Blogging, etc.

[Colin]

OK, I am admit it. I am old, fat and balding. Maybe that is

why I don’t get the blogging thing.

• There

  are a few influential news outlets on line these days (USA Today,

  Washington Post, NY Times, Wall St. Journal).

• There

  are a few influential literary magazines left (Atlantic Monthly, The New

  Yorker).

• There

  are a few really good authors who I have to consume all of their works

  (Pat Conroy, John Sanford, John D. MacDonald, Sue Grafton, James Lee

  Burke, Robert B. Parker, etc.)

• And

  yes, there are a few titillating blogs I read just because I am a living, breathing,

  thinking, single male animal (http://www.literotica.com/stories/new_submissions.php,

  http://tampa.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/SexAndLove#,

  http://thelatebloomerfinallyblooms.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&updated-max=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=50)!

So my point is, who has time for all this blogging and Twittering?

With the exception of my charming friend Harley May (http://harleymay.livejournal.com/),

who is an exceptional easy writer to read, what does anybody care what Joe Shmow

says?

Several decades ago, the eminent science fiction writer, Isaac

Asimov, wrote an article for Business or News (?) Week lamenting that the

problem with direct democracy is that it gives equal votes to both idiots and geniuses.

The same logic applies to talk radio and TV. Who cares about the uneducated and

inexperienced opinions of morons on the Jerry Springer show? This is about as entertaining

as cold tea.

Give me the grasping, greedy, bloody power struggles of news

reality, the archly crafted story of literature or the venal, prurient appeal

of porn. Give me something with a double shot, not the unfiltered rainwater of

the masses.

Color me elitist then. But I would rather be mentally,

intellectually or even physically stimulated than waste my precious time

sucking down the tepid drool of some Idiot AsIsMe.

[RichardP]

While I am sure there has always been a sizeable portion of the population who revel in expressing their opinion to whomever will listen, the internet has now made that possible without the necessity of having a face to face listener. Combine that with the increasing levels of narcissism in successive cohorts of young adults over the past 25 years, and we now have a large number of people who not only want to express their opinion on anything and everything, but are convinced that their opinions cannot be wrong. Their perfect view can now be presented to potentially millions in the online world. Some social scientists attribute some of the change in narcissism to the self-esteem enhancement curricula of the 1980s, designed to strengthen children's and teen's resistance to peer pressure to do drugs, etc., but now known to have virtually no effect at all on the targeted undesired behaviors.

What is scary is that a lot of the current fiery political debate is supported not by knowledge, scientific fact, or any sort of hard evidence, but only by what some unqualified a-hole said on a blog.

But, that is just my opinion.[]