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Culture Clash
Does anyone here talk about anything other than politics?
If you haven't noticed, ever since the big software changeover, there's generally been two kinds of people that are posting here: (1) people who navel-gaze about why the site is different, and what's going to happen to the way we used to blog, and why we lost our beloved tracker, and, (2) everyone else.
I, obviously, am in the former group.
What's clear to me at this point is TPM has two very distinct audiences, that of Election Central, and the old Cafe. What the new software change has done has brought these two audiences -- cultures, really -- together.
No offense to the Election Central people, but one of the happiest days of my blogging life was the day TPM moved you all over to another site.
I know that sounds rude. I don't mean it to be. We're just different animals, you and I.
You are, and this is simply my impression from the last few days, as well as knowing the old EC, fast and furious, breathlessly politically-astute and breathlessly consumed by politics. And sometimes, for me, it can be too much.
Don't get me wrong -- maybe it's too much for me, but I also admire this about you. I admire your passion, your knowledge. How you know things about undeclared delegates, or why Minnesota was so important to Obama on Super Tuesday. How you know about the "micro" of politics. I feel I can learn a lot from the people here who know so much more about politics than I know...and I actually thought I was pretty good!
Incidentally, it actually troubles me, then, when I read the "Obama Supporters Think He's Jesus" sentiment in many people's comments -- if nothing else, Obama's supporters are passionate about politics. Passionate, just like...you. What more could we want from people (other than having them vote exactly like you?)?
Anyway, the point of all this is, I've noticed that we're different. Not in a bad way; not in a good way.
Just different.
Which is, in case you were wondering, why some of us are spending so much time navel-gazing these days.
Just different...
I am hoping that I can learn from you. I am hoping I can get used to the much faster pace of things around here. I am hoping our two worlds end up being much better off by colliding.
OK, that's that.
So seriously, does anyone here talk about anything *other* than politics?
Cooking? American Idol?
Anything???
Oh, forget it...
Comments (36)
"So seriously, does anyone here talk about anything *other* than politics?"
You know I do, but I'm a bit intimidated at the moment. I'm taking a wait and see attitude to see how everything design-wise shakes out.
Glenn
February 7, 2008 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I sent an e-mail to Andrew earlier today, seeing if tags / categories can be added to the reader blogs. I would help filter things down for those of us wanting something different at the time.
I think we're seeing so much political posting simply because we're in the middle of a political season.
Plus, would imagine there's an internal censor many people have about posting more personal entries. "This is a political site, we should post political entries," kind of thinking.
Personally, I'd love to see the blogs branch out into more varied topics.
February 7, 2008 3:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've been yelling about tags for two years. I hope we get them.
As far as the non-political, I never tire of frivolity.
February 7, 2008 4:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
cscs,
I bet you'll get used to the new system. Hang in there.
I agree with you that there are both Obama and Clinton supporters here posting a lot of unproductive nonsense about the other candidate and her or his supporters. But I think at the end of the primary campaign supporters of whichever candidates loses will line up behind the winner.
I really enjoy American Idol, by the way; and am today enjoying some really good homemade pizza.
February 7, 2008 3:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Idol and pizza?
We have much in common, my friend.
So happy the auditions are finally over...on to Hollywood!
February 7, 2008 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I live in Mexico and haven't figured out how out of date the Idol shows I see here are. Last night they were auditioning in Omaha.
February 7, 2008 5:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
You're a couple shows behind...
February 7, 2008 7:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I dunno. It is kind of like in sports where play-by-play and color commentary can enhance the experience of watching until it goes overboard with either ridiculous stats or excesses of personality. Then it is a turn off.
February 7, 2008 3:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
cscs has a perceptive way of putting it. I realize that, not long before the change, I posted my only blog item ever, wondering why there was so little posting on issues or other news compared to other popular sites (Yglesias, Drum, Klein, those of many of our own posters), so much shallow shilling and predicting. Looks like I had in mind a market segment that not as large and important as I thought, and reality was for Election Central readers. Judging by TPM, it may also just lie closer to Josh's heart.
At the time, another find old TPM Cafe user blamed the changes on, yes, old timers like me. We'd uprated the worst posts, the short, shrill, kind with cuss words, chasing out good contributors like Dr. Slaughter. In other words, we had MJR vs Larry because no one else would contribute here. Now, I'm dubious about that for lots of reasons.
(1) Seems to me lots of fine guests have contributed to the book club and elsewhere. (2) I don't admit ever to have rating or writing comments that way; if anything, I navel gaze way too long, and comments on (say) Yglesias or Stirling when they were here neared reverence. (3) Other long-standing commenters behaved I thought, even better. I'd learn policy from Dan K or Howard B any day, and I thought their contributions to America Abroad and elsewhere were exemplary. The corresponding posters themselves deigned to participate from day 1. (4) Most old timers tuned out the mad influx of comments by libertarians or those violently pro- and against Israel.
But looks like the culture conflict was different than any of us guessed.
February 7, 2008 4:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't agree all that much with the "we're mean to posters" theory, either. It's possible, of course, but I think it's more people coming into blogs without understanding what they're all about. (Discussion, not lecture...)
February 7, 2008 7:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know, cscs. I recall commentors being particularly vicious in tearing down book theses, and contributing content. The authors at the Book Club tended to reply, or at least make reply-posts.
It tended to be the professionals and politicians who didn't reply to commentors.
February 7, 2008 7:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
jhaber,
I am glad you brought up the America Abroad rise and fall into the culture clash discussion. I don't know what expectations were active while setting up the Election Central site but the hope of having "establishment" and academic figures converse with the TPM Cafe commentarium was clearly a goal of Josh and company and it didn't work out.
Bringing a horse to water and that sort of thing.
February 7, 2008 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Second try:
To me there are 3 audiences. One group was drawn by Josh's original blog that spawned The Muck. I'm in that group. Another was drawn to the Cafe and the idea of many people posting. I'm in the group of folks that came (late) to the Cafe and enjoyed the back benches more than the front pages. Then there's Election Central... a world of it's own... and while I pay more attention to it now with this new format, it's like a boxing ring there!
The problem of having blog posts ends up at 3 places instead of just one (the Cafe) seems to be driving the discontent. Because it's leading to an overlap and more blogs and more rancor. Maybe some of the rancor is really due to simple frustration that these changes have taken far longer and been more disruptive than anyone could have imagined... and they were just thrown at us without warning.
I do think the annoying tone of EC is infiltrating the "community" of the old "back bench" Cafe, cuz it had already infiltrated the front pages for sure before the change-over.
So.... that's my take. At this moment in time. At a moving target....
February 7, 2008 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's the Cafe reader blog community I miss. Things move so quickly down the page now, and without tracking, it's really hard to see who's talking to whom. I almost never read anything on the front page; you can get the stuff all over. The backbench was my spot :-)
February 7, 2008 5:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
me too (sniff...)
Maybe things will settle down. Or they can have a special area called: Back Bench.
♪
February 7, 2008 6:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
If I hadn't already complained so much, I'd give Andrew even more grief. They should have had a beta site before going live with this. This just has too many bugs and is far too different from the other Cafe incarnation to have just put it up and then try to resolve issues for a large audience. But it ain't mine. Namaste.
February 7, 2008 8:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
At least it didn't take 20 minutes for this comment to show, but my reply to seashell is at the bottom. This ain't user friendly. I hope the savings in memory and code overhead was worth the alienation of users. Yeah, I'll take some cheese with that whine. But it's damn frustrating.
February 7, 2008 8:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problem of having blog posts ends up at 3 places instead of just one (the Cafe) seems to be driving the discontent. Because it's leading to an overlap and more blogs and more rancor
I agree, and while I guess I understand the cross-posting idea, I don't think it works. The idea is visibility, but, if there are different types of bloggers in the different "areas" of the overall site, the cross-posting doesn't work.
Perhaps specifying on that sidebar, here are the Cafe posts, here are the EC posts, would help.
And, yes, sorry, I forgot the Muck. :-)
February 7, 2008 7:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Cafe used to have lively Discussion Tables where I could throw out something on culture, or science, and even inside talk like site management.
Josh and Andrew are defending, over at my moaning blog post. If they are pleased to clean up messy code relationships, I understand, but I'm not likely to be happy with the new regime, unless there are lots of features we have yet to see.
If the point was to be like Election Central, I found that page uninviting before.
February 7, 2008 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm tired of my posts getting eaten...
February 7, 2008 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Another problem. What's with these blog posts that are really nothing more than 1 or 1 line comments and could be in a thread?
Seems like it's a "blog attack" - to move other blogs off the page.
February 7, 2008 5:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I can't count! That should have been "1 or 2 line"
(almost did it again...)
Same difference anyway!
February 7, 2008 6:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
cscs, you put up a real blog post, with a name and a set of coherent thoughts, about which I will happily comment.
It has been a culture clash. It is quite like that between martini, beer, wine, and sweet tea from the South. And I agree that it is about pace and style: the difference between a sentence and a fragment, an essay and a paragraph.
I am having better luck at actually posting, commenting, etc. But I still have to make sure I am very currently logged in, that I save my writing, and that I give comments a minute or two to show up within the thread where I put them. Is that progress, or am I just thanking God for very small favors?
February 7, 2008 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Carol, thanks. It's definitely progress. I keep forgetting to make sure I'm logged in...I haven't gotten in the habit yet.
You would think me yelling, "Damn!" over and over again, I would get the message. Thick head.
February 7, 2008 7:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for posting this, cscs. As usual you nailed what most of us were thinking even if we weren't aware of it. :-)
I wonder if there is some reason the EC folks couldn't have their own 'Reader Blogs' on the main EC page, separate from these RBs?
Someone named RH posted a blog with the title, "it's okay if your investment gets you influence". The entire contents of said blog consisted of:
So I commented that the only thing I know about Frontline is it is the stuff I put on my pets for fleas.
February 7, 2008 6:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Or, there are check boxes already for Muckraker or Election Central. Why not find a way to move the database entry to either one of those site's "Reader Blogs"?
February 7, 2008 7:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Eric, check me on this, but it looks like the RBs are already separate. For instance, the one I just wrote about, "it's okay if your investment gets you influence", is listed directly above this one in the Cafe, but it's not in ECs Reader Blogs at all. I think they have been posting to the wrong one.
February 7, 2008 7:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think it's the wrong one -- I think that's the idea, to be able to post one post in all three areas. That's the idea of getting our posts more exposure.
I like the intention and spirit of it, just not yet convinced it's working for the blog community.
February 7, 2008 7:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
seashell, what you're saying is correct. However, that's not what I was talking about - and I didn't explain myself well enough.
When we click "Muckraker" or "Election Central" on a blog post, only the link to the blog post gets put on the MR or EC site.
The blog entry is still housed on the Cafe site.
What I meant was that, choose either MR or EC, and the post gets moved over to a separate "Reader Blog" database on its respective site. There would be no blog entry in the Cafe.
Kind of like, you can only post a blog entry in one place.
February 7, 2008 7:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I get you now, Eric, as brain catches up to fingers on the keyboard, and thanks for explaining. This is one time that I'm all for separate but equal!
February 7, 2008 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, you definitely win for Best Avatar. Love that!
On those one-liner posts, I wonder if that's people not knowing how to post, cause they're new to it? Or it's just nonsense. I would hope that if people tried to post, and it ended up looking not like they wanted, they would post a comment, and maybe even ask for help.
We're all nice here, and are always helpful. We've at least got that going for us. :-)
February 7, 2008 7:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the best Avatar win - as soon as I saw it I knew it was THE one.
The one liners might also be some connection to a thread or post that makes sense to the EC crew, but not to us in the Cafe. Either way, they seem disruptive rather than contributive, and furthermore, they knock the Cafe posts off the front page.
Not that Andrew has asked for a vote, but I vote for separate RBs and those who want to read both can do one more click and be satisfied.
February 7, 2008 11:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
Woof!! (too frustrated for the other two Woofs; I *#@x*%$#@! timed out gosh darn it *#@x*%$#@!) Double treats for our furry four-legged friends and double martinis for the rest. Sorta takes the wind out yer sails; don't it? :-)
February 7, 2008 8:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
seashell, you have a reply starting with "Woof" further down the thread. (Glenn bites tongue and holds back explosive stream of expletives and sighs)
February 7, 2008 8:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
I give up. I friggin', everlovin' give up. You check the damn box, and the comment ends up at the bottom. Call me when Terminex has sprayed enough DDT that there is no longer a need for entomologists.
February 7, 2008 9:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
For about the 54th time since the apocalypse occurred in our happy TPM life, DON'T GIVE UP!
I'm seeing a need for some civil disobedience pretty soon, though. It's our constitutional right! Thanks for the woofs and double treats. Linus woofs back at ya.
February 7, 2008 11:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
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