Cathy Seipp on Lefty Bloggers' reaction to a panel discussion on blogging, where she picked the panelists by (gasp!) their links!:
The blogging panel, though...what a hornet's nest of outraged opinion this one stirred up. Some people seemed to think the blogosphere should be like academia, where outreach programs to find the perfect lesbian woman of color sociology professor are taken very seriously indeed...The panel was basically evenly divided, and in the strictest sense probably tilted left. But there was a storm of protest that, to use some of the more polite terms I came across, the bloggers represented were all warmongering, Arab-bashing, Republican turds.
OK, let me spell this out, for those who are not quite clear on the concept:
So you think the blogosphere is infested with a conspiracy to keep you down? Great. WE. DON'T. CARE.
If all you do is parrot the Kerry (or Bush) campaign's talking points, or do nothing but start flame wars, or bitch about how smart you are and why is it that nobody reads you, then NOBODY'S GOING TO READ YOU OR LINK TO YOU.
And don't think that you get a special dispensation just because you have a master's degree or are a minority. Those don't count. Everyone in the 'sphere has two or three areas they know pretty damn well, whether or not they have a degree to show for it. And every blogger is a "minority" -- a minority of one. In other words, an individual.
Blogs are the ultimate free-market medium. ("Talk is cheap. Supply always exceeds demand.") You put out good product, people read you, you get links. Blogs do not rise above the fray because of some vast conspiracy to find bloggers with this or that agenda. Blogs rise because they offer the people what they want, whether it's insight or laughter or simply trash.
I'm not a big blogger. (Instalanche count holding steady at one.) I could be a lot bigger, if I just could make the time to post more. But you know what? THAT'S MY OWN GODDAMN FAULT. NO ONE ELSE'S. No one's conspiring to keep me down among the reptiles, and no one's conspiring to keep this guy down in the swamps either. The only way to succeed in blogging is to write often and write well. (Either that or engage in a LOT of link-whoring. But even if you do, unless you write often and well, you will be known as a link whore and nothing else.)
Come to think of it, that's the way the real world works, too. Success is earned, not given. Of course, such thoughts are not PC. But they are true.
Posted by Thief at June 3, 2004 12:07 PM