Matt Bai in the NY Times, “Can Bloggers Get Real?”:
The Chicago Reader, an alternative weekly, recently profiled a 23-year-old law student who writes on Daily Kos’s front page under the pseudonym Georgia10, positing that she may well be the most-read political writer in the city, even though few people know her real name. (For the record, it’s Georgia Logothetis, and she lives with her parents.) In this way, Daily Kos and other blogs resemble a political version of those escapist online games where anyone with a modem can disappear into an alternate society, reinventing himself among neighbors and colleagues who exist only in a virtual realm.
Bai needs an additional, ontological premise. Perhaps: the size and reality of an audience are inversely proportional. Also, this is an unfortunate sentence: “She says she hopes the convention will show politicians that the bloggers are just ordinary Americans — and vice versa.”
{ 20 comments }
greensmile 05.28.06 at 6:40 am
Night before last, David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan, a Mr. Frum and some scrawny kid from the Democratic party HQ had commandeered the table on the Charlie Rose show and were trying to make sense of what moves and strategies behooved the Democrats in their efforts to make gains amid the rubble of Republican agendas. Toward the end of the segment, Brooks mentions Daily Kos as if it were the militant wing of the party and while still a rabble, now had some impact [not necessarily positive in Brook’s view] on Dem strategy. Frum was less kind and only remarked on the “vicious” tone of discussion in Kos. Only one person at the table, I forget who, felt it was necessary to comment for the audiance sake about what/who Daily Kos is. Thats four people on PBS who ought to know something about how real and how big the audience is.
If any others reading here, caught that segment, I’d like to know if I misread the treatment they were giving the blogs.
almostinfamous 05.28.06 at 6:54 am
David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan, a Mr. Frum and some scrawny kid from the Democratic party HQ had commandeered the table on the Charlie Rose show
sounds like a pretty good premise for a joke. it’s a pity i havent got an original joke in me. anyone else up for it?
John Holbo 05.28.06 at 7:06 am
No wait, that’s too easy – and yet too hard. David Brooks, Andrew Sullivan, a Mr. Frum, some scrawny kid from the Dem party HQ, a penguin and a nun walk into a pub …
Rich 05.28.06 at 7:12 am
Well, aside from the penquin and the nun, I never bothered to watch the show (or is that, “listen to the joke”?). Two conservatives, one Bush love doll and a DLC dude discuss what Democrats need to do.
And there were four democrats representing the various views of the party that were unavailable for Charlie Rose?
No wonder people think Dems don’t have a vision.
greensmile 05.28.06 at 7:42 am
Well, you guys have been a great help. Thanks.
John Holbo 05.28.06 at 9:25 am
Glad to be of assistance.
Dæn 05.28.06 at 9:43 am
In this way, Daily Kos and other blogs resemble a political version of those escapist online games where anyone with a modem can disappear into an alternate society, reinventing himself among neighbors and colleagues who exist only in a virtual realm.
Exactly how is this phenomenon different from the countless other forms of online communication among parties of compatible suasions who’ve never met? And for that matter, who has the time and energy to “reinvent” their political convictions on the net into something other than what education and experience has cultivated over the years?
Delicious Pundit 05.28.06 at 9:47 am
…and the bartender says, “Hey buddy, why the long face?” And Brooks and Sullivan and Frum say, “Because Iraq has cost far more in blood and treasure than we thought.”
And then the horse standing next to them rolls his eyes and walks out of the bar.
And then Tom Friedman says, “Once again, I’ll have what they’re having.”
John Holbo 05.28.06 at 10:24 am
Exactly how is this phenomenon different from the countless other forms of online communication among parties of compatible suasions who’ve never met?
Why stop there? How is it different from the countless other forms of offline communication among parties of etc. who’ve never met … ?
Dæn 05.28.06 at 10:46 am
Characterizing the desire to engage in political discussion as “escapist” strikes me as extremely odd, to say the least. Like John, I’d have thought it’d be obvious that blogging has more in common with, say, Drinking Liberally than World of Warcraft.
Barry Freed 05.28.06 at 11:41 am
Where did Tom Friedman come from? And also I thought the punchline of the version with the nun and the penguin was “rhythm method.”
Jay C 05.28.06 at 11:46 am
Well, it must illustrate some factor or another of modern systems of communications – the copy of the New York Times in which Matt Bai’s piece appears is laying on my dining-room table a few feet away, yet I have just read his article online, thanks to Crooked Timber!
But the occasional infelicitous phrase aside, he does hit on an important point: which he sums up as:
“Online politics can’t flourish in the virtual realm alone, any more than an online romance can be consummated through instant messaging.”
and the inflated self-importance of bloggers (left, right, or center) aside, he is right: politics, like any other endeavor in a “real-world” society, needs to be (and is going to be) governed by the rules and regulations of the social system it reflects – and “offline” life is most assuredly one of those factors. I read enough blogs of various political orientations to recognize the “alternate-reality” mindset which permeates so many of the most ideological/partisan sites – both bloggers/posters and their commentariat. It is events like YearlyKos which, I think, are going to be of increasing importance in shifting the nature of the “political blog” from a sort of current-affairs-oriented RPG into a real (as in “reality-based” without that term’s now-ironic connotations) political force.
Of course, it probably won’t work for any blog much smaller than DailyKos; but at least it is a start.
Seth Finkelstein 05.28.06 at 12:33 pm
Hmm … how many times has the Beltway-chatter crowd been described as living in an alternate reality of their own making, an indulgent society where status within the “game” matters far more than the concerns of ordinary people?
Yentz Mahogany 05.28.06 at 12:43 pm
If we went by John’s hypothesis, then the New York Times would have to publish unreal material, since it has a large audience.
Still, there’s an intuition behind the idea which makes sense. Unfiltered but meaningful emotion can draw crowds, and the greater the crowd, the more densely the emotion is distributed across the set of persons. Sense of the real involves mental discipline. Mental discipline is waived when emotion is unfiltered. Sense of the real is waived in certain crowds, especially when they’re large. This is in some part because it becomes harder and harder to communicate, so you have to resort to emotive signals more readily.
This doesn’t explain Daily Kos, though, because the viewers are from the getgo more isolated from one another than people are in genuine crowds, and they’re fully able to communicate in sophisticated ways. And in one sense, her use of the pseudonym would only inhibit emotion by blocking the sense of trust that you get from knowing someone’s real identity. So this would call the intuition into doubt.
Though in another sense, it would provide a loss of inhibitions for the reader to be critical; and in conversations which ensue with direct contact with the person, a sense of trust may be saved. Also, politics tends to provide its own emotions (especially when dealing with groups feeling underpopular, like Democrats). This would seem to support the intuition.
(Also, daen, your comment is spot-on. I wish I’d caught the irony of the statement.)
nick s 05.28.06 at 1:25 pm
In this way, Daily Kos and other blogs resemble a political version of those escapist online games where anyone with a modem can disappear into an alternate society, reinventing himself among neighbors and colleagues who exist only in a virtual realm.
And ‘political journalism’ in the US resembles an game in which anyone with a keyboard can reinvent himself as a chronicler and opinion-former. Sad thing is, Matt Bai really does think it’s just a game.
Bill Gardner 05.28.06 at 2:38 pm
Like John, I’d have thought it’d be obvious that blogging has more in common with, say, Drinking Liberally than World of Warcraft.
So you would think. However, Brooks, Frum, Sullivan, Rose, and the scrawny kid are on Warcraft. Find the cave due east of the Grove of the Ancients in the Twilight Vale. It’s a fairly easy level ~15 quest; but you need to kill them all, quickly, or they bore you to death.
Ian Whitchurch 05.29.06 at 6:28 am
Welcome to an All-Azeroth Wtfpwned Scene Investigations special on ‘Da Winnerz’, live from our new studios in sunny Booty Bay.
We’re going to the tale of the tape to the Kentucky-06 fight last year – a knock-down drag-out battle, a classic Shaman vs Paladin matchup between Alice Kerr and Ben Chandler.
Now, between professionals, this matchup is a classic endurance fight, not so much about one killing blow, but mana management over the long term. For you noobs, this fight is about mana per second, not short term burst.
And when we say mana, folks, in this fight we mean bucks for advertising.
To recap, Chandler had the early bucks advantage, and then Kerr pulled ahead and looked to have the sustainability to win the fight.
The classic Wtfpwned Moment then happened, when a massive zerg of Kossacks the waved into range, flagged up and hoed into the fight.
Individually, these Kossaks are noobs who really shouldnt step out of Goldshire, capable of a maybe 20, maybe 50 point Lesser Heals or Renews, critting for the occasional 250 or 500, which is total noob stuff in an all-purple epic-ed out endgame standup fight like this one.
But when they all added up, numbers counted and Chandler got 80 000 total in the three days, exactly when he needed it from the mass of Kossak zerglings.
This hundreds-strong assist train of zerglings let Chandler dominate the last segment of the fight, and he pulled away to win – Kerr was getting help, but a few sporadic Greater Heals from De Lay and friends just wasnt a match for the zerg of tiny contributions marshalled by Kos.
A classic Wtfpwned moment, with Kos and the Kossaks effectively delivering the win for Ben Chandler in KY-06.
And thats Da Winnerz from Wtfpwned Scene Investigations, live from sunny Booty Bay.
r. clayton 05.29.06 at 1:44 pm
Even ignoring the contradiction (online politics can’t exist anywhere else but in the virtual realm), I’m not getting the point. Unlike romantic consummation, political consummation (casting a vote, offering a proposal) is a solitary act. You can argue about the nature and affects of online political seduction, but I don’t think you can sensibly argue that it makes consummation impossible or significantly more ridiculous than it otherwise would be.
Bill Gardner 05.29.06 at 2:53 pm
Re #17: 1337.
For the uninitiated: ‘Wtfpwn’ is the village in Poland where the first regexes were mined, hence the hacker interest. The term drifted into gamer slang. In current usage, it rhymes with ‘meringue’.
Kenny Easwaran 05.29.06 at 4:43 pm
“Online politics can’t flourish in the virtual realm alone, any more than an online romance can be consummated through instant messaging.â€
Matt Bai obviously doesn’t own a webcam…
Comments on this entry are closed.