Though it happens extremely quickly, each time the blogger examines his blogroll they are faced with a range of decisions. Is this a blog I have to read everyday to keep up with? Is the blogger likely to have written a post that I can use today? What if they have a good post that I want to read later? Not even my favorite bloggers could make it past such an intensive decision process every single day.

Another useful--though largely unrecognized--benefit of using a RSS reader is that it reduces distractions and extraneous context. By trying to express their individuality through their blog's design, bloggers tend to get in the way of their own content.

To see what I mean, look at the dress code of the modern teenager. One of the biggest challenges I faced on recruiting duty was explaining to teenagers what I call the paradox of uniformity. They believed that expressing themselves by how they wore their clothes, hair, makeup, or jewelry helped them to stand out from the crowd. Instead, it merely provided signals about their chosen subgroups.

Whether the signals provided clues about class (rich kids wear expensive clothes), sub-culture (skaters sporting funky haircuts), or interests (a t-shirt of their favorite band), they provided a useful means for the teens to pigeonhole themselves into their chosen stereotypes. (The extremes of nonconformity often lead to the most extreme conformity. Have you ever seen a "Goth" that didn't look like every other Goth since the 1980s?)

Paradoxically, forced standards of conformity (such as wearing a military uniform) cause people to send and receive signals about personality in ways other than dress. The individual personality traits of people in the military tend to stand out more for their colleagues because they are not camouflaged by the normal civilian clothing signals.

The same is true for the "dressing" that accompanies blog post. Take, for example, my friend Mark Olson (hopefully he won't mind me picking on him). While his blog's layout is clean and uncluttered, the purple and green color scheme is hideous. There is also a photo of Mark in spandex and a bike helmet and the subtitle, "Christianity, Cycling, and Current Events from Right of Center."

If I were to rely solely on contextual clues, I'd get the impression that the blog was mostly about cycling. Yet I've been reading Mark's writings for years and can't recall a single post that mentioned a bike. Instead, I read his work because he is a first-class intellect who grapples with serious theological and philosophical topics. By filtering his posts through my RSS reader I get distraction-free content. I can focus on the contents of Mark's big brain rather than on the color of his bike helmet.

This is not to say that blog design and individual style are unimportant. Aesthetics certainly has an essential place in blogging. I do believe, though, that when it comes to blogs, bad design is far more harmful than good design is helpful. Ultimately, though, content is king; which is why the RSS reader is supplanting the blogroll as a blog's throne room