Especially those that pride themselves on the "high caliber of their discussion"-and the "fine people on their front porch". Fortunately I jumped in the gutter from the start-so I have no such lofty ambitions.
But this post-by my Canadian Counterpart-quite accurately describes why the collective blogosphere is a huge failure. Like every major internet outlet for public expression, the blogosphere has been hijacked by those who care nothing for it. Just about every outlet for public discussion on the internet has been ruined by stupidity, and that is quite true in blogs that call themselves "Mil-blogs". And yes Uncle Dumbo-that includes you.
Blogs in general, suck. This place less than others perhaps-but the symptoms of the disease are here as elsewhere. Here at Far East Cynic HQ, however , we do strive to be accurate-which is about the only thing keeping us going. But the pissy idiots like Erik Erikson, 3/4 of the mil-blogs, just about all of the major political blogs and even some of the expat ones-all have tested positive for incurable echo chamber syndrome.
Look, I know how to be successful, influential blogger who has lots of readers and makes money from their work. It isn't hard, really.
You always, always reinforce what your audience already believes and never challenge those core assumptions, regardless of how intellectually inconsistent or ridiculous they might be. You keep your posts under 800 words, which obliterates the possibility of putting anything that happened before last month in some kind of historical context, You mercilessly attack the other side, while justifying or ignoring the excesses of your own. Of course, if you can find a marginal cartoon character, like Jeremiah Wright or David Duke on your own side to denounce, that makes you look "fair." Whatever you do, make sure that cartoon character isn't Sarah Palin, lest you be denounced as "sexist" by people who spent sixteen years making Hillary Clinton jokes.
You link-whore relentlessly, and suck up to folks with audiences larger than your own. And you never disagree with your own side in public, no matter how damaging to your credibility doing so might be. Look at the high level of support George W. Bush had among very conservative Republicans during his spending spree and military adventurism, or the very liberal support for Bill Clinton during his corporatist term in office. Then look to what those former supporters say about them now.
It is a bigger trend really, and affects all major internet outlets. Twitter? Useless except for really famous people to get in trouble with. Nothing meaningful I know can be said in 140 characters or less-and besides who follows average nobodies like me? Facebook? Yea, that's rich. Here's a test-try to have a meaningful discussion with a "friend" who loves the teabaggers has gone to the dark side. It will simply lead to a gang fight-and no meaningful discussion will be accomplished. Do it enough and you learn quickly to move to stupid pictures of people on vacation, cars, any other innocuous thing. Out of fear mostly.
Major Media comments? Most require registration-and then spam comes your way as a result.
Its all a 100% , gold plated, failure.