Flashes of Panic

Two bits from the Time article on weblogs, which (as usual) suffers from the oversimplification and utter lack of nuance unavoidable in sound-bite magazines.

One, the very first paragraph, which closes like this after introducing three well-known weblog people including Slashdot’s Rob “CmdrTaco” Malda:

Today they are some of the most influential media personalities in the world. You can be one too.

Oh, come on. Can’t we put that myth to rest? I’m not going to be even a moderately influential media personality from Flashes of Panic. First, I had much more “influence” (if you can call it that) when I was at RW, had about two orders of magnitude more readers (assuming as many as a dozen people are reading this,) and frankly, I’d rather drink too much cheap beer. Second, there will never be another Slashdot, assuming you can call Slashdot a weblog. (I won’t start that fight.) There will not be another Instapundit. Other than a very small number of full-time weblog authors, every widely-read weblog I’ve seen has been written by someone who is well known for some other reason. (Those of you who arrived here via my place in the twenty-author “Bell Lap” rotation on the RW site, raise your hands. Uh huh, I thought so.)

Starting a weblog in order to become a media personality is like learning an instrument in order to become a rock star. Fine, maybe you will; rock stars have to come from somewhere, after all. But if you don’t find you enjoy the instrument just for the sake of what it lets you say, no matter who’s listening… well, you’re wasting your time. (Yeah, big words from someone who’s barely been at it four months, but I was cynical before I started, too.)

Much better, later in the article:

Blogs can be a great way of communicating, but they can keep people apart too. If I read only those of my choice, precisely tuned to my political biases and you read only yours, we could end up a nation of political solipsists, vacuum sealed in our private feedback loops, never exposed to new arguments, never having to listen to a single word we disagree with.

I don’t think I could say that any better.

Now playing: A Pagan Place from A Pagan Place by The Waterboys