Confusion about diffussion

The more I prowl the more surprised I am at how little considered this fact is: a mass of links is worthless.

Webrings, Blogrolls, the whole spectrum. What is the point? Incoming links for boosting pagerank? A link on an unranked page adds almost nothing to begin with. Distribute that almost nothing over their ten, or hundred, or thousand outgoing links and it's worth really close to nothing. But it isn't all about pagerank. It's all about readers. If I had a list of a hundered links over there in the sidebar, and I added yours to it would you want it at the bottom, the top, or in the middle? Do you think it would make any difference? Readers see 'the list'. Will they recognize the list changed? Have they tried everything on the list already, so a new thing has to be checked to keep up? I think not. The new link has just as much chance as any other of being picked at random by the very occassional person who exits that way. A slim chance that the very occassional reader will follow your link. Oh boy!

I think I'm beating a dead horse here, but I really want someone to tell me...what is the point?