Let's just get one thing straight off the bat:
We are not nice people.I am not a nice person in general. I am nice to those that I care about and my friends but that's where it stops. Done and dusted.
Why is it that we think the blogosphere is different? We as bloggers are all self serving. We all want hits, we all want money, we all just want and that's the truth.
With this years blog awards we saw the turning of the tides. That was the beggining of the real age of the blogosphere. The truth is that we all kind of harbour jealousy towards someone else who blogs something first, who thinks of something new or who creates something that we didn't think of. Then we shut our mouths, "praise" that person and keep deep seated rage towards them.Take Mr
Richard Catto for instance. I applaud him. Why? Because he is harsh and most of the time he is looking to be a mean guy and succeeds. I don't particular like him but his honesty and brazen comments are appreciated. Many of them are out of line in my view but that's my view.When we don't like something he says we pussy foot around the giant elephant standing in the sphere.
What is that elephant? Fact is we all dislike someone, if not many people, most of the time. But in the blogosphere we try not to. This is not real. This is not the way the world works.
Justin and I had a discussion about the "community" that we call the blogosphere. It is not much of a community if we are honest. At an extreme push there are 200-300 bloggers (real people) who are extremely active and entrenched in the local blog scene. That's it. It is impossible for us to take a liking to all 300 of these people. It wouldn't happen in real life so why would it happen online?It doesn't. And if you think that it does you are still living in the old bubble of local-blogosphere 1.0. We are now in version 2.0 of the local space. This space is not so pleasant as
Jon Cherry discovered when he organised the blog awards this year. Unfortunately the events disdain was directed at him and he became the scape-goat.Now things have changed. People are talking a big game and others are responding with even bigger talk. I almost got sued, which was not pleasant either. Bolton Deventer existed for a week or two and then dissapeared. But we all still pussy foot around and act like it's OK and we are happy and "Hahahaha he got us". Fuckem. He didn't get me, I didn't link to him, didn't blog about him (until now) and commented a couple of times. I refuse to take that shit again. I wont do it.I'll tell you why I wont do it, because if this space was larger people like Deventer, Mclaren, me and my blog would all be lost in space. Because we are a small, new and fresh sphere we are trying to be pleasant and entertain every notion and partake in every conversation that pops up. If this space were bigger I would be an insipid blip on the blog-radar. In fact, I think I am an irrelevant voice in the grand scheme of things and so are many other bloggers who just don't see it the same way.Ego is an issue. Many people don't like that about our little local blog space. I love it. I love the game, I love the hype and I love the big talk. Why? Because it's the closest thing to reality that I can experience online. Egos are real, competition is real and disagreements are real to. Let's embrace it, get pissed off and move on.Why does every little incident have to be turned in to a massive ordeal that everyone partakes in and get's riled up about? Why do we even entertain the bullshit and give the likes of Deventer hits?