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syncope at 01:32pm on 10/06/2009
syncope at 01:32pm on 10/06/2009Blog culture really baffles me. I know that sounds odd coming from someone who is clearly participatory in online culture, but I feel like bloggers have some radically different notions about appropriate behavior than I do. For one thing, they seem tirelessly humorless. Don't get me wrong, a lot of them strive to be witty, emphasis on the strive.
Here I'm talking about political bloggers, not people who maintain pop culture or other kinds of personal blogs. Many of those are quite amusing with the sort of sharp insights that come from the fractalization of unique human experience.
I don't know WHY I did it (besides that I hate myself today because I have a sinus headache), but I clicked this link to the Shakesville flounce post hoping for some lulz. It's basically a Greatest Hits lp of what I loathe about blog culture. The bottom line is that bloggers who become even marginally popular seem to become self-aggrandizing blogging BNFs--and seem completely unaware of how douchetardy they come off.
I'm also NOT A FAN of groupthink. While I very much support feminist critiques of the world, politics, the great butter/margerine debate, speculative fiction, et. al. I feel that Shakesville consistently puts out a message of "living, you're doing it wrong!" which I don't appreciate as a living person. I feel like my own thoughts are being dissected and shoved back at me without respect to what I'm actually thinking. In many ways I find that blogger culture (as exemplified by Shakesville) participates in an insidious rhetoric of undermining difference and freedom of thought while claiming to be working for freedom of for women to be whomever they choose. NO, I'm smart enough to see through the smokescreen, ok? I can think for myself and would prefer to interact with the world in a manner I see fit and not according to a rubric which you set forward as "correct." This is an outgrowth of current academic culture, I know. Which is why I am now a writer and not a philosopher.
I think sometimes lines get so hazy that people prefer to always err on the side of appearing nonconfrontational/on the side of the angels, but the whole point of intellectual debate is that debate brings previously unknown insights ON BOTH SIDES. That is the idea anyway, it doesn't always work that way because there will always be petty people who like the sound of their own shrieking, but if there's no debate even the opportunity for synthesis is removed. This is what I think is happening currently in online conversations about feminism.
Mostly I stay well and away from "feminist" debates online. Not because I have no opinions--haha, have you met me? But because I know ahead of time I'm gonna get a bingo card chucked at my head or shut down with debates about the debate that never address the point I'm making. Where have all the intellectuals gone? *weeps into my black turtleneck*
I am a motherfucking feminist, do not tell me HOW to be one.
Ok, that felt good.
I see online debate going like this, mostly:
OP: AND LO YOU ARE ALL BUYING INTO THE PATRIARCHY THIS IS YOUR DOSE OF TRUTHINESS!
Commenter 1: THANK YOU!
Commenter 2: The scales have dropped from my eyes!
Commenter 3: Yes to this!
Me: Is there NO dissent from this?
Troll: SHOW ME YOUR TITS!
Me: Great, they're all going to take that as validation...
Commenter 4: VALIDATION!
Me: Ok, fuck, someone must have posted some new Kirk/McCoy porn, why was I bothering to think about engaging in intellectual debate anyway...I wonder if there are any new macros on ontd_st...
You know, and I am well aware that I'm hardly the only one who behaves this way. I honestly hesitate to even POST this because so many people feel like debate and dissent are oppression. It's not oppression, dude, I actually agree with half the shit you say. I agree that rapes go unprosecuted and that men get away with constant groping of women in public spaces and that girls are still taught that math is for boys and agree that litmus tests are still necessary. HOWEVER, don't tell me when and where I should feel oppressed. I totally support everyone's right to their own life experiences--to the point that I think if X thing triggers you that you should give that feeling as much air time as you like. But I also feel that road is not running both ways. I live and let live, where's the returned respect? I know full well I'm not welcome in those conversations because I've been bingo carded.
Idk, man, isn't the whole idea of internet culture that there is no hierarchy? How's that workin' out for ya?
Here I'm talking about political bloggers, not people who maintain pop culture or other kinds of personal blogs. Many of those are quite amusing with the sort of sharp insights that come from the fractalization of unique human experience.
I don't know WHY I did it (besides that I hate myself today because I have a sinus headache), but I clicked this link to the Shakesville flounce post hoping for some lulz. It's basically a Greatest Hits lp of what I loathe about blog culture. The bottom line is that bloggers who become even marginally popular seem to become self-aggrandizing blogging BNFs--and seem completely unaware of how douchetardy they come off.
I'm also NOT A FAN of groupthink. While I very much support feminist critiques of the world, politics, the great butter/margerine debate, speculative fiction, et. al. I feel that Shakesville consistently puts out a message of "living, you're doing it wrong!" which I don't appreciate as a living person. I feel like my own thoughts are being dissected and shoved back at me without respect to what I'm actually thinking. In many ways I find that blogger culture (as exemplified by Shakesville) participates in an insidious rhetoric of undermining difference and freedom of thought while claiming to be working for freedom of for women to be whomever they choose. NO, I'm smart enough to see through the smokescreen, ok? I can think for myself and would prefer to interact with the world in a manner I see fit and not according to a rubric which you set forward as "correct." This is an outgrowth of current academic culture, I know. Which is why I am now a writer and not a philosopher.
I think sometimes lines get so hazy that people prefer to always err on the side of appearing nonconfrontational/on the side of the angels, but the whole point of intellectual debate is that debate brings previously unknown insights ON BOTH SIDES. That is the idea anyway, it doesn't always work that way because there will always be petty people who like the sound of their own shrieking, but if there's no debate even the opportunity for synthesis is removed. This is what I think is happening currently in online conversations about feminism.
Mostly I stay well and away from "feminist" debates online. Not because I have no opinions--haha, have you met me? But because I know ahead of time I'm gonna get a bingo card chucked at my head or shut down with debates about the debate that never address the point I'm making. Where have all the intellectuals gone? *weeps into my black turtleneck*
I am a motherfucking feminist, do not tell me HOW to be one.
Ok, that felt good.
I see online debate going like this, mostly:
OP: AND LO YOU ARE ALL BUYING INTO THE PATRIARCHY THIS IS YOUR DOSE OF TRUTHINESS!
Commenter 1: THANK YOU!
Commenter 2: The scales have dropped from my eyes!
Commenter 3: Yes to this!
Me: Is there NO dissent from this?
Troll: SHOW ME YOUR TITS!
Me: Great, they're all going to take that as validation...
Commenter 4: VALIDATION!
Me: Ok, fuck, someone must have posted some new Kirk/McCoy porn, why was I bothering to think about engaging in intellectual debate anyway...I wonder if there are any new macros on ontd_st...
You know, and I am well aware that I'm hardly the only one who behaves this way. I honestly hesitate to even POST this because so many people feel like debate and dissent are oppression. It's not oppression, dude, I actually agree with half the shit you say. I agree that rapes go unprosecuted and that men get away with constant groping of women in public spaces and that girls are still taught that math is for boys and agree that litmus tests are still necessary. HOWEVER, don't tell me when and where I should feel oppressed. I totally support everyone's right to their own life experiences--to the point that I think if X thing triggers you that you should give that feeling as much air time as you like. But I also feel that road is not running both ways. I live and let live, where's the returned respect? I know full well I'm not welcome in those conversations because I've been bingo carded.
Idk, man, isn't the whole idea of internet culture that there is no hierarchy? How's that workin' out for ya?
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