUE” to everything you write. (These loyal readers, of course, will also in turn become bloggers). Folks, this is a vicious cycle. If people continue to encourage its development with self-congratulatory accolades to all that is J-bloggery, it will spiral entirely out of control, and the Jewish people will be destroyed by the sheer force of 7 million Jewish mothers with identical blogs subjecting the world to OH-SO-CUTE posts about the color and consistency of their little Moishele’s post-nasal drip. Stop it.

Just repeat this mantra to yourself: “I am not a significant person. My opinions are not significant. The fact that 50 people who share my opinions comment on my site everyday is not significant. I will refrain from investing cosmic import into the musings of my online buddies, and I will remind myself that probably 95% of Jewish people have no idea what a blog is, nor do they care. All Jewish blogs are is Jewish people expressing opinions, which I can see everyday at my local synagogue, which often, by the way, has a buffet, unlike my blog.”

And if you’re one of those sensitive little bloggers and you’re about to write an indignant response about how wrong I am to dismiss the gravity of the Jewish Blogosphere, remember, just as it is with you, I am not a significant person. My opinions are not significant. Like you, I’m just some schmuck with a computer. So go outside for a change, and wipe up Moishele’s post-nasal drip, because God knows nobody wants to hear about it.