December 22, 2001

Love among the blogs

Well, well. Seems that one of my predictions for 2002 is already outdated. No Miss Chloe, I admit, still I thought I was being really forward-looking with my prediction of blogger marriages in 2002. Seems I'm behind the times. Got this email from Medley at Uncorked...

Assuming you're talking about people who write weblogs in general, and not just those who use the 'Blogger' tool, there have been a few weblogger weddings already!
My own, for one.
Rebecca's Pocket to JJG
The authors of BackupBrain (if I'm remembering correctly)
... and I'm sure there have been a couple of others.
I'm just sayin'...

-Medley -- A weblog about IT, policy, current events, and more from an INTJ-feminist-geek perspective. http://uncorked.org/medley/


How cool is that? So now they are on notice--we're waiting for the conception part, guys!

Friends, family, workfolk, they all ask me--who is this "RageBoy" you keep talking about? (same folks who keep asking what a blog is). To understand someone, I always say, take a look at where they came from. This week Steve Larsen gives us poignant glimpses into RageBoy's early rants in chapter 1 of a book he's working on, "What Were We Thinking?" Locke has posted the chapter in an EGR Send. Here's an example of the sensitive, empathetic and sometimes passionate character we know as RageBoy:

"I've been stuck at IBM for a year with my thumb up my ass and I'm waiting for someone to figure out what the fuck is going on and they've got plans I give them all the time and they file them and say 'Yeah, Chris, that's great,' then they take me into some fucking egg carton room and tell me what I've got to work with, which is nothing, no money no equipment no staff, and then they give me a check and I fucking go home and sit there, where I've got better tech stuff anyway than IBM where it took me three solid months to get an internet hookup, and this is what they want me to do, see, they want me to do the internet thinking, and get them into it, but the first fucking thing they tell me is you've got no resources and 'Oh, by the way, don't talk to anyone about this stuff without clearing it through channels.' A fucking year. And I sit here and some of what I'm hearing is how to work in the system. Well I say fuck the system -- it's dead it's stupid it's non-responsive it's counter productive it's fucking socially evil and if we put any more of our goddamn time into propping up these dead-ass morons we deserve what we fucking get."

December 20, 2001

Blog Predictions for 2002

Some iteration of instant messaging and chat functions will merge with blogs for folks to talk amongst themselves--taking 'blogback' to the next level.

More idiots will begin blogging, annoying the hell out of blog pioneers and increasing the velocity of insult hurling.

Doc Searls will announce the first blogger wedding mid-year, when friends who met blogging decide to tie the knot. The conception of their first child will be bloggerized. RageBoy will be all over that shit.

More celebrities will jump on the blog bandwagon.

RageBoy and Winer will go at it again, likely using biological and chemical weapons this time. There will be no winner, but lots of memes.

Corporations will get wind that employees are blogging during work hours and issue anti-blogging policies.

Smart companies will get wind that employees are blogging during work hours and imagine the possibilities.

A major motion picture will feature a character who blogs. The character will be a psychopathic alcoholic intellectual head case.

The part will be offered to Jack Nicholson, who will turn it down because bloggers don't get cute chicks.

Some company, somewhere, will take Gonzo Marketing to heart and underwrite some blog, somewhere, somehow. Please.

Community blogs--or "party blogs" like Gonzo Engaged--will grow in residents and in numbers, morphing into their own form of blogging. These forms will separate from one-man blogs, which will lean more toward journal and journalism than community.

David Weinberger will stop blogging again, only to start again in 2004.


December 18, 2001

tis the season to take pot shots
fa la la la la la la la la

Wow, someone got up on the wrong side of the blog today. Wouldn't have come across this rant by Cameron Barrett on Dave Winer's blogger of the year contest, but RageBoy in a rare two-EGR-send turned me on to the Contest, and later in his blog, to Cam's rant on the unfairness of it all.

My first suspicion: That Cam's relying on memic propagation to boost his OWN standings in the contest as we rush in large numbers to Winer's defense... In other words, me thinks he doth protest too much:

"I was not surprised then, to find my own site (CamWorld) nominated in the Blogger of the Year category. I have a feeling that Dave wanted to include some non-Manila weblogs in his list of nominees, so as to appear less one-sided. Well, thanks but no thanks Dave. I don't care one bit for this awards contest. My site has been around for a long time now, and I have never once asked for it to be nominated for any kind of award. Nor have I ever intentionally submitted it for any awards consideration. Even for awards that actually mean something like the yearly SXSW Interactive competition, where Web site excellence is actually celebrated by a large group of well-repected peers, and not by some overly self-important, egotistical, software programmer in Silicon Valley with a Web site."

Because if he really means what he says, then Cam needs to summon the spirit of the Blog and remember what we're in this for. It's not about democracy. It's not about uniformity. And it's certainly not about being "unbiased." The days of pretend-not-to-have-an-opinion journalism are over.

Blogging is all about what I think. What Dave thinks. What RageBoy thinks. What Doc thinks. What bloggers who've not yet blogged think. It's saying what I want. How I want. It's making up whatever fucking contest strikes my fancy. It's about the Five Fish Blog Award and the Scripting News Awards. And if Cam decides to throw up a CamWorld contest, then I'm down with that too.

And one more thing. You don't see us blog-girls taking pot shots at each other. More proof that blogs imitate life? So boys of the blog, take a deep breath, make peace, and go get your vote on.

-later