Because celebrities have every other possible medium in which to broadcast their feelings and opinions, from movies to television, newspapers to magazines. Why would I want to read John Cusack's opinions about why the war in Iraq is bad, when I can go see his terrible movie about it? Either way, I'm almost guaranteed not to laugh. Responding to the brouhaha over her blog, Barr at least makes me chuckle:

i do not know brangelina and do not mean to personally impugn them as they might be good people in the flesh, but the media's images of them are smelly and vile, and I must always attack the media's representation of what is good or cool, because those who inhabit the media world of glamour and entertainment and fashion and gossip are horrid people who have no talent of any kind, and yet think of themselves as tastemakers. taste my sandy buttcrack, tmz, and perez!

See, she hates the "mainstream media," but she's not boring. And after all, Barr's celebrity status was already an anomaly in Hollywood, where aging, overweight women are meant to play the cuddly matriarchs of nuclear families, not leading roles in sitcoms. Barr's Roseanne was a paean to working class America, and while too trite by half these days compared to the hard-hitting social commentary on The Wire, at the time it was unique.

So while for the most part I would suggest celebs go on their merry way to produce regular old Hollywood schlock and leave the blogging to the creative underclass, I heartily welcome Barr into the authentic blogger mold. She even has an RSS feed! Now slap some ads on that site, Roseanne, and start complaining about how little money you can earn from Google with the rest of us. (Photo by Getty/Todd Williamson)

1. Facebook stays independent and private, strikes a meaningful deal that legitimizes its business plan, and buys a startup.
2. Born out of the writers' strike, at least one "Funny or Die" style site gets big buzz and maybe even gets bought, but it fails to produce any videos near the quality of FoD or Super Deluxe.
3. Google releases some limited version of voice search beyond GOOG 411. During the year, the company's stock tops $800.
4. Digg sells to a major media company for at least $200 million, and founder Kevin Rose starts a non-web-based company.
5. YouTube announces it's adding HD video, but the feature doesn't arrive until 2009.
6. Gawker Media, publisher of this site, starts a men's site and a Web show.
7. Yahoo suffers major layoffs, leading the press to dub it the next AOL.
8. Yet AOL is spun off and reframes itself. At the end of 2008, the company's future is still uncertain.
9. Apple releases a second-generation iPhone, and at least one New York Times article tries to draw a "middle class/rich" line between those who upgrade and those who stick with the first generation.
10. A new videoblogger emerges as the go-to example for slick independent daily vlogging, following Amanda Congdon and Ze Frank.
11. Tumblr, the pared down blogging service, enjoys the popularity that 2007 brought Twitter.
12. Twitter remains independent and spins off a new service.
13. The Internet again fails to drive one presidential candidate to success. So does Chuck Norris.
14. Jason Calacanis, still running his online directory Mahalo, starts another project.
15. A new meme started in a geeky part of the web infiltrates the "normal" population even more deeply than LOLcats.
16. Yet another e-book reader comes out and no one cares.
17. Blog search engine Technorati collapses after failing to get enough funding to stay afloat.
18. The Wall Street Journal announces it will soon be free online.
19. Blog platform maker Six Apart, having spun off LiveJournal and rearranged its exec staff, gets bought.
20. Dell screws up the good will it won in 2007 with another customer-service or bad-parts scandal.
21. Net Neutrality takes another hit from a telco-friendly Congressional bill.
22. Second Life plods along.
23. The TechCrunch blog network lands a regular TV appearance, if not a show.
24. The country tires of the last round of famous-for-being-famous celebs, and gossip blogger Perez Hilton's TV show gets cancelled.
25. A minor medical incident renews the "can Apple survive without Steve Jobs" argument.

• Perez posts the Liza Minelli video on his normal YouTube account.
• YouTube removes the video after a copyright holder complains. YouTube suspends his account.
• Perez posts a different video under a new account protesting YouTube's deletion of Liza and his account:

  I'm going to try not to get angry, or upset or raise my voice because thankfully I've already done enough of that without the camera rolling. My YouTube account was suspended. I've emailed YouTube, but I've yet to hear from any person there. I've just got an automated email from them.

  Apparently, the Liza Minnelli video that I posted on Monday was in violation of someone's copyright which is really confusing to me because the person who took the Liza Minnelli is a reader of my website gave me permission to use the clip and I still have mutliple emails from that person sending me the video and giving me permission to use it.

  The only thing I can think of is someone at Liza Minnelli's record company was upset that this video showing her being drunk or on drugs allegedly is out there and they wanted to get it removed from YouTube. Well, as a result my account was suspended.

• His protest video gets removed along with his second YouTube account.
• 
  
• Hilton writes bitchy post complaining about YouTube and censorship.

This is not the video that got Perez banned, but it is footage from the same event, found on YouTube.

Ughhh. We have always been the biggest YouTube supporter and fan. We're heartbroken by their mismanagement of this whole situation ... Note to anyone creating videos and using video networking sites: don't keep all your eggs in one basket! You may get burned!

Hilton did not mention what caused his suspension, aside from the critical video. YouTube did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but then again, when do they?

More: The fatal misstep that got Perez Hilton banned

The Onion
When it was worth reading: In the 90s, when it was fresh and fake news hadn't yet been properly done. Articles started with an ironic lede and developed into a larger farce, like the 1997 story "Supreme Court Overturns Car," which depicted the Court as a wild frat. Just three years ago, the Onion still successfully mined the mundanities of modern life: Wikipedia sticklers, cops suspecting terrorists and teens, fat women¹, and Christian rock bands.
Why you must stop: The Onion is like Dane Cook: where are the jokes?² The schtick — ironic headline, similarly ironic lede, endless reiteration of lede — is tiresome. "Not So Horrible Thing Happens In Iraq" might have been funny four years ago. This parody of unfunny humor columnists feels witty until you realize you could write its series of non-jokes yourself.
Maybe the Onion didn't even change — it just looks worse against all the new competition. Politics is better satirized by the Daily Show franchise, celebrities better mocked by bloggers, mundanity better picked apart by more bloggers.³ All that's left for the Onion is the same observational humor that normal people make. Instead of telling a friend, "Hey, isn't that Wes Anderson movie just like all his others? Heh, and he always puts the Kinks in the soundtrack," you can send a friend the Onion article that says just that. Ha! Ha! This article is funny because it's true!⁴
What it's still good for: Mocking other lame publications, as in "Pitchfork Media gives music 6.8." And the AV Club is still neat.
Replace with: NPR puts its weekly news quiz, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me! online. It's not as hip, but that's why it has room to be funny. By the way, they had Colbert on this week.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency
When it was worth reading: About four years ago.
Why you must stop: Just like the Onion, McSweeney's has fallen into an endless schtick. Everything is either "A thing as if it were done by my family/co-workers/friends" or "I am an expert at normal life" or "Overextended metaphor"⁵ or "Basically an Onion column "Mundane thing done wacky!"
What it's still good for: Outsourcing your own jokes. The last funny article on this site was "Thomas Kincade's Experimental Period."
Replace with: Old Garrison Keillor collections. Try "Happy to Be Here" or "We Are Still Married." For fresh funny, read the humor section of The Morning News, or get over your wry self and read some balls-out humor at Corporate Casual.⁶

CNN.com
When it was worth reading: When the only other option was TV
Why you must stop: It's not news, it's fark: sensationalist stories that don't constitute world-changing news. The site's headlines, often with invitations to "watch this," have long been fodder for Gawker. The front page looks like an "oddly enough" section. So either take that to its logical conclusion and read full-on trash, or switch to a real news site.
What it's still good for: I dunno, knowing what other CNN readers are talking about?
Replace with: MSNBC for better (not perfect) mainstream headlines; Drudge for a quick screamy snapshot of the day's stories, and Fark for stupid news.

Perez Hilton
When it was worth reading
Why you must stop: It's vile, unimaginative pulp by a man who is friends with Paris Hilton. Perez's taste in celebrities is only outshittied by his writing style. Maybe everything that sucks has some connection to Dane Cook, because Perez's weak neologisms⁷ could have been coined by the inventor of the "SuFi."⁸
What it's still good for
Replace with: The Superficial has decent writing, Pink is the New Blog has better photo vandalism.

Boing Boing
When it was worth reading: When one blog could catalogue all the wacky things on the Internet.
Why you must stop: The net's too big now, and Boing Boing misses plenty. That's fine, it's not their job to make sure no one sees something funny and weird before you do. But the best stuff shows up in a million other blogs anyway, so Boing Boing is no longer a must-read.
What it's still good for: Boing Boing TV (a new series) has original . Xeni Jardin⁹ interviews people like the director of the Simpsons movie and Bill Gates's Microsoft co-founder.
Replace with: Tumblr blogs, which have all the junk-drawer appeal with none of the context or commentary. Try Tumbl.us, Scribbling.net, and A Garden of Varied Delights. If you want something higher-class, savor the baroque feel of Kottke and Fimoculous.

¹Whatever the Dove campaign says, fat women will always be fun to laugh at.
²Or like Steve Wright's unfunny cousin. Or like New Yorker cartoons in which, says Gawker, "the rate of humor is the exact same as naturally occurring humor in the world."
³And "The Office."
⁴Before I realized how desperately unfunny it would be, I originally wanted to write a parody article called "Onion makes observation about modern middle-class life, stretches premise out to 1000 mildly amusing words."
⁵See also: 1, 2, 3. I thought about just listing McSweeney's headlines and hoping you'd get the picture, because that seems to be the style McSweeney's readers respond to.
⁶Disclosure: The writer of "Corporate Casual" sometimes writes for the same publisher as mine. This isn't even really a disclosure, I just want him to notice me and maybe Facebook message me, like, "thanks doug for the plug."
⁷"Fauxmance." Okay, not even his word.
⁸It's the finger, but with the ring finger extended too. It's a "super finger." He named a company after it.
⁹Fun Fact: If Hillary Clinton is Data from Star Trek¹⁰, Xeni Jardin is that sexy Cylon from Battlestar Galactica.
¹⁰Or Johnny Five from "Short Circuit"

Nick Douglas writes at Valleywag and Too Much Nick. Those things you like? He is over them. But he listens to Billy Joel, so you're still ahead.

I, (your name or handle here, unless it contains a year other than your birth year, the word "sux," or the number 69 — in these cases you're not yet ready for the pledge), pledge that:

I will never comment on a blog saying "Why do we care?" because if I don't care, I can go away from the blog. Instead I will sit back and have a good five-minute think about my life.

I will not sign up to Twitter or a blog just to write "I am getting my hair done" or other inanities. Every message I write will be entertaining and/or informative; e.g. "Getting a beehive hairdo so I won't fit under the parking garage clearance pole" or "I am on fire, please assist me." (Note: The latter is appropriate only if my hair is, in reality, on fire.)

I will not consider meeting people off the Internet "creepy," because look at me, I'm normal and I answered the Craigslist ad and here I am in the front of the bar alone, looking over my shoulder like a criminal, waiting for my Craigslist date.

I will only add up to one application per month on Facebook. This application will not be a zombie maker, werewolf maker, "top friends" maker, or anything that serves no purpose and is not, again, entertaining and/or informative.

I will hand my Yelp posts to a friend who works in writing or editing, and I will ask them to rip it to shreds, because I am not an awesome writer but in fact a terrible breezy writer. If I am a regular contributor to McSweeney's Internet Tendency, I will now stop writing ANYTHING on the Internet and will now back away from the keyboard.

I will trick people into seeing Goatse, because that is funny and will never not be funny.

I will not comment on YouTube.

I will not add a signature to my forum posts that is more than half the length of my average post. I will definitely not put ASCII art in my signature, because I recognize that 1993 is over and the Internet has pictures.

After one year of commenting on other people's work without producing any of my own, I will produce some work and allow others to comment on it. I am allowed to then lash out at my commenters, but I acknowledge that that polemic will become my only well-known work.

My new blog's title and tagline will not contain these words: random, musings, "just some thoughts," "my crazy/demented/unique brain", or by Perez Hilton.

I will not invite a "friend" on Facebook if I've never actually communicated with them, even if "we share like 15 friends so I guess it's time we connect." Instead I will wait until I meet these people socially, or get my friends to set us up on a blind date because let's admit it, that's all I really want.

I will never leave a comment expressing adulation or criticism in three or fewer words, unless I am doing so in an altogether unique way. "FAIL" is not a unique way. Neither is "LOLzers."

Photo by Getty Images. Nick Douglas writes at Valleywag and Too Much Nick. He pledges to the above, except for the bit about "LOLzers."

Reuters headlined Sina's claim that Xu had garnered 100 million pageviews in 600 days. But that doesn't sound at all impressive once you do some basic math — a challenge for reporters, I know. Once you figure out that that translates to 166,000 pageviews a day, it's hard to believe she's the world's most-read blogger. Even now, as her traffic has picked up, she's only doing 250,000 pageviews a day. Xu may well be, thanks to the support of her countrymen, the most-linked blogger, according to Technorati. But links aren't pageviews.

Here's an easy comparison: Perez Hilton, the gossip blogger, may inflate his numbers, but by even the most conservative measures, he gets 33 million pageviews a month, or more than a million a day. That's four times the traffic of the "most-read blogger in the world."