Amen, 37signals.  It's good to know I'm not the only one annoyed by social bookmarking icons. 

When I first saw these things, I was impressed by all the different sites that do similar things.  I would click on the icons of the sites I hadn't heard of to see if I was interested in using the site.  I suppose I found a few interesting things, but that completely misses the purpose:  To enable readers to submit your site to any of several social bookmarking or rating sites.  Even if I read something that was interesting or noteworthy, I wouldn't submit it to one of these sites.  Why?  I'm a passive user.  I'm not a submitter.  I'm the person everybody hates.  I just sit there and read things and ponder their interestingness.  I never pass anything along.  What can I say?  I'm a jerk. 

So anyway, my main argument against these stupid little icons is that every social bookmarking site produces their own bookmarklet which is easily embedded in every user's browser.  I occasionally use del.icio.us, so I have the bookmarklet that enables me to save things to my del.icio.us account.  Simple as that.  Why would I use somebody's icon that's on their site instead of using my own bookmarklet?  I just don't see the point.