I don't think Oliver Kamm's continued arguments against political blogging (and Wikipedia and the internet in general) are worth linking to, not even to make fun of him for thinking that the internet used to be called the information superhighway. So if you want to read them and haven't yet, google or something. Linkz meanz rankz here in websville, and his arguments don't deserve the boost.
For example, he says that blogs generate more heat than light. Some do, of course, it's just that the sweeping and all-embracing nature of his criticism makes his analysis trivial. After all, some don't.
But there are few worse examples of the sort of scene you get when two sets of entrenched blogistas collide than this slow motion car crash. The increasingly combative - or paranoid, depending on your perspective - Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has been posting more and more about attacks on him, with links so his legions of attack lizardoids can click through and ramp up the heat in the comments.
Why?
Johnson is a pioneering blogger who long ago crossed the line from echo chamber to agenda shaper, his personal courage and intellect are beyond doubt. He is one of the very few people who can be said to have played a part in shaping a medium. So why bicker? And why, for heavens sake, create situations like the one I linked to above, where some of his fans have pulled off the amazing, almost incredible, feat of making a bunch radical Islamist shills look dignified? Here's an example:
#The whole thing began with an Islamist blog displaying a picture of a 1950s KKK lynching, and a suggestion that the readers and commenters of LGF were like the KKK. I've seen Islamists post images of Klansmen before, and it's more funny than anything else - aggressors coming over all self-pitying. At that stage the score read Johnson 1000 Islamist 0.
ISLAM SUCKS ASS....
April 10th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
“LGF Types are still proving my point… Its sad you guys can’t control that savage temper of yours? is that somehting left over from the dark ages? The Crusades maybe? Get therapy..”
yes, soon we will be organizing suicide bombings. not only that we will kill each other as well. we have learned this from islam and the worlds muslims. Untimely death is Islam’s greatest contribution to mankind. Oh, and the internet, they invented it you know, not al gore as previously thought
Now it's a lot less clear. The LGFers have left comments that can be used to discredit Johnson. Yet they got there following a link Johnson put on his blog for that purpose.
It's a bullseye. But, unfortunately, one through the centre of the foot.
4 comments:
Peter, your examples are hardly convincing. The first is the kind of standard South Park insult you see all over the internet. The 2nd is self-evidently not by an LGFer but by an anti-LGFer, and the 3rd is an ironic redactum ad absurdum retort to the website's violent persecution fantasies. I thought it was supposed to be only Americans who don't 'get' irony?
Carnack, no it's all the one comment - quoting an earlier (anti-LGF) comment. So the South Park insult is the chosen screen name of the commenter.
And yes, I gathered the commenter was trying to be ironic...
Please respect other peoples religion even if you don't like it.
and specially if you don't know anything about it.
disrespecting a religion is disrespecting your own self ..
God Bless everyone no EXEPTION!
James, I'll respect something or someone if they merit respect, and not otherwise. That includes religions.
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