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Gentrification at TPM and the Blogosphere
I moved into the blogosphere ghetto after the Lewinski scandal. I had had enough with the planned, manicured, and glossy communities which were the mainstream media, and the ideological tilt and uniformity which was scaringly imposed in them. It was not just that I was fed up with the chain restaurants, the humongous shopping outlets, the impeccable lawns, and the SUVs ubiquitous in the Mainstream Media world. I had begun to notice former neighbors with more critical views were mysteriously disappearing and being replaced by either arrogant imposers of conformity and authoritarianism or by the banal. CNN, for example, no longer boasted the character that it once did. Everywhere, the inexplicable Clinton bashing was unrelenting, unless interrupted by the school shooting or shark bite stories. Nowhere did there exist anything approaching a liberal or progressive viewpoint. Michael Moore, considered a shocker at the time, was available only at the dust filled smaller video stores. It is true that neighborhoods in the mainstream media smelled disinfected and clean and were generally safe for the children, but I had simply had enough.
I therefore started exploring the less manicured neighborhoods in the web in search for an alternative away from the mainstream. Instinctively I mistrusted Slate. It was cardboard townhouse passing itself off as a loft. Its content was no different from that of a suburban MacMedia outlet. Although Salon was somewhat of an improvement, my eyes dazzled when I first encountered mediawhoresonline.com. Unapologetic, merciless, it called our mainstream media what they were, whores. George, Cokie, Wolf and even the so-called dean of journalism, David Broder, were before my eyes being exposed for the whores that they were, the trivializers of real issues, and the worshippers of the powerful. It was safe to use say the word "whore" in this little media ghetto. The "blog" was housed in a dingy site where the respectable and easily offended would never venture. On the dirty couches of this hangout, one could truly lounge, smoke whatever one chose, and say nasty things about the powerful. It was bliss.
Mediawhoresonline passed but there remained the salty Bartcop, and then came Atrios, Kos, and Rudepundit, and the Dirty Fucking Hippies had more and more choices of where to hangout and express their viewpoints, and we turned to Josh for the juicy untold stories about Plame, voter suppression (back when it was a republican thing), Niger documents, and other goodies. We had found a home and a refuge in the ghettos of the blogosphere. Together we suffered the days of 80 percent Bush approval ratings and together we defended the Clintons. We joined MoveOn, opposed the war, and catapulted the Angry and Bush-Hating Howard Dean to frontrunnerhood. The arguments were heated, sometimes nasty, but everyone got to express herself.
How things have changed. People have realized that they have been had by the mainstream and are now flocking to the blogs. The blogs have prospered and the more washed have arrived. Now it is remodeling time. No more hobos walking down the neighborhood street. No more graffiti, and above all, do not use the word "whore." No sir. Not that word. TPM Café will change as more disenchanted or newly-enlightened Starbucks drinkers flock here. They will not resist playing the Kool Kids and dictate what is acceptable debate and what is not, just like back in the 'burbs, and it will all be squeaky clean, perhaps even with neighborhood watch, association presidents, and someone will bring in doughnuts every morning. Ah, the joys of gentrification.
Comments (46)
Good post. Let's see how long you last here if the Commissars don't like what you've written.
I would summarize the issue as "if you don't like democracy get your ass out of the public discussion from any and everyone who has something to say."
May 2, 2008 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, he's just complaining he can't use the word "whore." That's all this post is about!
Recommend!
May 2, 2008 11:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
No way, man. I can still post the word fuck on this board.
May 2, 2008 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's true, you can.
May 2, 2008 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
No shit!
May 2, 2008 2:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Makes you hanker for the old days of Usenet, doesn't it.
May 2, 2008 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Got any examples of TPM oppressing posts?
May 2, 2008 12:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
TPM doesn't and I never claim so. We just have more users who freak out with certain adjectives used to describe certain people.
May 2, 2008 2:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Aww, poor baby. You are so deprived.
May 2, 2008 10:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Kool aid" is the only term I really have anything against...
May 3, 2008 12:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
You know clevomon, I was the one who opened up their big fat keyboard and wrote the commentary about not drinking the Kool-aid a few weeks ago. I did not do it to suggest the editing of anyone's right to write. I wanted people who were throwing around the phrase to understand what it meant to someone from the Bay Area. How truly ugly the idea was from that perspective. As someone who writes for a living words are important. There are more layers to our ideas than we know ourselves sometimes.
AdAdsurdum, I am a fairly new arrival to TPM (last few months) but it is not from a gentrification of the sight, or a naivete to blogging in general. It is from a recognition that on this sight there were more like-minded people, and some very intelligent opinions - even the ones I didn't particularly like. Part of what bothers you is what attracted me. Nothing like an uptight person to sink your teeth in to in a good debate. Sometimes you see someone shift, and life is a little better. Sometimes you feel yourself shift, and you feel more open and informed.
Anyway that's the long story I'm stickin' to without invitation or provocation. BTW Starbucks not only sucks, it is world renowned as horrible coffee. It is as big a myth as the MSM's idea of news coverage.
May 3, 2008 4:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
I very much appreciate your kool aid post. I previously didn't know it was referencing the tragic mass suicide long ago. I wonder how many people who throw that term around know what it refers too.
May 3, 2008 5:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually I always thought when someone said drinking the kool-ade it referred to LSD in kool-ade from the 60's. I've heard the phrase used that way before the Jim Jones episode.
May 3, 2008 6:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are correct. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test precedes the Jim Jones incident by years.
May 3, 2008 8:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
I always thought Kool Aid referred to the Owsley and Keesey era, but now that the other interpretation has been suggested, I can understand why some folks would be put off by the imagery.
Just goes to show how ambiguous and interpretable words can be. Even our pop culture phrases can have more than one meaning.
Don't know about the rest of you, but I would certainly prefer the Owsley Kool Aid over the Jones version.
May 3, 2008 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, you know, everyone has the right to write what they want. Whether or not the term is discourageable is probably where we differ. I don't like it because I see it as not debatable. To me, at least, it's an hyperbolic charge that really cannot be falsified. In that way, its only real purpose is to insult, and it adds nothing to the overall debate. Even most swear words don't serve as an argument themselves, but only strengthen the emotional content of the words that do argue, so I see less wrong with them.
Oh, and I did read your piece back when you wrote it. I really enjoyed it, even if our reasoning on the issue is quite a bit different.
Tis my two cents.
May 3, 2008 7:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome to TPM, after the last few months, how do you like it. As someone who has been here since December 2000, I have to admit the neighborhood has changed. This was always more of the thinking mans blog. Josh is known for his tempered responses to the days events. What has changed is the comments. Instead of tempered well thought out responses we get things like the now and always thoroughly debunked video being touted as gospel. We get people who didnt see the Kroft Clinton video swearing that she said he was a muslim. Yes, the neighborhood has changed. But as a good neighbor, I cant and wont try to close the doors to people attracted to what I saw some 8 years ago, I just try to show what good neighbors do, post on fact, not rumor, innuendo, or hate.
May 3, 2008 7:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
well, apparently this "gentrification" thing isn't new...
goes back at least 8 years.
May 3, 2008 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Caringthinkingperson, I recommended your 'KoolAid' post precisely because you deconstructed the fallacy and disingenuousness behind the term's usage.
My rant about 'whore' is more about the faux outrage it evokes.
May 3, 2008 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Fuckin A right bro! Damn, shouldnt a said that. Will people laugh at me if I admit that I don't drink coffee?
May 3, 2008 1:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're going need to explain this a bit better for those of us "newly-enlightened ... Kool Kids" playing in your park. I can live without the vulgarities, especially when they're directed at people, no matter their political persuasion or background. It requires a bit of creativity and mental exercise, but writing around the tired phrases of a banal hip-hop vocabulary produces a more powerful and incisive advocacy.
The salient message of your post is that free-wheeling, contrarian and critical dialog should continue to be a central basis on which to engage in discussion here. I don't disagree. But I'd like to understand what's changed and to hear some examples of how an earlier undefined quality of life here has been diluted.
May 2, 2008 11:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Apparently, us youngin's got too much civility these days.
May 3, 2008 12:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Shut my mouth wide open! Rec'd!
May 3, 2008 12:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
AdAbsurdum, I'm way too tired to snark you back. Maybe tomorrow. I like your wit and your style, and I appreciate this counterpoint to my post. It's only your taste that I don't quite get.
I don't give a shit about cool kids or kool aid. I can't stop anyone from blogging or pass any zoning laws. All I can do is try to persuade, and that's what I tried to do today, knowing full well that I wouldn't accomplish much if anything at all.
You cast yourself as the defender or rollicking free speech. But this isn't about free speech. This about who gets to hold the megaphone at TPM. I hear you and others who complain that jokey insiders spend too much time with megaphone. You too object to uninterrupted megaphone time by someone you don't want to listen to. I acknowledged that complaint in my post day and tried to look for ways to keep insiderism under control. If you read that, you didn't choose to respond.
As for me, I don't care if someone supports Obama or Clinton, is angry or calm, is funny or serious. If they can put together a coherent argument, produce a witty retort, or marshal an original thought, then I want to hear them speak. If not, they don't deserve the microphone, not because of what they believe but because ultimately, they have nothing to say.
Now we can have a debate about what's worth saying, whether snarksters or hacks are more worthy of getting the megaphone. But don't pretend that you're some internet robin hood defending the free streets from the oppressive sanitized elite. Whether you say it out loud or silently when you hit the recommend button, you're choosing who you give the microphone to.
May 3, 2008 2:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, I found your post was excellent and I do agree with most of what you wrote. As a longtime software designer and as someone who's been lounging in the blogosphere since its fetal stages, I found your suggestions spot on.
Please, please do not feel that I singled you out. My intention was to offend everyone.
I am still shocked that this was even recommended by anyone, but thanks to those who did. The metaphor just wrote itself and I think each reader is getting something different out of it well beyond what I intended.
May 3, 2008 6:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Might I add that I am using a lot of Atrios terminology here, which can lead to confusion by those unfamiliar with it.
May 3, 2008 6:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Funny. I was sure that it was directed at my post. Egoism at work. There were a lot of "kool kids" complaints over at that thread, so I guess that I fixated on your remark about that. Also, we disagreed about the value of a Bionic Soy thread the other day, the one I labeled The Great Troll War of April 30th, which was one of the factors that motivated my post. And perhaps I am bit of a blogosphere elitist. I'm also a software guy, but my blog experience is pretty much exclusive to TPM. I've got no problem with cursing, but the shouting and schoolyard namecalling just seems stupid to me.
So I'm glad that you liked my post, though for the record, I wasn't offended even when I thought that you were attacking it. Intelligent disagreements are for me, what the blogosphere is about.
May 3, 2008 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
LOL. Rec.
AdAbsurdum, loved the post. Quite snarky. Laughing.
Nice concluding paragraph. No, really. In general, I agree. Although, I have to admit, I don't like nasty arguments. I'm too lazy.
May 3, 2008 4:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
You're totally right, and I'm not being sarcastic. I've read TPM for several years, but I didn't really read the user comments or start posting until the last year. I'll totally pack up my shit and head home-- no joke. I hate gentrification, and wouldn't want to wreck the neighborhood. Again, I don't mean this sarcastically, I'm being totally sincere. Like, that thread about the quality of threads? That thread was pure evil, like a giant Crate & Barrel moving in where the bar used to be.
May 3, 2008 4:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
As long as they don't try to suppress the words and images we need to express our emotions. If they try to do that, we'll run their sorry asses off.
May 3, 2008 7:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
One of the benefits of the blogs is that any one of us can start a new one.
Unfortunately, at least for the serious intellectuals among us, the tabloidism brings in a lot of traffic. And givesa any blog it's unique character.
I've said for years, a blog that stays completely on-thread loses readership, again it is unfortunate, but so is life most of the time.
As one of those who occassionally joins in on a blogpile (Macaca was a blast, Cunningham was another great moment, and Kantorgate has been intense!) I admit it feels good to see the bad guys on the other end of an online ass-whoopin'.
May 3, 2008 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
All of this is the least of it.
If you really want to see gentrification, just look at the politics of the liberal blogosphere. It isn't really all that liberal at all, in any sense that Harry Truman would have understood.
TPM and the blogosphere as a whole would be Progressive Republican, if Progressive Republicanism hadn't gone the way of the dinosaurs. It is the politics of Emily Post, all about good form rather than doing very much.
May 3, 2008 9:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am part of the second coming of the blogosphere. I have to say that I think it's amazing — has been for some time as you indicated. Really, though, we are in a period of fractured media. 2 Dems getting different coverage on the left and the right and 1 Repub getting barely any coverage. Glad there's somewhere for me to go.
May 3, 2008 9:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent, excellent post...
You need to gather some of your old blogging circle and write a book. You probably already have, over the years, just dig up the best of your old stuff, put it in chronologhical order, and publish!
"The Birth Of the Blogs"
May 3, 2008 10:18 AM | Reply | Permalink
PS; anyone here think that Kantorgate may have something to do with Youtube's going down?
May 3, 2008 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, I'll be a dissenting voice here. It's a funny, well-written post, and it definitely doesn't offend me or anything.
On the other hand, there's a slight risk any time we use an aesthetic or demographic yardstick to judge discussion, instead of a logical/ethical yardstick.
What do I mean by aesthetic/demographic? Well, person A wears a bow tie, or person B can't spell, or person C is a latte-drinking elitist, or person D lacks the wild, fuck-you spirit of the old-time blogosphere. If the arguments are good, and the ethics are above board, I don't give a frak whether the person making the argument is wearing a bow tie or a beret.
I don't mind a bit of nostalgia for the glory days of Atrios, etc. You're right that there's been a change -- over the years, but especially during this protracted primary season. Some changes for the good, others for the bad.
But I am uneasy about the word "whore" as an example of the glory days. It's true that avoiding a word like that requires some self-censorship, but I think the benefits are worth the cost. For instance -- just to speculate -- it might be the case that the blogosphere is less predominantly male than it used to be, so that we've become more conscious about avoiding sexism. If that's "gentrification," I will happily say "guilty as charged," and sip tea with my pinkie finger pointing up.
May 3, 2008 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can I just say this? I love you.
I fucking hate gentrification. That's one reason I left Colorado for New Mexico - cause New Mexico resists it except in some places.
I hate it - it's taking every bit of soul out of this country and I wish poeple would quit complaining about the tone online.
I really hate the meta bitching. It is so boring I could scream. If you don't like certain people - skip their goddamn comments. But I can get all the deeply reasoned polite prose I want - books and magazines are full of it - for real
This is the only place I can come and really be me. And really say what I want to say and I'm so sick of being harrassed for being rude.
I'm rude. Get over it. Snark is funny, it's healthy and it is not damaging to anyone but the tender damn sensibilities of the person being snarked on.
May 3, 2008 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Christopher - I meant that "I love you" for you.
May 3, 2008 11:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Your love versus that of the Kool Kids is a no-brainer. :)
May 3, 2008 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
hear hear, on all counts.
I especially like this;
"I'm rude. Get over it."
And here's the best advice you provide, (at least in this comment)...
"If you don't like certain people - skip their goddamn comments."
We can easily choose with whom we converse and interact, good or bad, by simply scrolling down to the next comment. And nothing gets rid of a troll faster than when all the regulars agree to keep them out of the daily loops.
We've seen that here more than once.
But I will say, many of the "arguments" here have eventually led to discussions at a much higher level. And quite often, one of the true trolls will provide us with an opportunity to fully vet out a line of reasoning.
So, while I enjoy an occasional straightforward conversation without the disputations and rants and raves, we do get some mileage out of our arguments.
It may not always be pretty, but it is usually fruitful in one way or another.
May 3, 2008 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
JEP -
Thanks for support.
What you said here - this is what I have been saying myself for several years. The truth is, folks, every one of us likes to hear the sound of our own comments. We all have some kind of something that is attracted to writing these ideas we have down. Since I know for a fact that it gets addictive - don't believe me? Quit the internet cold turkey. You'll be pacing the floor.
Anyway - all the wailing, the breast beating - it's such a waste of time. The internet is what it is.
Dig it or get off.
May 3, 2008 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
You people are all fucking crazy...
I love it
May 3, 2008 11:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's mutual.
you're picture slays me - you are a very good looking man.
May 3, 2008 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
your
What a smooth move that was. [rolls eyes]
May 3, 2008 11:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't want gentrification. I think we can handle the diversity of well written posts and badly written ones. We don't have to recmnd. Simple. But people should still be allowed the forum (as long as Josh is willing) to voice stuff.
Also, regarding teh word "whore" -- really I don't understand why you'd want to use it. Not as if "whores" is nec. an epithet given that many call girls may have a more finely tuned sense of ethics and humanity than many in the media. Cockroaches might be more appropriate...
May 3, 2008 11:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ringsend
(after reading Tolstoy) Oliver St. John Gogarty Gogarty
I will live in Ringsend
With a red-headed whore,
And the fan-light gone in
Where it lights the hall-door,
And listen each night
For her querulous shout,
As at last she streels in
And the pubs empty out.
To soothe that wild breast
With my old-fangled songs,
Till she feels it redressed
From inordinate wrongs,
Imagined, outrageous,
Preposterous wrongs,
Till peace at last comes,
Shall be all I will do,
Where the little lamp blooms
Like a rose in the stew;
And up the back garden
The sound comes to me
Of the lapsing, unsoilable,
Whispering sea.
May 3, 2008 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
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