There’s always something to howl about.

Who is the most influential real estate weblogger in the RE.net? Beyond all contest or doubt, it’s Dustin Luther

This is me in a comment at Todd Carpenter’s REMBEX Blog Fiesta:

Not to be too contrarian, but this is all Old Testament. None of these people meant anything to me when I was building BloodhoundBlog. If influence means creating the RE.net as we know it, Dustin Luther is the New Testament. He’s not a category killer, but the phenomenon Inman is trying to surf has Dustin as its without-whom-not. I may post on this, because it’s a point we ought not lose in the hoopla. I know Dustin would credit Levin and others, but the fact is that Dustin more than anyone else invented this thing we do.

I hadn’t intended to write anything about this silly Top 25 list, other than to make fun of it in comments to Russell’s post, but I didn’t want to let the moment pass without drawing attention to Dustin’s amazing achievement.

Todd was writing about the people who pioneered the idea of real estate weblogging, and I certainly don’t want to take anything away from them. But the real estate weblogs that dominate the conversation now owe their origin either directly or by — perhaps unknowing — concatenation to the work that Dustin Luther did in building Rain City Guide. BloodhoundBlog, as I disclosed very early on, is a virtual blogchild of RGC, a maculate reconceptualization of ideas Dustin invented or himself reconceived — not from the nascent RE.net but from the weblogging world at large.

Inman’s list means nothing to me. I don’t want to be categorized in any way with exponents of evil, which Keith Brand surely is. The idea of being influential is important to me, but there are but few human behaviors upon which I would seek influence, with all the rest being so much noise. What Inman is celebrating is not influence but popularity — or perhaps simply the celebrity of having been written up in the past by Inman. It’s all one to me in any case. The entire universe I would conquer can be encapsulated by a baseball cap. Lend me your mind, and the rest of the world comes of its own.

But the point for now is simply this: Who taught me how to play baseball this way? Who taught us all how to do this thing we do? Dustin Luther, none other, before-whom-nobody. If we’re going to tip our caps, almost all of us should be tipping them his way first.

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