As i meet more and more of the uber-bloggers, i continue to get more horrified as they play out their catty games in a public forum. It’s one thing to critique a product, an idea, someone’s politics and philosophies. It’s another thing to pull up private matters into a public forum or to mock people’s struggles to overcome their own self-defeating habits. What’s worse is that i watch bloggers write this material to elevate their own position in the eyes of the person they are mocking. So counterproductive and insulting.
I’ve been trying to tease apart the difference between LJ folks and the uber bloggers (particularly those who blog about people, not simply ideas/links). At first, i thought it had to do with content, but the more i think about it, the more i think it has to do with audience. At this point, i expect journalers to talk about their STDs, their cheating, their love life and all other made-for-Jerry-Springer content. But i expected public bloggers who make a name out of blogging to be a bit more sophisticated. Unfortunately, their content is often just as catty, only its self-importance tries to make it seem otherwise. The bloggers want the whole world to see their opinion of other bloggers… so that the hierarchy is created publicly. Thus, rather than just creating personal content for friends, the bloggers are going for others’ public throats.
Erg. I’m a bit too cranky from reading my RSS feed this morning. Of course, here i am, feeding into the flurry by talking about what i observed in a meta-fashion. I just don’t feel right directly pointing at people. But seriously, if you read this and you write about other people, think about it for a moment. Get out of the “this is truth” mentality and really question how others might read what you just said. Is it really necessary to lambast people’s personal shit on a blog meant for the world to see? It makes me cringe and it’s not even about me!
Catty Games
We all have our problems, but just because we choose to make some of them public doesn’t make those that don’t superior. Bullies only think they have the respect of others – more often they’re seen as pathetic.
Zephoria, it’s all about “publicy” that I describe here. Publicy is the reversal (in Marshall McLuhan Laws of Media terms) of privacy, the reversal occurring because of the extreme acceleration of instantaneous, multi-way communications. It’s only natural that it is happening, as we “outer” our inner minds and private selves.
And if that doesn’t worry you, try this one on for size: Our leavings online are both ephemeral and always present, as there is neither place nor time on the ‘net, and we are discarnate members of the electric crowd. Welcome to the ground effects of the Global Village.
I see the difference betwixt Bloggers and Livejournal, and Diaryland as such.
Bloggers believe they own their world view, and given that many bloggers are not always famous or come with a plug and play entourage, they have to fight for their hold on thier bit o’ turf. And the network must be built instead of offered (like D-land or LJ) they are stuck in semi private space, that feels private, like a booth at a restaurant. So if you want to make someone feel bad about a bad choice, you take them to a restauarnt and speek in private words in the semi public space… which somehow caps the level of discivility of response, without capping yours. However this becomes a bigger problem when we are all communicating from our own booths… yelling across the fine dining establishement.
Livejournal is more networky, You KNOW that people you know will find you, and comment, and that your thoughts are not safe, so you watch it. So This is like a fancy dress dinner party… where you mill and make lil comments, snippy ones to the communities/groups of strangers, and friendly ones to the personal entries. But it is set up to be shielded. LJers give a minimal amount of personal info (or present it in a LJ friendly code language) so there is a shield, that I do not see present in the bloggers.
Diaryland can go either way, I’ve experienced both modes, If you have a tight posse of folks who read and communicate regularly via journal, having formed shortly after the discovery of said medium and being thrilled of this vast sounding borad for thoughts… then you elude to a RT conversation with someone in the diary, and… since there is only a guestbook, not a comment feature, trying to carry out an argument is only possible if you fight directly across journals, and through the journals…and it is not prone to stopping because there is no one to call time out/take it offline, and and you aren’t directly communicating.. so you can’t address eachother directly as a method to chill the topic out.
Anyway, can you tell that I am stuck In Packerland, with no access to email? Have a good Holiday darlin!
The STDs bit was good. =)
I’m 21 and a college student and I think it’s incredibly interesting to see the difference between the xanga and LJ crowd and the MovableType/TypePad crowd. Glad to see a post on the topic. My personal pecking order for blogs, best first, would be MovableType/TypePad (depending on your saavy), then LJ and then Xanga.
Post more on this sometime =)
It’s just gossip, world-readable.
Social networks that sustain conversation also harbor gossip, for good and for bad. For good– models of behavior and thought to learn from the different lives of others (I hate to link, for fear of embarrassing people). And for bad — cattiness, schadenfreude, one-upsmanship, and posing.
Seems to me that the ethics of blogging overlap mostly with the ethics of gossip.