Stop bitching. Make it better...
The main problem I have with the weblog-related positions of professional writers like Bill Thompson and professional trolls like Andrew Orlowski is that we've had all these debates so many times before. Debate around A-list cliques has existed for years - as have comments that weblogs are ultimately trivial. It was over three years ago now that A List Apart published Fame Fatale - and that wasn't the first article along those lines. Some of the pieces had more justification than others. Some had little or no justification at all. Mostly, in time, people just changed their minds. We've walked around these particular avenues and alleyways several times now, each time accompanied by a new group of people who consider themselves slightly higher up the food chain.
It would be different if they accomplished anything. If Orlowski was working to improve weblog culture or pull it in a positive direction, then there would be value in that. If Bill's work was trying to rectify inappropriate imbalances in the social system that has emerged, then we might actually be getting somewhere. I don't think there's a single weblogger who thinks that there's absolutely no scope for improvement. But instead what happens is that legitimate concerns get pushed aside by florid rhetoric and high dudgeon, debate gets polarised, until eventually everyone gets bored and weblogging continues pretty much as it did before. Only this time with permalinks! Or comments! Or automated blog-rolling!
And the steady take-up of weblogging seems undeterred by these debates. People still continue to start weblogs faster than people stop writing them - there are now (by conservative estimates) hundreds of thousands of regularly updated sites. And with AOL and Microsoft rumoured to be getting in on the act, along with new ventures by Blogger, Movable Type, 20six (etc.) it looks like there's going to be a hell of a lot more weblogs started in the next few years.
I think it's now time that people started to face this fact. That whether or not they like it (whether or not any of us like it), weblogging is not something that's going away in the next couple of years. Having an 'anti-weblogging position' is no longer even vaguely a 'real-world antidote' to unfathomable and unwarranted 'weblog hysteria'. It's just really unhelpful. It doesn't accomplish anything. So you want my advice? Work to make it better or sod off. If you think there's really a legitimate problem in the way that weblogs operate between each other then try and suggest a solution, try and suggest some things that are likely to be taken up and worked with by the extended community. Or think of something better than weblogs! That's got to be a more creative, positive and useful way of interacting with the world than sitting on the sidelines and bitching... Surely?
This piece was grumpily forged in the comments of the iSociety's weblog.
Comments
Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.
I have no idea about the history of the blog critics, reading between the lines, Orlowski's comments show a wit, sarcasm and intellect which deserves more than being assigned as a troll. I believe he's not anti-blog. He actually praises them. His last article about weblogs says as alot about a level of quality and navel-gazing in blogdom. It's not so far fetched to think he's fullfilling the role you ask for, except he has no blog, just a column which has no trackbacks, comments and further interaction, unless you email him of course.
As for Thompson's comments, what was so bad about his criticism on the 'social software' discussion? In my mind, he's adding a few pointers and praises the level of writing from those involved.
Surely the level of criticism for a phenomena is indicative that it has some meaning and 'possible' influence, and some people would like to add their tuppence in that direction. Take the criticism as a compliment.
→ Posted by: Gummi at June 3, 2003 6:30 PM
Well said !
→ Posted by: Andy at June 3, 2003 6:43 PM
Hear hear! I chatted briefly about this post here. And you do bring up some very good points. For every creative, interesting use of weblogging there is always some bumjuggler out there ready to mindlessly criticise. And that's where the Orlowski's and Bill Thompson's come in.
→ Posted by: Tom Morris at June 3, 2003 6:45 PM
I'm amazed you bothered to respond to this.
I stopped reading the drivel Bill spouts a long time ago, until people started referencing his nonsense on their weblogs - usually in anger to whatever tripe he was bashing out.
When he last took an ill-informed swipe at weblogs and social software, I posted a rant in response, but I wished I hadn't bothered.
I only noticed this article when I checked Jason Kottke's site out the other day, and I didn't even read the whole thing.
Best not to.
→ Posted by: Martin at June 4, 2003 12:47 AM
Orlowski's comments show a wit, sarcasm and intellect which deserves more than being assigned as a troll. I notice you don't include faithfulness to reality on that list. More than troll, perhaps - less than journalist certainly.
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at June 4, 2003 1:22 AM
I think the view that there is a lot of self-satisfied back-scratching in the blogging community is not unfounded. I think another well-founded view is that some people spend altogether too much time talking about blogging itself rather than blogging something original (present company excepted, Tom -- most of the time you talk about interesting things only peripherally related to blogging). I think the distinction between "journalist" and "blogger" is the same as between "professional" and "amateur" in sports -- i.e., the only difference is that some get paid. I think some people -- and this includes you now, Tom -- lack perspective on what blogging is, and how significant it is. Blogging is journalism with comments. It's not a world-shaping new social movement, it's not even a particularly new or exciting application of technology.
Blogging is just the natural progression of personal web pages from "pictures of my cat" to more interesting content, and as the number of mature/experienced web authors has risen, so has the number of interesting personal sites. That's good, but it's not earthshaking. And yes, blogs have comments, and yes they link to each other and they backtrack and pingback and permalink, but that's nothing more than back-scratching, nothing special.
I blog all the time, and I'm proud of what I'm written, but I'm proud of it because of what I've written, not because I wrote it into a blog.
→ Posted by: Seldo at June 4, 2003 2:05 AM
"I think the distinction between "journalist" and "blogger" is the same as between "professional" and "amateur" in sports"
And the other distinction is who enjoys it more? Bloggers do it for fun, journalists do it for money. The 'job' aspect of it probably diminishes their enjoyment of it, while the ability to post what you want, when you want and without the hindrances of publishing deadlines and screaming editors, or a need to stick to house style or political alignment (especially in the US... eg. Fox News) probably makes blogging a welcome relief. It's media, on the writers terms (no sticking to rules) - and thanks to the wide variety of choice, and the usefulness of RSS readers, to the convenience of the reader.
→ Posted by: Tom Morris at June 4, 2003 2:46 AM
Seldo - I think you're wrong about a few things. Firstly, everyone knows weblogging software isn't technically difficult. Secondly, weblogging is not the same as journalism - there are a variety of criteria that differentiate us from them. One of them is that they have access to all the resources of journalism and the other is that the individual is subordinate to the power of the brand and all that implies - fact-checking, the ability to fire people who don't write compelling, accurate or newsworthy copy. These are important mechanisms for newsgathering that individual weblogs lack. There are types of journalism that correspond more obviously with weblogging - the newspaper column, the opinion editorial and occasionally the written feature - but we should be careful in our comparisons. Weblogging may correspond to types of journalism - it may even be a form of new journalism (there may be different mechanisms at work) - but it is IN NO WAY that they map onto one another directly. Now as to the importance of weblogging - well we're not really in a position to tell yet. When I started there were a few hundred webloggers. Most. Now there are half a million. In four years. And not only are there half a million of them, they are aggregatable, there are connections between them. They may seem trivial to you, but think of it this way - if you could poll half a million people world wide each day as to what they thought the most important issue of the day was, wouldn't that be useful? Certainly there is potential here for something profoundly useful, even if not profoundly important. We'll see in time...
→ Posted by: Tom Coates at June 4, 2003 10:43 AM
i'd compare the importance of blogs with the equal importance of reality tv. we are living through the most insidiously conformist of times right now. an age of off-the-peg lifestyles and information that tends to eclipse the chances for home grown 'individuality' to take root. trendy and fashionable are the new conservatism. this, combined with the thoughts and actions of the past 100 years, creates a deep need to be able to access and view each other right down to a nose-picking level. we need to know about diverse human realities. secondly the professional /waged mass media tends to be populated by a singularly middle-class social agenda. its arguable that 'cyber celebrities' also tend to be middle-class, having the financial good fortune to be able to be technological pioneers. but generally mediums such as blogs and reality tv are capable of disseminating non-middle class conversations and perspectives.
→ Posted by: russell higgs at June 4, 2003 1:06 PM