My former RWW colleague Jon Mitchell (@ablaze) revealed Friday that he’s the person behind the tech blog parody Twitter account @nexttechblog.

“So what?” is a perfectly acceptable response here. If you’re not a tech blogger (or journalist or media-watcher of some sort) you probably don’t care about a Twitter account that mocks the kinds of stories we tech bloggers churn out.

I think you should care. I mean, I’ve seen you retweet some of the vacuous crap we write.

We’ve all done it, I suppose: written the crap and/or retweeted it. And the @nexttechblog has spent the last few months calling us tech bloggers to task for it. Our headlines. Our story selection. Our propensity to copy-paste, to bluster on about topics about which we’re grossly uninformed, to serve as our favorite companies’ PR agency, to worship at the altar of Apple.

There’ve been times when I’ve published stories on Hack Education and seen a @nexttechblog tweet a biting critique shortly afterwards; and I’ve wondered, “Oh snap, is he talking about me?” (He hasn’t been. I’ve asked.*) I think — I hope — that like @nexttechblog, I tend to be pretty critical of what passes as “journalism” in the (education) technology industry; I don’t want to perpetuate the bad behaviors: the SEO-driven superficiality, the mindless marketing-speak.

@Nexttechblog can be fairly oblique about his criticisms. His tweets often prompt me to look through the last hour or so of tech blog headlines to find the offending story. And then at other times, his tweets can be absolutely obvious. I mean, at this stage, we all recognize a Mashable or MG Siegler story just by the headline, don’t we?

I’m not sure how other tech bloggers react to being called out by the parody account. Is it embarassing? Does it feel awkward? Most importantly: does it give them pause, make them change their behavior? 

I’m not sure “shaming” ever does much good. And I can’t help but note the irony of the timing here: many tech bloggers, myself included, published our takes this week on whether it’s cool or not that the Internet call out teens for racist tweets on Election Night. Public shaming: thanks to social media accounts, we can all participate now, right?

Mitchell says the purpose of the account isn't to shame people. But rather, "I’m ashamed," he says. "I do it because I want us to make sure we’re doing serious work, and we usually aren’t."

There’s been a lot of speculation this past week or so about the real identity of @nexttechblog. I’m not sure why it matters, although I do understand the curiosity. (I mean, I’m curious who runs the Fake Jeff Jarvis (@profjeffjarvis) account.) But I can’t help but wonder if the manhunt is connected to this cycle of Internet judgment-shaming-punishment-retribution — a cycle that doesn’t ever seem to move us forward.

Or maybe the speculation about @nexttechblog surfaced as we tech bloggers love to gossip about our peers, publications, and co-workers. That’s sure a lot easier than being critically self-reflexive about our own work.

Or maybe this all surfaced on a Friday because that’s the day where there’s often an absence of “news,” and as such it’s hard to make our daily quota of stories.

* I should disclose here that I’ve known the identity of the person behind @nexttechblog for a while now. I think I quit RWW the week that Jon Mitchell started there, but I continue to talk with him a lot about the world of tech blogging. That world could use a helluva lot more criticism, so I hope a thousand @nexttechblog-like accounts flourish. I know I’ve made one…