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Today's self-referential post: Ritchie is melancholy and socially withdrawn
Link: http://www.blogscanada.ca/egroup/CommentView.aspx?guid=63ef5857-e166-442d-be77-e5bba20e7644
Dr. Michael Keren, a University of Calgary professor, has written a book where the thesis -- at least based on the published synopsis -- is that bloggers are a bunch of loner weenies (keep in mind I'm paraphrasing this a bit.) And, yup, he even manages a slam against cat-blogging in the press release.
Money quote from that press release:
Comparing bloggers to terrorists, Keren writes...
Seriously? How hard is he trying to sell this thing? That's like saying "Comparing income trust accountants to terrorists" or "Comparing surburban housewives to terrorists"; it's an attempt to link two utterly disparate groups in order to gain attention.
Oh well, I guess next up he'll accuse conservatives of being mean, liberals of being woollyheaded and Canadians of being anti-American. Could even go so far as to refer to artists as flakey, lawyers as greedy and jocks as dumb.
Sterotypes and far-reaching comparisons are entertaining but they're not terribly useful.
(Via POGGe)
7 comments
He was scheduled to give a speech at the university yesterday.
From the Speaker’s Series flyer:
Michael Keren compares bloggers to terrorists, arguing that while the methods advocated by the two groups are obviously very different, they both represent a similar trend, one of diversion by respected but disenchanted citizens from the norms of civil society to a fantasy world in which the excessive use of words—or bombs—would make everybody listen.
That’s one of the more amazing over-extended metaphors I’ve seen in a while. There’s a big-arse gap between disenchanted citizens talking about things, right through disenchanted citizens perhaps demonstrating against things, all the way to disenchanted citizens “doing something about it". Just because terrorism is something done by weaker groups against more powerful groups or countries does not mean that on a relative scale, they are passive equivalents of people blogging about their dead cats.
The level of activism involved couldn’t be more night and day.
I’d surmise more that the level of political blogging has reached its fever pitch because of the polarization of the political scene, where 50% of the people have a vastly different average perspective than the other 50%, share versus protect, “is” versus “ought". Given that the voting processes happen in a rather spread-out manner compared to daily events and decisions, and that voting outcomes only stand a certain chance of reflecting your own thoughts, what else are people supposed to talk about the other 364-ish days per year when it affects them deeply?
Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
Perhaps he’s got something deeper than that, but the bylines and taglines certainly do not indicate the depth of such a master thesis.
P.S. I’m socially withdrawn, but I’m most certainly not
Ritchie… I am seriously going to ban you from photoshop!
(ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!)
I hardly blog at all, and I *am*
Well, Dena’s next one is going to look better than mine, but here’s another variation on the theme!
Damnit, damnit, damnit!!!
He beat me to the punch! …I should know better than to go head to head with Ritchie in a race of software applications… ;)
This thread is officially over!
(Adam: Yup. I found the “close comments” option and enabled it. Dena wins!)
