Popularity contests

I read Coyote's Bubbles is a New Way of Recreating Old Problems which expresses so well why I am wary of this kind of thing. Not Bubbles specifically but the general mood. Which is that I try to stay away from anything that feels like a popularity contest. Pretty early on I removed upvotes from my blog. Because I don't need to know that. But I didn't remove 'make discoverable'. My rationale, if there can be said to be one, is that the most recent discovery feed - the only one I look at - is just facts. These are the most recent discoverable posts. Fact. The trending page... is opinion? I understand it's a useful metric for people in choosing what to read. I like that Bear has this baked in. But I'm choosing not to participate in that side of it either as a reader or blogger. Directories versus Bubbles-like aggregators are the same. I've never submitted to any directories, as I didn't submit to Bubbles, but there I am. I like this, though, because it is a fact I have a blog that exists…