I went to the Showcase, as I do more or less daily, to check out the new blogging talent on the scene. While there, I found out that Mac Diva of BlogCritics did
, thinly disguised as a lukewarm endorsement. Simon does
of defending both the Showcase and blogging in general against this swath of smarmy condescension, but I want to add my own loving foot-to-gluteous.
The first annoyance is this hoary old canard that blogs don't really count because:
So. F******. What?
Is your anal-cranial inversion quotient REALLY so high that you think that popularity is an unerring guide to quality? Statistically speaking, and rounding to three significant digits, 100% of internet users have NEVER heard of Mac Diva. Does that say anything about the quality of Mac Diva's writing, research, or posting? Hardly. It just means she's relatively unknown. Judging quality is the province of people who ARE aware of your existence, NOT of those oblivious.
The virtue of the blogosphere is this: EVERYONE is an expert on SOMETHING, although usually it's in a very narrow field. Too narrow for the big boys to bother with. Yet sometimes that narrow expertise is exactly what's needed to make sense of what's going on in the world. The big boys don't have the air time or page space to devote to these things. That's why people turn to blogs. There are millions of tiny news-niches that have been left in vacuum for years. Blogs are filling that vacuum.
Picture the universe of information as a big glass jar. You fill it with "big media marbles" and you swear on your mother's grave that the damn thing's full and there's no room for anything else. Blogs are the sand you pour in to fill the spaces in between.
Take the sand and make glass. Take the glass and make a lens. Look through the lens and see the world better, clearer, brighter than you've ever seen it before.
THAT'S what the blogosphere is.
1
Extremely well said, Harv. I like your statistical approximation of the percentage of internet users who have heard of Mac Diva.
thanks again for all your support of the Showcase. I've started a weekly "best of" at Simon World but it's hard when there's been so many good ones already.
Posted by: Simon at June 28, 2004 08:46 PM (FUPxT)
2
That guy is dumb fuck... there is no blog contest... right now it is only set up to showcase new bloggers' work... it is a place where anyone can go to find out where the new bloggers are and link over to their sites... and he automatically disqualifies his status as a judge of quality, researched reporting/writing by identifying himself as a (former?)journalist... we all know what kind of accurate, researched, un-biased reporting they do now-a-days... jack-ass!
Posted by: Madfish Willie at June 28, 2004 10:39 PM (0pRbT)
3
"Take the sand and make glass. Take the glass and make a lens. Look through the lens and see the world better, clearer, brighter than you've ever seen it before."
Very goood!
Um, as for statistics, I'd like to see a survey of how many people in the US have direct input into the topics for coverage on a major US Media Show? I'll bet it's less than 2%....
Posted by: _Jon at June 28, 2004 10:45 PM (RZ4Hy)
4
In my narrow areas of expertise I find the major media wrong more often than right. I also find them completely uninterested in correcting factual errors in my areas of expertise.
I've spoken to people with other areas of expertise, they tell me more or less the same thing.
Someone should ask this Mac Diva character the following question. Since you major media people are either lying or totally ignorant when you write about things that I know, why should I believe you when you speak about things I don't know?
Posted by: Peter at June 28, 2004 11:34 PM (PcgQk)
5
Peter: You are absolutely correct! I don't recall the exact situation, but I remember reading about something that I was a witness to and thinking "WTF... that's not how it fucking happened... lying bastard just made up shit and twisted it around to make it sound better". After that, I've never trusted anything I read, execpt the sports page... it's hard to lie and make shit up if their are thousands and millions of witnesses that can call
bullshit.
Posted by: Madfish Willie at June 28, 2004 11:48 PM (0pRbT)
6
And that's part of my original arguement - blogging is not about reporting. It is all about opinions, fact-checking and so on. I'm with Madifhs, there have been plenty of times I've had to point out to Mrs M or others that the "news" on TV was wrong, lying or a mistruth.
That's Mac Diva's problem: being part of Big Media (by calling themself a journalist) automatically identifies Mac's bias - from there the rest of the critique loses value because of that bias. It's especially galling given Mac once won the bear's showcase!
Posted by: Simon at June 29, 2004 12:23 AM (FUPxT)
7
Ack! I am out of highschool a long, long time. I can pick what I do/read/see etc. based on, well, what I enjoy and not what X% of my friends enjoy.
Hey, I know I don't "rock". I'm not sure I could "rock". I can be me though. And that's what I try and be on my site. Just Rachel Ann. Sure I'd like tons of visitors to me site; adulation is pretty good for the self esteem. But should a person just stop writing because thousands aren't beating down their door?
If it is just a numbers game then you've lost that very important part of oneself that hopefully started you blogging in the first place; the desire to share the truth of yourself.
Posted by: at June 29, 2004 02:12 AM (+J8HX)
8
oops, sorry, the above was exemplified by me. I don't know what happened to me name and all that..it just disappeared.
Got to get more sleep...
Posted by: Rachel Ann at June 29, 2004 02:15 AM (+J8HX)
9
"Silence, plebes!
Quit your typing and blogging and expressing your opinion and listen to us, your betters, Who Know Things You Don't and Can Tell You Best What To Know and How To Live Your Life!"
So, yay for elitist swine!
Posted by: Russell M. at June 29, 2004 12:55 PM (1NyUN)
10
ONLY 7%-11% of internet users read blogs???
Do you have any idea how freaking many people that is?? Especially considering they have to actually make an effort to log on and find those pages, instead of having a program pumped to them after watching some vapid worthless reality show, and watching merely because their asses are welded to the lazy boy?
Of course they rip on blogs, they like their monopoly. In the process they get people who have never read personal online opinion pages
to go "Hmm, what's a blog??" and enter a new world.
That's what happened to me, and I couldn't be happier.
Posted by: Graumagus at June 29, 2004 01:31 PM (xBX8Q)
11
Harvey thanks for the quote Re: % based on phone survey. I DON'T BELIEVE IN SURVEY'S! I used to work for one of those companies while in college, and they too are biased.
Besides, any self-respecting blogger would be too busy writing to bother with stupid questions for a surveyor.
Oh, by the way, I'm also a former Washington insider (who worked as a lobbyist on capitol hill) and a former journalist (who worked for a neighborhood newspaper in the East Village), but even if I worked with the NYTimes, those credentials don't give me the standing to make sweeping statements as she did.
So I go over to her site 'cause I want to tell this stupid broad to her face she's full of it and what do I find? A rehashing of newsarticles related to the Jack Ryan divorce culled from the web of mainstream media. How hypocritical is that!!!
She just wants her name to come up in Goodle enough times to get her ranking up so she can seem in some circles (her own) that she has credibility. I say we don't even mention her name so that she doesn't get any more undeserving hits in the blogosphere. I propose we banish her to blogosphere oblivion!
Posted by: Michele in NYC at June 29, 2004 06:08 PM (ldN8h)
Posted by: Madfish Willie at June 29, 2004 07:34 PM (0pRbT)
13
O.K.
If blogs are the sand, and sand Isn't round how come It's called the blogosphere...AHHH SHIT now Im gonna have serious thought's all day. But seriosly I think If the taking heads wanted to know what people really think
(and they don't) they'ed hit some blogs and start reading, and of course they don't tell you the survey Is +or- 2-7%.
Really, I mean what kind of answears would you give to someone whos Interupting your dinner.
Posted by: blogless brother at June 29, 2004 10:44 PM (6cyEp)
14
There's likely to be more as Mac Diva contacted me and told me to expect a response sometime soon....
Posted by: Simon at June 29, 2004 10:44 PM (FUPxT)
15
Mac Diva - interesting about her... she won the New Blog Showcase way back when:
http://www.truthlaidbear.com/newblogshowcase.php
(6-9-03) Mac-a-ro-nies
Now check out her Ecosystem ranking history:
http://www.truthlaidbear.com/showdetails.php?host=http://macaronies.blogspot.com
Number of links stays the same since about August of '03. Ecosystem ranking on a steady decline.
Shall I speculate that there are some "issues" here?
Posted by: Harvey at June 29, 2004 11:23 PM (ubhj8)
16
BB - Ya got a point there. What kind of morons don't have anything better to do than to answer a phone survey? All the smart people are reading blogs :-)
Posted by: Harvey at June 29, 2004 11:57 PM (ubhj8)
17
"All the smart people are reading blogs" . . . not. The data from Pew and other research proves that most Internet users are oblivious to the blogosphere. That would include what people who actually do their homework call 'agenda setters.' Blogging is an activity a handful of Internet users in engage in -- for an average period of four months. What I've said is that blogging should be understood in the context of other media, an unassailable point to any thinking person.
This is just the kind childish group grunting I referred to in my entry about reviving the Showcase. Thank you all for confirming my point.
Posted by: Mac Diva at June 30, 2004 12:10 PM (lDKyE)
18
grunt. grunting grun grunt. grunt?
Posted by: at June 30, 2004 12:37 PM (1NyUN)
19
Mac - Again with that odd assertion that popularity relates in some way to quality. If blogging were widely known, but disregarded (like, say, the National Enquirer, or Air America), I could see your point.
And I think Peter has the best explanation of the relationship between blogging and the larger media. Big media is riddled with factual errors & biases. An emergent property of the blogosphere is that these flaws get pointed out by people who know better.
As for group grunting... well, one look at my banner should be a good indication that making fun of shit is something that gets done around here a LOT. You want boring stuff, try the Puppy Blender.
And the line you quoted out of context... see that little :-) at the end? That means I was making a joke. Something similar in theme to the one that goes something like, "You never want a trial by jury, because juries are composed of 12 people who were too stupid to figure a way to get out of jury duty."
[reconsidering]
Ok, maybe I should've written that line, "all the smart people are too busy reading blogs to answer phone surveys :-)".
Better?
Posted by: Harvey at June 30, 2004 03:04 PM (ubhj8)
20
Mac Diva:
The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. Harvey should have snipped away most of what you wrote, because, well... it didn't really say anything. Your attempt at constructing a creative flame was pitiful. I mean, really, stringing together an insult among a load of babbling was hardly effective... Maybe later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us normal people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known that this was your case then I would never have read your comments. It just wouldn't have been right. Sort of like parking in a handicapped space.
I wish you the best of luck in the emotional and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you.
Posted by: Madfish Willie at June 30, 2004 03:16 PM (0pRbT)
21
I had not heard of Mac Diva before reading this post and now having read Mac Diva, I know I need never waste my time again. Thanks for the tip!
Posted by: tallglassofmilk at July 01, 2004 11:51 PM (IAm4v)
22
TGOM - You're quite welcome. And it's nice to hear your voice again.
Or read your typing.
Well, you know what I mean :-)
Posted by: Harvey at July 05, 2004 11:29 AM (ubhj8)
Hide Comments
| Add Comment
