A while back, the slovene computer magazine “Monitor” published an article about blogs. It stirred up the blogging comunity and fired up one of the hottest debates ever.
Now, the author of the original article is back. With Avengeance.
The article, published in october edition of the same magazine is a follow-up. The reason behind it is probably the launch of the all-famous Rozina server and in the article, the news and information about it cover roughly 50%. It`s the basic stuff, names, criticism and description. However, the other 50% is more interesting.
Author makes a notice in paragraph 2 that all blogs are public and therefore open to any citations and in paragraph 3 he states that he used personal information obtained through blogs as a teasing element in the original article. In paragrap 5 however, he writes this statement “One of the bloggers, obviously proud of her beautiful body, published a few of personal nude photos. When she was informed by a common friend that I intend to publish her blog in a magazine, she intervened and asked me not to do it“. The blog was never published.
Note the discrepancy.
a) All blogs are public.
b) She found out and the information did not not get published.
The rule behind these claims would then be “All blogs are public and subject to publication unless you know that I am doing this and forbid me to publish some of the information“.
The author then makes the most absurd deduction and describes bloggers as “avid teenagers, closet-writers of the letters to the editor and all those who are not feeling well“.
Excuse me? Why don`t you just call us nuts? And what`s with “those who are not feeling well”? Freaks and geeks?
The caption in the article also states that “Some blog cause shrinks are too expensive“. Super fine! Let`s all hold hands and sing Kumbaya while Jack Nicholson is taking us out fishing!
According to the author, blogs are boring. All but those who publish links and interesting sites they found surfing the internet. As if blogs were mere private google clients. Forget the expression of opinions, personal views on the matters and knowledge. We want links to nekkid bubiz!!
The author is also puzzled by Rozina, claiming he does not understand how does Jonas and the gang “afford” to write for free. As if journalists and publicists write absolutely everything for money and not a single word escapes their fingers without someone tossing them a dime. I wonder if the author charges for his own signature.
And to top things off, he states that a personal blog could be interesting but he thinks we`ll have to wait for a long time to get a blog as interesting as the Darwin`s log of the Beagle voyage. OK…what? Seriously…I don`t quite get the point of this. First of all, did he scan the entire blogosphere? In search of the next Darwin? Or is he speaking for the slovenian blogosphere only? In either cases, blogs (note the plural form) are interesting because they offer personal views and ideas. You should never read just one single blog. Especially not in a country as small as Slovenia. Where the point of blogs is exactly their simplicity and variety. And second, Darwin?? Come fucking on. That`s like saying my dog is not smart cause when we play chess he only beats me 2 out of 3 games. No shit Sherlock! Darwin was one of the kind. And personaly, I`d rather read normal blogs than a blog of some bloke who went species-hunting. Just an observation.
In my opinion, the article is unprofessional and clumsy. It`s basically a commercial for Rozina with some mixed information thrown in to make it look credible. It fails to do that, however, it does show that this particular journalist does not have a clue about the stuff he writes about. He deducts stuff out of thin air, he insults the entire blogging community and depicts blogs as a web-asylum for the insane.
And at the very end, he makes the most absurd, text-book of how to not end an article, ending. He writes “I could be wrong.”
Well, if that`s the case, then you should come out and say it before. Cause yes, you are wrong. Dead wrong.
I rest my case.
I agree, there is much that is regrettable about that article. What particularly disappointed me was his utilitarian judgment of blogs. In my opinion, the fact that ordinary people can now easily publish their thoughts, read the thoughts of others, that readers can comment on all this, and that posts can link to each other — these are all really fine things, and I think that blogs are a valuable invention because they facilitate all this, even if most of the stuff that gets published in blogs doesn’t have quite so august a character as our worthy reporter’s monthly editorial in Monitor.
As for the ending, he has an editorial like this in every issue of the magazine and he always ends it with this exact same disclaimer: “I could of course be wrong.” This really infuriates me. What does he expect to accomplish with a disclaimer like that? He is writing an editorial for a fairly reputable magazine, and he doesn’t dare to stand behind his own words? Does he think that the dislaimer will prevent the posterity from laughing at him in case it turns out that he said something that will look silly ten years later? Does he think that, if Bill Gates had said “*I could be wrong*, but I think that 640 K ought to be enough for anybody”, that we wouldn’t be laughing at him like we do now?
“640k Ought to be enough for everybody” is an urban legend. And I am a Linux zealot… 🙂