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How to stereotype the entire blog communityMay 29th, 2005

Steven writes:

I’ve got a hunch that the blogosphere is getting soft, weak, passive, and timid.

The blogosphere is a commonly-used term meaning the entire collective of blogs, and therefore the people who create them. This statement therefore implies that all bloggers are getting soft, weak, passive and timid.

I totally disagree with you Steven. There is a whole diverse range of differing opinions and ways of blogging out there, and this will only increase as more people get on board.

Maybe in a certain subset or niche of blogging the above could be true, but having observed a large number of blogs, I can’t comprehend the above statement as being true.

Maybe some people just ignore the bad stuff and concentrate on praising people and ideas that they agree with. Others post constructive critique. Yet others go for full-blown personal attacks.

It’s all out there.

Blogs were originally pioneered by outspoken, brazen, hard edged individuals who were also geeks, techies, computer nurds. I mean this with all respect and fondness.

The Early Bloggers were outcasts. They understood HTML. They could build their own web sites, home pages, and blogs. They communicated with each other.

“Normal” people made fun of them.

This sounds as if all bloggers should be technical nerds, outcasts from society, outspoken, hard-edged (rude?) individuals… Dreaming of bygone days does not sit well with pioneering future trends.

Two things:

1. I am probably a computer ‘nerd’ (geek, is a better word, I think) and actually don’t associate myself with this appalling stereotype that continues to be portrayed…

2. I shudder to think of the incestuousness of the blogosphere if it stayed simply with a lot of techno-folk babbling to each other. The blogosphere is opening up and that’s a good thing. I don’t remotely care if a blogger can code in HTML or not?!

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4 Responses to “How to stereotype the entire blog community”

  1. steven streight aka vaspers the grate Says:
    May 29th, 2005 at 4:30 pm

    Good job, Andy. I want people to challenge what I write. I just added a reply to your comment at my blog.

    I’m not saying the blogosphere should be nothing but geeks. I’m saying it started that way, and if you read a good History of Blogs, like by Rebecca Blood for example, you probably come across references to how wild this new frontier was.

    Jorn Barger, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, lots of Early Bloggers and Pioneers were, and still are, aggressively opinionated, stubborn, feisty, cranky, contrarian.

    But now I really do see a lot of avoidance of conflict and controversy. Lots of cliquey behavior, mutual admiration based on nothing. “Mr. X is a great blogger” when I see little value in the dude’s posts.

    I could mention many specific people and events, but I don’t want to start a Blogospheric Civil War. At least not today.

    :^)

    Maybe I need to explain my observations, in general terms, a bit better.

    I really do think I’m onto something here. Go check Hello World to see one instance, under “Malcom Gladwell is Wrong” by rich…!

  2. Andy Says:
    May 29th, 2005 at 4:44 pm

    I can see your argument, I just don’t agree with it. I don’t really understand the ‘Malcolm Gladweel is Wrong’ reference either? Are you saying that the article doesn’t criticise the person enough? Or is about the content of the article itself?

    As we’re into stereotypes, the problem with techno-geek bloggers is that they don’t particularly change anything of real importance. We can argue about Macs and PCs, Microsft vs Apache (Microsoft vs anyone, really), Perl vs PHP, etc. but it doesn’t make much direct difference to what the vast majority of people might consider important.

    Also, modern blog subjects maybe don’t lend themselves to such strong disagreement. Sure, political blogs do (did you include these in your analyiss, ’cause you should) - but I’m not sure how much value there is in, say, Knitting Blog A kicking the crap out of Knitting Blog B because of the colour of the last pattern.

    (I have nothing against blogs about knitting, by the way)

    Pure backslapping commenting for the sake of it (increasing Pagerank) is generally a waste of space (if I like a post particularly but don’t have info to add to the discussion, I’ll email the author if I can)

    Maybe we need a high-profile Blogospheric Civil War. There are mini-ones around, just not on the “A-list” blogs - whoever had the right to decide those.

  3. steven streight aka vaspers the grate Says:
    May 29th, 2005 at 11:22 pm

    I’m saying it’s refreshing to see rich…! rock the boat and express a different opinion about BLINK.

    Most reviews and mentions of the book are ravingly in favor of it, but the idea of Instant Infallible Insight, if this is a fair depiction of the concept advanced in the book, seems weird, occult, superstitious.

    I get bored reading glowing praise of something, it seems unbalanced, like lemmings going over the cliff.

    I had very serious questions about The Passion film by Mel Gibson. Yet I sure got chilly receptions when I questioned the Biblical accuracy of it. But now George Barna says his research shows it had near zero effect on evangelism.

    I don’t mean to grind away into another hot controversy, but see what I’m driving at?

    Universal praise makes me very suspicious that something is not being examined closely enough, and some agenda is behind the conformity.

    I want unity, peace, joy, altruism, compassion to prevail in every realm of life. But sometimes we need to seriously question, ponder, advance alternative viewpoints and see if they can survive honest and intense debate.

  4. Andy Says:
    May 29th, 2005 at 11:32 pm

    Ahh OK I get what you’re saying a little better now.

    I could go off-topic and say that the argument re the Passion is yet another sweeping statement - it’s too easy to say it had zero-effect on evangelism - without asking every single person who’s seen it. I know of several people it had a profound impact on. Personally, I didn’t actually want to see it as I can’t stomach graphic films, reality-based or not.

    But anyway…

    I agree with most of your last comment - I just couldn’t agree with the phraseology of your original post. But anyway, I make sweeping generalisations so I could well be being hypocritical. I just saw it and reacted. A first impression, in fact :)