Building the Perfect Beast: What Is to Be Done in the Blogosphere

So when are you going to "take the Boeing"?

Posted by P.A. Breault at December 6, 2004 9:35 PM

Interesting post, Gerard. The reason I quit blogging was because it was no longer fun enough to be a hobby and never had been lucrative enough to be a job. Your post, I think, presages that same Catch-22 on a vast scale: As the medium becomes more "active" and competitive, people who come to it wanting nothing more than a place to spout off in their spare time will face an expectation that they should be out on the street digging up stories. Some of them will ignore that expectation, content to spout off into the void while the medium leaves them behind. Some of them will adapt and discover that they have a knack for newshounding. I expect the average joe, though, will toil away at it for awhile with mounting frustration until one day it occurs to him that if he had wanted to be a fucking journalist, he would have been a journalist. That's when he'll shut down his computer and go get himself a hobby that actually reduces his stress. Imagine this happening en masse and "The Great Consolidation" starts to look more like "The Great Weeding Out."

Another quibble. You say that "the bias makes the blog," and for a long time I agreed with that. There are few things more exciting than politics passionately argued. The problem is, over the long haul, bias is crushingly boring. Every morning I open up the Drudge Report and scan the headlines, and every morning not only will I know instantly which one or two stories the blogs are going to pick up but I'll know exactly what Hewitt/LGF/Allahpundit and Kos/Atrios/Marshall are going to say. So will you, so will everyone. Every day, every story, every time. In my own case, it got to the point where I thought, "If everyone already knows what I'm going to say, why bother actually saying it?" For all the (well-deserved) grief we give the New York Times for its biases, I expect it would be a lot harder to predict their editorial positions consistently from day to day than it would be to predict Kos's or Allahpundit's take.

In fact, given the amount of strident ideological bias in the 'sphere, it's hard to imagine an "active" blog community in the future ever developing much credibility. For example, if Kos breaks a story that reflects badly on a right-wing politician, am I going to believe it? Not without some extremely compelling evidence, because, after all, why would I trust Kos? And why would his nutbag readers trust LGF if LGF breaks a story that reflects badly on the UN, say? It's just going to be the same old spinfest bullshit except this time, occasionally, stories will be generating from within the 'sphere itself. And if, as you predict, the Times eventually wakes up and gets in on the racket, then it'll really be the same old shit: Because bloggers won't be able to compete with the Timesblog in active news-gathering, they'll fall back into their old habits and simply react to that site.

In any case, I look forward to your next installment. And kudos for at least recognizing that bloggers, at present, are almost wholly parasitic on the MSM. Instapundit had an item last week about how blogs are supposedly kicking Brian Williams's ass, and two things immediately occurred to me. 1) If not for Williams and co., we wouldn't have jackshit for material. And 2) even if we are kicking his ass, so what? Why the incessant triumphalism? To paraphrase what Chris Rock said of the O.J. acquittal, where's my kicking-Brian-Williams's-ass prize?

Posted by Allah at December 7, 2004 12:00 AM

Bias? I prefer to think of it as “point-of-view”. ;-)

And, Allah, thanks for the explanation.

One of the reasons to blog is the same as the reason to paint or sculpt or be in show business: because you have to do it. And, as in the arts, you'll get some pretty dysfunctional bloggers. But the need may be temporary.

Posted by Dave Schuler at December 7, 2004 7:02 AM

are few things more exciting than politics passionately argued. The problem is, over the long haul, bias is crushingly boring.

This sense of "boring" or repetitive is dead-on, but it's typically cyclical for most people. And that's part of the challenge, making a point in an effective, perhaps novel way. The rote bashing may be trite, but the potential for human argument is endless.

Not without some extremely compelling evidence

That's the challenge, isn't it. And it should be the challenge.

Blogs are still refreshing (not to bloggers, perhaps) because they openly declare bias, which, with compelling evidence makes them a potentially more trustworthy medium. In certain cases. In certain contexts. In certain doses. In conjunction with a more balance news source.

And as far as the parasitic nature of blogs on the MSM, this is dead-on. The triumphalism gets old. But the key is not a move to subvert traditional media, or replace it, the idea is to scare them (re: factchecking) to a point that they will be coerced into something resembling the responsible neutrality that they claim.

What are the odds a news organization will try to pass off unchecked fake documents again?

Everyone gets burned out. Everyone gets tired. And as profile grows, the ration of daily shit one absorbs for a "hobby" isn't paralleled by a rise in something like, say, income. Or psychological reward. I definitely agree with that. But typically people take a break and refresh. or not. Whatever.

Posted by Bill from INDC at December 7, 2004 12:03 PM

Does this explain why Steven Den Beste decided to go home and watch cartoons? http://www.denbeste.nu

Oh, well. At least there's still Lileks, who gets all his material (except for screeds) from nowhere, yet still finds topics for his Bleats.

Posted by Stephen B at December 7, 2004 1:17 PM

Great essay Gerard.

And thank Allah for the explanation of his quitting. Makes perfect sense, but he is missed.

Posted by J.R. at December 7, 2004 5:43 PM

I think the rivalry, if you can call it that, between the MSM and the blogosphere is a bit contrived. There always were outlets for reacting to the spewings of the MSM -- letters to the editor to the extent published, "small" magazines and journals, talk radio, public speaking, books, indy documentaries, the minister on Sunday mornings and the lonely pamphleteer of yore and lore. Blogs increase the velocity and volume of the reaction, and that fact has a big impact (think of the difference between a single ant at your picnic and a huge swarm of fire ants), but that does not make blogs any less derivative or reactive. From this perspective, blogs are just another technology or medium for pecking away at the MSM.

Like any technology, though, the means of blogging can be appropriated. Media corporations can set up "blogs" with blogging software, pay writers, and generate lots of readership. But just as the Borg cannot assimilate human ingenuity, big corporations face tremendous constraints in their ability to assimilate real creativity. Corporate blogs will be subjected to rules to which even Glenn Reynolds, Kos or Allah will not have to submit. A blog owned by ABC News probably can't refer to women as "bitches" or to Michael Eisner as a "fuck bird," but independant bloggers can. Just as there have always been irreverant, barely profitable independant newspapers, there will always be enormously creative and edgy independant bloggers. If Allah re-charges his batteries and decides to uncage his snark monster some future happy day, there will be a large and eager audience.

Even now, the taxonomy of the blogosphere is not so simple. There are professional journalists who write blogs, and no doubt do their best to sustain a quality product, day in and day out. There are non-journalists, many of them law professors, who have leveraged blogging into more mainstream punditry. There are also bloggers who write anonymously or semi-anonymously for nothing but the love of it. That's me -- I'm a top executive in a public company, and I work something like 60-70 hours a week at my "day" job. I started my blog just under a year ago and use it as a place to dump the many ideas that come bubbling out of my head. My friends, family and co-workers cannot understand why I no longer harangue them with my then-favorite theory of the universe or spasm of outrage. Blogging has become my outlet, and I harangue the innocent readers who stumble across my page. In this form, blogging will survive the MSM assimilation, because people will recognize that there is a fundamental difference between "NYTimesBlogs.com" and Allahpundit. For starters, people who tend to admire huge institutions as sources of authority will prefer the former, and people who are suspicious of same will prefer the latter.

Will there be a shake-out in blogging? There already is, of sorts. In percentage terms, virtually all of Technorati's 5,000,000 "tracked" blogs are written for family and friends, not for a general audience. There are only a few thousand bloggers at most who have the ambition to write for a broader audience of people they do not already know in meat-space and who can develop that ambition into a readership. Will this group continue to prosper even when capital and corporate management come to blogging? Sure. The vast majority of "general audience" bloggers are basically gadflies at heart who write blogs because it is fun. Once it stops being fun, by all means quit.

Except for you, Allah. Your fans wish you were back whether you like it or not!

Posted by Jack at December 7, 2004 8:17 PM

Thank you, Allah. A spot will always be reserved for you, whether or not you resume blogging now, a week from now, or... you get the picture.

As for me, after thinking about it for a while, snarking about it on a few blogs' comment sections, in the new year, I should have a blog. (You heard it hear first, hopefully not last.)

Lysander

Posted by Lysander at December 7, 2004 9:28 PM

Allah, would it have killed you to post these 3 words: "BLOG SUSPENDED INDEFINITIVELY", or something similar, thus keeping your fan base from having to check out your dead blog for weeks?

Posted by Kim Hartveld at December 8, 2004 2:27 AM

Allah,
Thank you for the explanation. I checked in on your blog once a day for awhile and was worried. Thanks for brightening many, many days.

Posted by joshlbetts at December 8, 2004 6:59 PM

Kim,

Allah has no bigger fan than me. I checked daily, then twice weekly, and then weekly. So I saw Jeter's picture a few extra times. I left Allah on my Blogroll, and it lit up the other day. None of this was a problem.

In any case, between this comment and the Protein Wisdom comment thread of last night, Allah has explained himself, at this time, surely to everyone's satisfaction.

None of which implies that Allah or any other blogger OWES a fan base long or short explanation for posting or for silence.

Posted by The Commissar at December 8, 2004 7:17 PM

Well, at least Allah wasn't stabbed to death with a manifesto pinned to his chest. (I love they way they said "pinned" as if a knife plunged into that poor guy's chest was merely pinned to it.)

And furthermore, Allah, if you are just going to quit blogging can I at least get my subscription money back?

Oh, wait a minute....

Posted by Michael Greenberg at December 9, 2004 4:31 PM

At last the mystery of the Allahpundit is solved. I am glad to hear that he is doing well, I honestly feared that someone had done the Fatwa thing to him.

I've also been quieter lately, for me it is hard to explain my reduced role, preaching to the choir got old may be the short answer. I also am not reading other's work as much since the election. Not blogs, nor news and opinion.

But, I am off point. The subject of this article, to which I am supposed to be responding if I post here, interests me, so I will finish reading it and perhaps then I'll have something to add.

Posted by Richard @ TBR at December 14, 2004 4:13 PM

What's lame is how this great post turned into an Allah ass-kissing contest.

*shrugs* But hey, who am I to talk - I get like 6 hits / week. So what if they're all my Mom.

:P

Posted by fat kid at December 22, 2004 3:39 PM

Allah Shrugged.

Heh.

Posted by fat kid at December 22, 2004 5:11 PM