[lbo-talk] The role of social media in the Egyptian uprising

[Gar Lipow]

On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 1:54 PM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com> wrote:
> At 02:12 PM 2/13/2011, Gar Lipow wrote:
>
>> Given your situation, don't know if you feel like "giving it away for
>> free". But if you do, you might consider offering an on-line course on
>> this.
>
> Actually, I'm thinking about writing a book, studying the local youth
> "movement" (not so much political as cultural). My initial hope was to
> document what we'd been doing with the workers group since I figured that a
> kind of handbook on how to get such a thing started could be very useful.
> But that fizzled out. The weird thing about it, Gar, was that these folks
> didn't even have the basic decency to do what my own boss as work does: they
> never tell you what the deadline is; they negotiate it with you. IOW,
> there's "buy in" where I have some control over the time frame. but with
> this "workers" group, the people who were the driving force behind would
> simply assign deadlines and then wonder why the hell people didn't get done
> on time or dropped off. Well, gee, maybe if you asked the "workers" in the
> group what worked for them, you'd get a lot more enthusiasm.
>
> In stark contrast, this is not at all how the more social/cultural groups I
> work with are. There's consensus building, meeting minutes, agendas, and you
> walk away knowing who's tasked with what and when it's due - on a schedule
> everyone agrees to. Wasn't happening with the leftwing workers group - very
> Communist Party USA.
>
> Yakking at Michael Pollak about this ideas, of writing a book about the
> stuff that *is* working, even if it isn't political organizing. It wasn't
> anything I think will get published, but self-publishing for the purposes of
> precisely what you mention is what I had in mind. Also figured that, if I
> could get a videographer on board, it would be extremely useful in social
> movement classes (sociology) since my idea is to elaborate various
> sociological theories in such a study. Question is: time, energy and
> priorities.
>
> My experience writing for South Atlantic Quarterly reminded me just how
> difficult it is to write when you aren't supported by an institutional
> infrastructure that makes it a whole lot easier. By the time I was done with
> that process, with an awesome editor, natch, I never wanted to read another
> word that dripped from my digits again. It was exhausting. I'd have to be
> really motivated and I can't see how I'd want to give up my other
> extracurricular and very outdoorsy away from the computer activities to go
> back to so much time in front of a computer! bah!
>
> shag
>

You know, the more I think about the more "giving it away" is a bad
idea anyway. People appreciate stuff more when they pay for it. There
is an on-line writer who would post a chapter, and then say OK if you
want to the next chapter you have to pay. I'll write the next chapter
when I've received x amount of money. She wrote the first chapter for
free. The rest of the book was paid for in advance a chapter at a
time. I lost the link because it never interested me much. (3rd rate
Fantasy mixed with really bad S&M Lesbian porn.)  Dunno if it might be
worth trying. Or you could try and do proposals to small publishers. I
will say that money is not worth the effort but you reach a larger
audience.  (The bad fantasy porn lady made a hell of lot more than I'm
getting for the GW book for a hell of a lot less effort. On the other
hand, while I could write better fantasy I doubt I could do even as
well as she did at S&M lesbian porn. )


>
> --
> http://cleandraws.com
> Wear Clean Draws
> ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)
>
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