Since the dawn of PR our profession has a proud history of using lists.
We have Top Ten lists, Bottom Ten lists, in fact we have PR lists covering practically every facet of human existence.
So in the spirit of "those who live by the sword…" it’s probably no surprise that those same lists are coming back to haunt us.
Over the past week I’ve identified three categories of such lists…
1) The "I don’t want to be on that list" list
Wired Editor-in-Chief and well known author Chris Anderson has clambered onto his high horse (I imagine it would have to be a high horse as I’m sure it has a LONG tail… sigh… sorry I couldn’t resist) and published a list of PR e-mail addresses that he is blacklisting from his Inbox.
Now that’s probably a list you don’t want to be on.
However, before anyone climbs aboard their own pony I should point out the Greenhouse rule of blogging.
As Todd Defren manfully (should that person-fully?) pointed out recently, the moral high ground can often become a windy, lonely place.
Instead, a whispered "tut-tut" followed by a quiet "there but for the grace of jebus" is often the best response to such incidents.
2) The "I want to be on that list but it ain’t going to happen" list
There’s loads of candidates here obviously.
Many have words like "fastest", "millionaire", "guru", and "beautiful".
However I’m taking a simpler example such as Todd Andrlik’s Power 150.
Although I’d never admit it publicly (this is just between us OK?) and while I try to discourage it, I have a penchant for "vanity surfing" a couple of times a year.
You know what I’m talking about.
Every time I check the Power 150 list I’m falling further back (currently descending past #175).
By the way, this is a good validation of the list because I’ve been running this blog on fumes for a while now and the bloggers putting in the time and effort are climbing up while I slip and slip.
I just hope we move to the "Power 550" as soon as possible.
3) The "Who cares?" list
Finally we come to the list that no one should care about.
Here I am talking about the anonymous (and gutless?) malefemale PR blogger who "retired" recently after grinding more axes than a Canadian lumberjack, without adding one byte of value to the PR community.
"It" recently came out of retirement (after nearly a full week with its hooves up)to insult a range of PR bloggers whose only crime was to have expressed their opinions (without hiding their identities).
Many of these bloggers I know and respect, in any case we should shun cowardice on this scale – no link love from here.
We’ll miss "it" not…
Note: I’m not referring to "The World’s Leading" by the way, which actually does make me laugh from time to time and tars everyone with the same brush in an even handed manner… well kind of.
Update: I see The World’s Leading is hanging up it’s HTML editor as well…
Murphy's Law 