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Blogging has sold out and nobody told me

There’s a fascinating essay in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times about how a group of scientists are searching for the reasons blogs are on the verge of extinction.  It seems that they were once vibrant, snarky, and unpredictable, but now their “spontaneous eruption of populist creativity is on the verge of being absorbed by the media-industrial complex it claims to despise.” As a result of losing their evolutionary niche, some scientists say, blogs are being increasingly eaten by corporate megaconglomerates.  But as they fail to reproduce their own kind, some of their features are being absorbed by Enantiornithes, a fairly diverse group of mass-media blogs, mostly political journals; Hesperornithiformes, toothless mass-media blogs which are chiefly apolitical diaries; and the toothed Ichthyornithiformes, salacious sex blogs whose authors probably feed on fish.

According to one researcher, the “commercialization” of blogs’ “culture of dissent” has recently reached the point at which “media steer readers toward the top blogs,” and “the temptation to sell out to the highest bidder could become irresistible.”

OK, I knew I was coming to the party two or three years too late, well after most of the cool kids had left and the best hors d’oeuvres were gone, and believe me, I’ve had my moments of thinking, “man, Kurt and I put that blüsparx website together in the summer of 2002, why didn’t we convert it to a blog then?  I could’ve had my rumpled shirts and my cans of Genny Cream Ale profiled in the New York Times Magazine by now.” God knows I’ve tried to make up for that profound sociocultural mistake by pointing out repeatedly, to all who would listen and many who would not, that twenty years ago I liked Hüsker Dü before they sold out by signing that megadeal with TimeWarner in 1989 and agreeing to tour as Michael Bolton’s backing band.

But hell, if we’re already on the verge of extinction, that’s OK so long as there’s money involved.  I therefore declare myself ready to be tempted by the highest bidder.  So, Mr. or Ms. Highest Bidder, sir or ma’am, please identify yourself as soon as possible, since I have only recently learned that Blogshares is merely a “pretend” stock market, and that this blog is not actually worth $63,660.08 in real money.  Thanks!

Posted by on 09/27 at 10:57 AM

  1. hey michael, did you see this? http://www.nytimes.com/pages/politics/trail/index.html apparently the times, too, understands the importance of politics and hockey.

    Posted by  on  09/27  at  12:58 PM

  2. Actually Michael Fancy Name, I don’t think any one would tell you anything worth knowing for fear that no one would find it in your pomo-esque drivel. Just sayin’.

    Posted by  on  09/27  at  01:27 PM

  3. Do your really not understand why you are losing? Perfectly encapsulated by Andrew Sullivan, as excised from Frum’s response to the NY Times piece. Angry, cutting invective undermines whatever case you have.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/frum/diary092704.asp

    “ The left-wing blogs have to take a considerable share of the blame for this disaster. They were a crucial part of the in-group conversation by which the most partisan Democrats convinced each other that the country feared and hated George W. Bush as much as they did. This delusion ‚Äì combined with the decision to nominate a man to whom haughty disdain came all too naturally ‚Äì pushed the Democrats to mistake after mistake and blinded them to opportunity after opportunity.”

    Posted by  on  09/27  at  01:59 PM

  4. I’m a bit confused by your parallelism with avian lineages; all the ornithoforms you mentioned are extinct. Shouldn’t we be comparing blogs to the Neornitheans? And shouldn’t right-wing blogs all be grouped with the Enantiornithes (look at their squirrely backwards coracoid/scapular connection! And they all died out in the Cretaceous! Ha ha!)?

    I do like your descriptions, though, and think I’d rather be an Ichthyornithiformes.

    Posted by PZ Myers  on  09/27  at  02:37 PM

  5. I was, at first, surprised to see that this article was authored by Billmon.  I discovered Billmon‚Äôs blog early this year, and it quickly became one of my favorites (this was prior to discovering, michaelberube.com, of course).  It is interesting to note that Billmon‚Äôs withdrawal from the blogosphere began on June 26th, when he wrote a piece lambasting Michael Moore and ‚ÄúFahrenheit 911‚Äù (http://billmon.org/archives/2004_06.html).  Suddenly his Liberal fan base turned on him, and next entry he makes is to declare that he has decided to discontinue the ‚Äòcomments‚Äô function of his blog.  Thereafter his entries became more and more sporadic, until he basically quit in mid-August.  Now we have this article where he is sounding the death knell of political blogging.

    It appears to me that his reasoning may be a bit clouded by ‚Äòpersonal issues‚Äô.  As long as the blogger-fan positive feedback loop was maintained, Billmon apparently thought that blogging was the shiznit, but as soon as his personal Cult of Celebrity gave a peak of its dark side, he suddenly finds the blogs to be in great danger of corruption and extinction.  Hmmm.

    It reminds me of the phenomenon of counterculture music fans (which Michael hinted at with the Husker Du reference, in his usual subtle way).  A soon as their favorite band actually achieves some mainstream success, they lose interest (the ‚Äúsell-out‚Äù syndrome).  The great irony of it being that they are as much slaves to fad and fashion as the pop-consumer sheep they so abhor. Popularity rather than quality is still the driving force of their aesthetic standard ‚Äì just in reverse.  It is an endless source of amusement to me to see these teenagers with the ripped jeans and faded t-shirts and messy hairstyles ‚Äì all carefully orchestrated to portray that they just don‚Äôt give a fuck about their appearance - when I know very well that they likely spent more time choosing their clothes and arranging their hairdo than the average high school cheerleader.  Their greatest moment of horror is to see that prized thrift-store Husker Du t-shirt hanging in the window of The Gap.  ‚ÄúPunk Rock is dead!‚Äù they mutter, shuffling of to find the next ‚Äúanti-fad‚Äù.  So too goes Billmon‚Ķ

    Posted by  on  09/27  at  03:08 PM

  6. Daniel, that must be why Howard Dean and Wesley Clark are on the ticket.

    Posted by  on  09/28  at  02:21 AM

  7. Dallas, it’s overstatement to say that “his liberal fanbase turned on him” - though that is undoubtedly what it *felt* like to him, and I agree with your diagnosis.

    What happened was a segment of said fanbase got pissed and did the usual newsgroup flamewar thing, complete with people attacking the mod, then with other people attacking the attackers, and the yet other people leaping in as pseudo-peacemakers to dump oil on troubled fires. Meanwhile the remainder try to go on having conversations around the ruckus.

    This is all old hat to anyone who spent much time on Usenet in the last 5 years.

    But I think that bloggers often aren’t in that category, and so it’s all a shock to them that yes, wow, people argue and bang on the tables just like they do in a real ratskeller, and sometimes you get brawls with people swinging from the chandeliers and thrown out through the saloon doors…

    Posted by bellatrys  on  09/28  at  03:01 AM

  8. "and sometimes you get brawls with people swinging from the chandeliers and thrown out through the saloon doors‚Ķ”

    All in a virtual sort of way, of course.

    Posted by  on  09/29  at  04:13 AM

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  10. In my opinion, many blogs now are thinking about making money only. Only few of them out there really interested with it’s content. I myself has some blogs. Only few of them are real others are just for commercial.

    Posted by Chicago Hummer Limo  on  10/22  at  03:51 AM

  11. Really wonderful content. all the ornithoforms you mentioned are extinct. I agree with your diagnosis. Thanks a lot dude. smile

    Posted by Ricky hassy  on  03/01  at  07:04 AM

  12. I just enjoyed it while I am reading this article. Many blogger are now busy to make money from the blog. I am kind of feeling sorry for that blogger. In other sense it’s very interesting incidents. Thanks for the nice allocate.

    Posted by jimy adems  on  08/03  at  10:32 AM

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