12/29/2005

Snark, Sass, and Destruction

No Blood For Hubris has an interesting story here about Kathleen Parker's evolving love for the blogosphere. NBFH links to Parker's own remarks, but excerpts enough to crack you up.

"Kathy warns regular people:"to beware and resist the ego-gratifying pack that contributes only snark, sass and destruction."
"This Southern blonde bombshell buxom-version clone of Ann Coulter decries "the less visible, insidious enemies of decency, humanity and civility--the angry offspring of narcissism's quickie marriage to instant gratification." Read it!!!!

Reflections on My Brief Career In The Blogosphere

Now while I can begrudgingly admit that she makes some points about the hit-whoring nature of blogging (puff in exchange for puff, etc.) I wonder what people in these little blog boxes think of her remarks?
Here is what I have observed- some good, and some bad. Like everything else.
Some bloggers chase the heavy hitters, hoping that their witty snarkalicious comments will attract the notice of the big shot blogger who might throw a bone or two in the form of traffic his or her way. These remind me of the fawning co-eds in college, struggling to dazzle the professor.
Some emulate the profanity and 'fuck yous" of the hip feminist bloggers, hoping to attract a slice of bitcherama for themselves. They even cover the same topics, like little clones. Sadly, some do not have the background of some of the heavy hitters to answer actual questions though. They just seem to repeat the same lines from the same script. That gets tiresome very fast.
Some recall the media coverage of the impact of blogs in elections and aspire to be the next Daily Kos (awesome, by the way). For most- ain't gonna happen! Kos is Kos for a reason.
Some chase the high traffic blogs, throwing hat tips, until (oh happy day!) one of them does the inevitable reciprocity pit stop to make a comment. Except they often seem to be too busy to read the actual post. Its like they need to do an obligatory round of "keep the peons happy". And again, more bone throwing. "You send me pings, I mention you." And so it goes until the referral radar loses you in the dust.
For some people in their living rooms, this is the closest thing they can get to their fifteen minutes of fame, their dreams of recognition tossed into the blogosphere like a buck on the lottery... for some, this is validation, these little rants- because they never seem to take it much further than trying to get out there and self promote. They don't actually DO anything, they just have a lot to say about those that do. blah blah blah about the republicans, the democrats...but work on political action? Who's got time? A blog is more than enough, thank you!
See I believe we all have the right to be critical. But armchair pundits are a dime a dozen. If just a few of them would actually engage, change would be more possible! We can use blogs to do this instead of whining alone. (gets down from soapbox)
The message I get from all this is competition. Sure, there's some mutual back scratching, some mutual admiration. But the underlying theme is the sense of "I need my own blog, I can do it better than her". It's not the gateway to conversation and action I hoped it would be.

7 comments:

Lew Scannon said...

The blogs are the revolution, people of a like mind sharing the information the corporate media keeps out of sight. It was the blogs that broke the story of the Downing Street memo, for instance, that the mainstream relegated to the back pages when the deigned it upon themselves to report it all.
But if I can contribute snark, sass and destruction against asystem gone disastrously out of control, where someone like Kathleen Parker can be employed as a shill for the status quo, herself an enemy of decency, humanity, and civility, than I feel I'm contributing more than someone who cheers the illegality perpetrated by the present administration as "patriotism".

Anonymous said...

Yes, I do hear you! Well said.

Anonymous said...

I think I was hoping that there would be less parroting, maybe.. more calls to action on legislative matters. Now I know that there are bloggers that do work very hard on action and they have my sincere respect... but I guess I am reflecting on the article I mentioned at the beginning, and the criticisms. Whether or not there is any validity, maybe.

No Blood for Hubris said...

Re-shaping social perception is an important part of political action, and bloggery is poised to perform this function, I think.

Anonymous said...

Agreed, I think that when questions are raised its important to consider them. I know the point was to shine light on her hypocrisy and contradictions, but I also think its important to consider the merits of her statements. I do agree on some of her points about the blogosphere but wonder why that necessarily renders it a medium to be "ignored". My thinking is that there are elements of good and bad in every medium, news, television, etc. and the burden of wading through is on the reader. It can be frustrating though when one feature of the blogosphere- the ability to question, converse, comment, challenge, discuss- is ignored in favor of fawning which we all see quite a bit of.

Anonymous said...

How ironic that I just came from a blog where my comments, disagreeing with a post, have been deleted. Now I do not expect people to agree with me, love me, or even LIKE me (I have real life people to love me, thank you) but I think I place a high premium on one's ability to speak and express an opinion. What is the purpose of a comment section if we are going to delete whatever we don't want to hear? And this isn't the first time. I guess I just discovered another value of having one's own blog: the ability to delete what makes us look sloppy or hysterical. Ah, precious censorship!

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