Creativity in the Blogosphere
I have been a member of the blogosphere for several years now: I started out with a small blog called Liberty and Justice and commenting at other blogs. After a while, Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice contacted me and asked me whether I would like to contribute to his blog. I gladly accepted and, over time, became assistant editor. I then founded a new blog, the Van der Galien Gazette, which grew increasingly bigger, after which we relaunched as PoliGazette.
In short, when it comes to the blogosphere I know what I am talking about.
After all these years, my general attitude towards the blogosphere has evolved. I once considered blogging a nice hobby, later I understood that blogs could have real impact, again later I became convinced that blogs could be even bigger than I anticipated and now, today, I have come to a different conclusion. Again.
This conclusion is this: there are a lot of blogs out there that could have real impact. Hopefully PoliGazette will be one of them. But the blogosphere itself is suffering from a major problem: no ideas.
Blogging about politics revolves around ideas. When you create a blog, you believe you have something to add to the discussion. If you do not, you might as well become a passive blogreader, who reads blogposts, comments on them every now and then perhaps, but who is weary to start a blog of his own.
Yet, what seems to have happened in the last two years is that increasingly more people, who offer no fresh, new ideas of their own, have started to blog and that those who once did have fresh perspectives have gradually evolved into more of the same.
When you read right wing blogs or left wing blogs, even prominent ones, you will quickly notice that they all say the same. There are only a few out there that offer profound, new ideas and perspectives. Most do not. When you go to one left wing blog you generally know what they will write about and what their opinion will be. The same goes for right wing blogs. Big blogs, average blogs, small blogs; no matter, they repeat the standard talking points, not realizing that they are part of the collective suicide of the blogosphere.
To me, the blogosphere resembles popular music: we all pretend that Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are inherently different, but deep down we know they are the same. They change the presention a little bit, but in general, it are two beautiful blondes, who sing the same crappy love songs.
The same goes for blogs. Conservative bloggers are, in 99% of the cases, simply the same. They repeat what the other says, they have the same opinions. Every now and then a small difference is visible which gives readers the impression they are truly dealing with completely different people, much like Britney and Christina.
But this is not the case. They are almost carbon copies of each other. Pretending otherwise is foolish.
Which leads me to the following: creativity is missing from a medium founded on it. Creativity is vital to the survival of the blogosphere, without it, it will die. If current trends continue I fear that blogs will lose their value, and will truly be places where those who already agree with each other on a number of issues congratulate themselves with how smart they are.
We need more creativity in the ’sphere’ as a whole. Without it, we’ll be mere tools for partisans and especially politicians who do not have solid policies but only their own personal ambitions in mind.
You’re absolutely right. Making a difference is about having ideas that matter and about getting them heard over the din of the Net.
On the latter point, Memeorandum is great in that it aggregates related commentary. Unfortunately it rewards posts about major media news items rather than independent news sources, analysis, and thought.
What needed is a similar tool that aggregates and organizes original, valuable content. An important criterion would be that any ideological bias is kept to a minimum.
Creativity is actively punished in the current political blogosphere. Staying with a party line (either left or right is fine) will get you consistent links, even moreso if you can do it using vulgarity and abusiveness. But diverging will get you consistently blacklisted.
And anyone who is creative in any way is by definition diverging from a script.
I’m waiting for someone to put together a blog site that does actually reporting using its varied members but following a strict process that is posted prominently on the website. For example, an economic story could be done, posted on the site but info gathered by an individual in say Kansas City Missouri with strict guidelines as to who he speaks with, how he fact checks etc.
Obviously would take more from a volunteer than the present blog methods but if you only had to “do a story” once a month it might not be that bad.
To me, the blogosphere resembles popular music: we all pretend that Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are inherently different, but deep down we know they are the same.
Speak for yourself, Marc. Although Christina Aguilera did start out doing bubble gum crappy love songs, she had the talent, the determination, and the assertiveness to move on and up from that. I agree that the concerts and videos have their share of superficial and over-the-top Hollywood production values, Aguilera’s writing ability, performance talent, and — definitely not last in importance, *her voice* — make her a creative artist as well as a star.
Britney Spears, on the other hand, really has no singing or songwriting talent whatsoever. She’s a pathetic, mentally ill (and I say that with compassion, not as an epithet, because I *do* feel sorry for her) young woman who had a brief moment of fame that failed to outlast her talent.
It really has nothing to do with whether you like the music or not. There are many musicians whose music I don’t like but can still recognize as having talent.
Whoops! Sorry, that first sentence should have been, “Speak for yourself, Michael.” My apologies to Marc. We have enough we disagree on without me disagreeing on something you didn’t even write.
Authors are always speaking for themselves, Kathy. Or when you write, do you also speak for someone else?
To me, the blogosphere resembles popular music: we all pretend that Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera are inherently different, but deep down we know they are the same.
Jason, I think I will have to bounce that question back to you.
Very clever “gotcha” there, Kathy. By nit-picking an isolated phrase and using that to change the subject, you completely made yourself the center of attention and avoided the actual point of the post.
In my opinion (wouldn’t want to stand accused of speaking for anyone else here!!!), your behavior constantly provides an excellent example of what has gone wrong in the political blogosphere.
Creativity is wonderful and needed in so many ways in the blogsphere and general atomosphere. I disagree with the Christina and Britney comparison.
Part of the numbing of blogs perhaps has to do with the competition for readers, numbers, monetizing and pandering to the passive blog readers who agree and ignoring those who dare to disagree.
I’ve noticed that the trend is to try to get the scoop on a new story. Every blog wants to be the first to break a story (at least to the reader that might not have seen the same thing on another blog). Take the presidents G20 non-shaking hands video, for example.
But in the end that makes for a lot of blogs talking about the same things (although with perhaps a modified angle).
I would prefer to talk about the underlying issues. To use the G20 issue, what we should be talking about (now that it’s been debunked) is our lack of skepticism. Media and blogs seem to be willing to jump to conclusions way too fast, in my opinion. I related problem is out inability to say “I don’t know”. The G20 issue is just the latest example. I think that would be a really useful discussion to have. I plan to post on it, but since I don’t have wide readership, feel free to steal my idea if you want.
I submit that some bloggers do behave responsibly, do at times express skepticism to the “story of the day”, and do diverge from the scripted memes that dominate the blogosphere.
But since hardly anyone reads or remembers those deviations from the grinding and banal norm (and some of the most partisan sites have even been known to actively blacklist bloggers that “betray” their purist scripts), they disappear without a trace and the bloggers who attempt them eventually fade from sight.
Jason,
I think you’re probably right, but if that’s the case then the fault is with the readers. The people get what they want. If they want blind ideology and story-of-the-day re-iter-porting, that’s what they get, unfortunately.