Here’s the conundrum. Why do people bother criticizing blogs when nobody forces anybody to read them?
Liz Ditz hit the nail on the head when she wrote this:
“To be fair, there are a lot of blogs, often including this one, that are of interest only to those who write them and a few others. I just thought of another analogy: most photographs are bad, and few are of interest to anyone but the photographer. Do we then smash all the cameras? Ridicule the art of photography?”
I can understand how it can be annoying when blogs are over-represented in search engine results, particularly Google. If I’m looking for information, I want the good stuff, the most authentic sources and most authoritative opinions, not the musings of a well-connected blogger who happily admits to knowing nothing about the subject. That said, sometimes the false blog hits lead to the good stuff, or least give clues on how I can improve my search strategy.
The type of blogs which seemed the most odious to Blaise Cronin (please excuse this second post mentioning him, but writing it will help me get this out of my system) are personal LiveJournal blogs. It is a myth that LiveJournal people are mostly exhibitionists, who delight in baring their souls and airing their dirty laundry before the whole world. In my experience, most LiveJournal blogs are deliberately set up to repel the robots/spiders of search engines. The meaning of this is that many LJ bloggers don’t want to be found in Google and prefer not to be read by the Blaise Cronins of this world.
Because of this, and because most LiveJournal diary-style entries contain few links, which are so important to search engines, I highly doubt that Blaise Cronin has had too many of his searches clogged up by LiveJournal type blogs.
If so, then what is his problem?
Is he just being mean-spirited or snobbish to criticize so vehemently amateur bloggers whom he would actively need to seek out to read? Remember that he called these blogs narcissistic and banal and sententious drivel before bloggers started criticizing him. I wish he would admit that that was not a shining example of civil discourse.
Is he somehow threatened by the ability of the great unwashed masses to communicate their thoughts, unmediated by the traditional gatekeepers of publishers and editors (and sometimes, librarians)?
Blogs are a levelling force in discourse. If one looks at academic credentials, I am a nobody when compared with Blaise Cronin, yet I am able to challenge his opinions via the blog medium. He might not listen or respond, but at least I have been able to state my disagreement in the public forum that is the internet. If Blaise Cronin had written something which had really annoyed me back in 1990, what recourse would I have had then? Not being an academic, it is extremely unlikely that I could have had my opinions published in an academic journal. Maybe if I was lucky, a letter to the editor in the university’s newspaper, and who would have read that?
I can see why he wouldn’t like blogs if this technology has the ability to breach some of the protections provided by the ivory tower.
In the blogosphere as I understand it, people generally do not defer to anyone, irrespective of their academic or political accomplishments. In my idealized view of the blogosphere, it doesn’t matter who you are, only what you say. It does not matter if Blaise Cronin has written hundreds of books and is considered to be a very smart guy, if he says something stupid on the blogosphere, anyone can call him on it, including his worst former student.
Is this necessarily a good thing? No, I can imagine situations where this will cause problems, where we might wish that there was more deference. But on the whole, who really believes that broader participation in public discourse is a bad thing? Well, those who had a more privileged position beforehand, they wouldn't be so thrilled about the idea. The key thing is that there is no stuffing this genie back into its bottle. All we can do is accept the changes and adapt to them.
