a hearty cheer from Liberal Street Fighter
I’ve added a great new blog to my bookmarks: Our Word, where I happily find some voices that are absent from the dailyCLARK post Piegate. Their mission:
Our Word is a community where women’s voices are valued and respected, a space for telling the truth of women’s lives and working together to improve them. This site is owned by all members who post here. It is the aggregate of all of our words, all of our ideas, all of our experiences.
I haven’t registered yet (so many blogs, so little time), but I’ve found some great stuff there in its short time on the web, as well as some discussions that can make a madman squirm. That is a GOOD thing … it’s important and vital that we all get knocked off our pins once in a while, the written equivalent of a zen teacher striking a meditating student near their shoulder blades. Knock out stuck perception, break free the mind … WHACK WHACK.
However, the proliferation of focused sites sometimes worries me. Does the bullying on some sites serve to drive people into blog ghettoes? Some of this worry is mitigated by the very nature of the blogoverse — the contant crossposting, linking and trackbacking helps to keep communication lines open. Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not blaming anybody who goes off and creates a new forum in response to rabid pack behavior and bullying. I blame the bullies, their childish taunts and mocking comments of “well, if you don’t like it blogger is free, start your own damned blog!” This very attitude is contrary to the power that we all like to ascribe to the blogosphere.
That is a worry, and I’m curious to see what others think about it. I do applaud that communities like Our Word are there, having the vital discussions that are increasingly being silenced on big blogs focussed on “party activism” (i.e. fundraising). As a feminist, as a humanist, I do believe that the only way out of the cul-de-sac this culture is trapped in is to confront one another, communicate with one another and try to empathize with one another. I think that is the true power of blogs … not in fundraising. Start direct fundraising, and you invite in the pros, the ward heelers and political fixers. One can only wonder if that is the reason so many voices considered inconvenient are being driven to create their own sites.
I’m glad that people with something to offer aren’t being driven into silence, that vital new communities are springing up, and I’m glad that Our Word is one of them.
I think the answer is a big, fat, juicy YES. And although I’m happy to see the specialized sites, it’s a shame that it’s something that is sometimes done as a reaction to a negative rather than as a positive. On the other hand maybe it is just the best solution for the worse problem.
Liberals are not more emotionally advanced than conservatives and we have all the same personality shortcomings, including prejudice. We’re human and as such, sometimes we fall short of the ideal.
We must each do what we can do – either staying and fighting, creating a new site, joining a new site or leaving completely. No one answer works for everyone and hopefully we can respect the choices that each person makes when confronted with the human nature of those we thought of as comrades or friends.
For myself, recently I saw a few more southerners leave a site due to the bullying of a few. I decided that even though I can’t stop the bullying or the ignorance that goes along with it, I won’t allow it to pass unchallenged. It’s not for them that I respond, it’ll be for anyone else who reads it. I’ve picked a battle and even though I can never win, I’ll just fight my little heart out. If someone wants to post some anti-south crap they can expect that I’ll respond. Every. Damn. Time.
That said, I would still appreciate a site more open to southerners. Someplace to recharge my batteries, where the discussion didn’t have to include the words “stupid” or “racist”. I prefer a more positive attitude, one focused on what we can do now instead of focusing on blaming others.
At least when it comes to Our Word, this is a misperception of the site and how it came about, and what it’s about.
Most of us are not professional bloggers. Of those of us who run ads, most of us don’t have six digits or five digits or even four digits in our annual ad revenues. That means we have to work at other things for a living, and fit online participation into the margins.
What to do with your limited time? When you participate on a site, and don’t feel heard or appreciated, you go elsewhere. The negative of the pie fight happened right then, and right after. People left or ranted or both. Many came here and found a welcoming atmosphere and a more cordial climate of discussion and debate.
We so-called Women Kossacks got together to talk with each other about what had happened. A lot of us were like, “Was I imagining things?” No, we weren’t imagining things, we realized. Talking to each other, we each got perspective on our own individual reactions to what had been happening there in that incident and over the past several months.
But on that temporary site, and in the emails that flew back and forth, the topic quickly moved away from T&A on one site to other issues that concern all women, including women not participating online. And not just issues, but just the kind of connecting that happens, a sharing, that you guys all see when we are found talking together in the kitchen at the cocktail party. In busy lives, some of us get to have girls’ night out. But not all of us by any stretch. So what about a women’s place online? There wasn’t one. Not a community that wasn’t also a commercial venture.
So Our Word was formed almost by osmosis. One person put up a little money, another offered server space, others pitched in on design and setup. It’s a collective effort, and a positive endeavor, not built in reaction to anything than a simple absence of a space like Our Word.
That’s it.
I’m a believer in smart mobs. When all sites cost but a mere mouse-click to visit, people go to where they get something out of the experience. When a site becomes more relevant to a group or demographic, as word gets around people will drift over. If they aren’t staying at whatever site on whatever topic, it’s simply because the site does not offer what they seek.
I’d hesitate to call it a meritocracy, because demand has little to do with quality of content and more to do with what needs the site is fulfilling. People follow relevance, desire, curiosity, and those I think are hard things to quantify. So I think reading anything into the creation and activity on Our Word would be a mistake.
Anyway, I just wanted to dispel some misconceptions that seem to be floating around the internets about Our Word. Thanks for reading.
good thoughts, and thanks for clarifying your mission.
I guess what I like about your new site, and what I was trying to get at, was this:
When you participate on a site, and don’t feel heard or appreciated, you go elsewhere.
I was upset that so many felt that way. I felt that way, but I’m stubborn, and already had a great home at Liberal Street Fighter, so I could just hang around as a gadfly. However, what I think I had allowed myself to believe was that a certain big blog was a forum, where it had quickly morphed into an online continuous party CAUCUS (I think due to the emphasis on raising campaign money). Like any caucus, that meant an increase in berating, bullying and coalition building, and sometimes reprehensible attempts to demand either consensus or surrender.
So anyway, I didn’t mean to imply that Our Word existed SOLELY as a REACTION to a given event, but rather that the influence of “professional bloggers” and party functionaries had made large forums hard to maintain (they are already hard to maintain anyway, but the parties are trying to institutionalize them now, which makes it worse) so people just naturally went where someone wasn’t telling them to shut up.
Liberal Street Fighter grew out of an earlier blowup, the infamous Shut Your Fucking Pie Hole diary, b/c we wanted a place where questions could be asked, assertions put forth and ideas explored. I want to make sure that vital conversations continue.
I love that Our Word seems to be pursuing similar goals. I’ll definitely be reading.
I’m not sure what misconception you think I have. I’m trying to go for shorter posts but I think I’m sacrificing clarity in the process.
I wasn’t talking about your site in my post but rather whether bullying drives people to create other sites. I’ve visited your site, but have no idea, other than what you’ve just posted, about the founding of your site.
Some sites can be formed, amongst other reasons, because on a negative event that occurred. It can be the impetus to change (although that change might have occurred anyway), whether that change is a new site or simply leaving the old site. It doesn’t characterize the form of that change – just because a negative event occurs it doesn’t have to be a negative reaction. Rather my point was that the sites are a positive reaction to a negative event. But I still wished that the negative event hadn’t occurred even if it delayed the positive, yet inevitable, reaction.
Does that make more sense? I’m always willing to try to explain again. Sometimes it takes me multiple attempts to make sense. 😀
My response was not specifically to you, though your phrase quoted above triggered a reply specific to Our Word. There seems to be a general idea that Our Word is a reactionary site, and part of that might have been my fault when I emailed some prominent online writers about the site and gave a thumbnail history much shorter than my post here. The site is much more than I could possibly say about it, but I thought that since it was raised in the context of reactionary exodi (lat. sp?) from dKos, it was worth trying to clarify.
Sorry, I did not mean to set up a straw man.
There’s is never anything wrong with trying to clarify, especially in writing where so much can be miscontrued.
On a side note, I’m so glad you changed from the pink as the default for visitors. I’ll be posting over there eventually (I like to follow a site a bit first). Thanks for all you’ve done.
little in-crowds and cliques has been worrying me, too. But, as I’ve thought about it, I’ve considered some advantages:
The biggest advantage is not being entirely reliant on one playground. I remember a day, some months back when the-site-that-shall-not-be-named went down and many people simply freaked. Wild paranoid fantasies shot thru people’s skulls: Had the owner been arrested in the middle of the night? Had all of our IP’s been seized by the MIB? Some like myself, simply went into a seizure of blog withdrawal, similar to the DT’s. By hack or court order or mere server failure, putting all of our eggs in one basket makes too easy of a target.
Smaller blogs provide a greater sense of community that can’t be sustained in massive blogs. Everyone gets to know each other more personally and feels more confident about expressing themselves. Smaller blogs provide more of a sense of empowerment on a personal level. While the largest ones may have more political clout, many of the individual participants may be left feeling like faceless clogs in a machine… or foot soldiers being given marching orders.
And, it’s not like all of the smaller and larger blog communities aren’t in communication with each other. Cross-posting and references to other sites are rampant these days. If something really big goes down, we’ll all know about it almost simultaneously.
Think of how many blogs from the left and right came together when our right to political activism seemed threatened. I think the same thing would happen if any direct action was required. The small blog communities would gather and brainstorm on what they felt should be done. The best ideas would be repeated across the whole web of inter-related blogs and a general consensus would be achieved rather quickly. Everyone would feel they’d had a part in formulating the strategy and give it their whole heart. At least, I’d like to think it would work that way…
Those are good points about the smaller blogs. And although I too worry sometimes about too many blogs I have to agree there are positives to it.