I was, this morning in the shower, thinking about trackbacks and how my theory is they were a product of the obsessive-compulsive micro-managing personality of Mena, who once, years ago, mailed me when I linked her blog, asking me to change the text in the link to the correct name of her blog, I suppose for the search engine mojo or whatever, and how otherwise it would probably have taken a long time for anyone else to come up with the idea of trackbacks. And I was wondering, as I often had, what the hell the appeal of trackbacks ever was, since you could always see who was linking you from your traffic stats unless the link wasn’t sending any traffic your way and if it wasn’t who cares? And I guess, a trackback would be so other people could see who was linking you, and who cares if they do? Some people, I suppose. So for them, trackbacks might have been a good thing. I was never too crazy about them, because all mine did was show, on practiclly every post, how no one was linking that post. And I was also thinking how trackbacks are now dead, basically, due to trackback spammers, thanks a lot guys. And I was thinking how it would be ironic, or not ironic, but, well, funny, if Horst’s post on this topic, which I had just read, shortly before thinking all this stuff, got lots of trackbacks.