[lbo-talk] Re: blogosphere

[Gar Lipow]

On 6/17/06, J <cogprole2 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> On Jun 17, 2006, at 12:54 PM, yoshie  wrote:
>
> > MSM = Mainstream Media.
> >
> > Railing against blogs due to a large number of sorry blogs is like
> > railing against poetry due to a large number of sorry poems or against
> > email due to a large number of sorry messages.  Blogs are in part a
> > genre and in part a medium (content-management system tools offered --
> > often at no cost -- by commercial businesses).  One doesn't rail
> > against a genre or a medium just because a large majority of pieces
> > produced in or through it are mediocre or worse.  Technorati claims
> > that it is "[c]urrently tracking 44.8 million sites and 2.6 billion
> > links" -- probably, by now a majority of blogs are written in
> > languages most LBO-talk subscribers can't read and therefore can't
> > really evaluate.
> >
> one can rail against a medium if the medium isn't taken seriously or if
> it is obsolete or lends itself to stupidity. blogging isn't a neutral
> medium. does it lend it self to knee jerkism, source distorting and
> ridiculous punditry? we can condemn infomercials can't we? why is most
> poetry really bad? is it because it's obsolete as a medium? there's so
> much bad poetry that the best poetry by definition would be poetry that
> mocks poetry.... but hardly anyone does that. we can make assessments
> of blogging. i think most blogging is goofy because it still relatively
> new.. there's almost 0 tradition to draw from. not enough good examples
> etc.... so that is a problem of the medium. also all the mediocre and
> bad blogging, poetry whatever affects the medium. it's like stand up
> comedy...50 bazillion bad stand up comics can ruin the medium to the
> point where even good stand up comics aren't funny. so there are
> problems.
>
> ~J
>

Sturgeons law:  90% of everything is crap.  Also the thing about blogs
is once you find a good one (by your standards) the links lead you to
others.