Blogging Kills
December 05, 2005
Some people are upset with an article in the latest FT that is somewhat critical of blogging as a diminution of life and that thing, “community”–rather more a word-husk than a thing. It is commonly employed as a vague linguistic gesture toward a conceptual, hypothetical, and largely phantastic entity. This bespeaks a warning. That giant sucking sound you hear, blogger/blog-reader, is your former quiddity. Mon semblable, mon frère!
I say the offending article did not go far enough. All bloggers who care for their soul’s health should do a special penance. I recommend a hair-shirt as well. Of course the problem is not merely blogging, but all manner of internet and computer use. Blogging intermixes the vices of any desk-job with that of journalism, and to the extent that a blogger adopts the style of an attack dog, a gossip, or a “personality” columnist–or worse, the exaggerated egotism of a rock star–it is a most damning activity. Incurvatus in se! The better one is at it, the more subtle the vices and the greater the risk.
Worse still is the use of internet “forums” (and blog comments to similar effect) which are the real idols, the real false community substitutes for what Walker Percy called “naught-selves,” not to mention a magnet for buffoons, bullies, and common fools. (Now that FT has a blog, let’s hope it does not acquire a “forum.” The ROFTERS email list-serve is quite deadly enough on its own.) In short, a true anti-liberal has to pretty well forswear the internet, as I do. Remember, these messages are all keyed in by Smogarian peasants and others who receive my ink-bespattered parchments via carrier-pigeon. (The peasants are spared contamination as they cannot read in any language, and their keyboards have been alterred to harness the energy of their typing to power their community’s hydroponic barley-farm.)
This is Blogging Kills in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: The Contagion of Girardianism | Next: When Children are Not Welcome in the Church | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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