Blogging To Themselves

Christian Crumlish writes about bloggers who want to change the world, but increasingly find out that they are merely talking to themselves:

Those people are not reading my blog. [...] The Weigh In [has an article] on the limited effectiveness of punditoblogging [...]. Dave Copeland describes himself [...] as a warblogger and expresses frustration about not being able to reach out and change the minds of 'The people who we need to influence, whose minds need to be changed' at the same time communicating a clear in-group subtext through use of warblogger jargon:

[...] most of the bloggers whom I read are conservative and libertarian, and are warbloggers. We pretty much all believe in the same basic principles. We all link to and comment on the same news stories. We all cross-link and reference each other's posts. You see where I'm heading? ... down the path to groupthink. The people who we need to influence, whose minds need to be changed, those people are not reading my blog.

[Christian:] I detect more of a zeal to convert than a desire to reach out to those of other convictions [...]. [Radio Free Blogistan]

Okay, so here are my thoughts: I think it's obvious why these people are not able to reach out and change the minds of their readers. Frankly, I have so grown tired with the rhetoric on some political blogs that I can't be bothered to read them anymore.

As Christian says, most of these bloggers write with "a zeal to convert", but it's done with a rhetoric that reaches no people other than those who already share the same opinion anyway.

Typically, one blogger would lash out at someone or something in his blog to vent his anger; one of his readers would relay the post on his own blog and add his own dose of anger, hatred, world view, belief or whatever, and so the item would propagate itself from blog to blog, becoming more and more unreadable for outsiders while at the same time raising the emotions of those involved in the blog circle.

(If you ask why the rhetoric of these blogs would be that way, I can only quote one blogger whom I've criticized a few times. He wrote: "My rhetoric is angry because I am angry.")

Speaking about blog circles: With their excluding way of talking about things that is totally unfit to attract, lest even convince, outsiders, it's quite obvious that these people are mostly talking to themselves or others in their peer group; if you take a look at the blogs they link to you'll find that these are invariably the same; basically it's a group of about 50 people venting their anger, exchanging polemic and reassuring each other about their political beliefs (why Glenn Reynolds would link to Tom Tomorrow remains a mystery to me).

Please notice that I have no objection whatsoever against that; let them vent their anger as much as they like. I just think that they shouldn't believe that that way they can reach out to anyone outside their circle.

I used to read a couple of these weblogs for their provocative point of view on things; what really spoilt it for me was the wave of anti-German sentiment that sprouted in these blogs after some stupid remarks by some stupid German politicians.

Now I'm not German, and as an average Austrian I have this strong reservation (if not dislike) against most things German, but seeing this wave of anti-German sentiment spread throughout several weblogs and becoming stronger with each iteration really did it for me. The amount of ignorance, nonsense and narrow-mindedness expressed in these weblogs that seemed to thrive on mere nationalist hatred against the Germans was just too much to bear.

Any environment that allows emotions to amplify themselves to such a degree that they get totally out of proportion is bad. In that sense these blogs are bad as long as they remain a closed community that exists merely to reassure each other of one's own beliefs.

Hatemongering is not what I think blogging is about.

So, at least as far as I am concerned I can say it's not a matter of "this guy isn't reading my blog", but rather "this guy isn't reading my blog any longer."

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