first of all ...
I’m up early for a Saturday morning. I volunteered to work today. Welcome to my Saturday.
i have a complaint
There is a Starbucks that I frequent on my way to work because the location is very convenient. I need my caffeine rush in the morning and I am extremely crabby when I don’t get it. This particular Starbucks is new. It’s only been open for a couple of months. When it originally opened the service was spectacular. Everyone in the joint was extremely friendly, they greeted you as soon as you walked in the door and you got your cup exactly as you wanted it.
Flash forward to four months later. The service is shitty, you have to remind them to put new milk and sugar out, the counter where you add stuff to your coffee is always a mess and they always have a line out the door with ONE person working the register and four people working the bar having conversations that have nothing to do with coffee but apparently involve so much that the baristas often move ten times slower while fixing drinks. This makes for a very pissed off Monique in the morning, let me tell you. I think I’m going to write a letter.
the elitism debate
So the battle rages on in the comments of the elitism post. The only dissenting voice is Anil’s and I think he is taking some things that people are saying the wrong way but I will let them debate it out and I will simply moderate and add my two cents as necessary. Some points I would like to make clear though:
1. No one is against anyone else having a good blog. I don’t think that is the point or the basis of anyone’s argument. I think we all agree that the argument is against those who would assume that they are the authority on what constitutes a good or bad blog. Anil states he wants to call bullshit on people who put out crap. Fine. If someone is putting out crap you are more than welcome to stop reading. We aren’t saying that we are the champions for everyone putting out crap. We are saying that we are champions for the free expression the web affords us. I run across sites with content that I don’t find engaging every single day. I don’t discredit those sites as not being worthy of any attention, I simply don’t read them. I don’t think it’s right to say, “Well so and so writes crap so he doesn’t deserve to be called a blog (or have a site or whatever else you want to add there)”.
Anil said - "Everything I do is good, simply because I have done it." seems to be their attitude, and I call bullshit on it. You all but call out Kottke, 'cause I know his site isn't interesting to you. But he has *never*, not once, said he's better than someone. He has *never*, not once played like the fact that he's well known in this one little bitty community means shit. That's all come externally, from other people who want someone to pick on for being popular, and they almost always incidentally have shitty sites.”
I have never come across any cam girl site that has that attitude. I think cam girls are having fun and we should allow them that. So it’s not your cup of tea. No one is forcing you to look at it. And no, Jason Kottke’s site is not interesting to me but I never once said that he called himself better than anyone else. I was speaking to those who would have you think that he was the weblogging messiah and we should all follow in the footsteps of him and his 12 apostles. Not everyone has the same style. That is my point.
Also, saying that someone has a shitty site is a matter of personal opinion. What you think is shitty someone else might think is cool. What doesn’t appeal to you may appeal to someone else. That is the point in all situations. I am arguing that people should stop trying to tell everyone else how to do their fucking thing. It’s what creates situations where people feel like they can’t post what they want for fear of what someone else might say about it and that is plain wrong. You know it and I know it. Enough said.
You've got a great site, Mo, you know that. And it's important that everyone feels that they have something to say and a place to say it on the web. But it's stupid and, worse, boring, to not want to be good at whatever particular genre interests you. And I'm *glad* there are people pushing others to do better.
Maybe those people don’t want to do better Anil. Maybe they are content to keep doing what they are doing. Maybe they aren’t doing their thing for anyone else. Maybe it is just all about them. Why should they change it up just because it doesn’t suit what you would consider a good site. What if all the cam girls and e/n site holders decided they didn’t like your site because you talk about tech stuff a lot. Does it make your site any worse than theirs just because they don’t have an appreciation for your particular style?
Does anyone own the web? Who are we to tell people how they should and shouldn’t express themselves? Not everyone sets out to have some stellar website with thousands of hits and gawkers coming along. Some people do it just for fun, to learn or whatever else. It’s not fair to tell them that they should change it up because you don’t like the fact that they don’t use a spellcheck and proper grammar. That is elitist and it proves my point.
My very first website was not all that hot. It was full of crap and it looked funny cause I didn't know what to do. We need to allow people room for growth. Everyone is not going to jump out of the starting gate with a page mocked up in CSS, replete with SAT words and MLA structure. Let's let them grow into it. Even in my writing books it says that you have to allow people to crank out the crap before they can start generating the beauty.
I like what AB said - That is an essential point -- weblogs and personal sites are about PEOPLE. With a book or an essay there's an implicit artistic standard, but not everyone creates a weblog with the intention of creating art. Some people are just there to be themselves. Such sites can't be judged by artistic standards any more than the average person would want to be judged by beauty pageant standards. It's not that they meet or don't meet the standard of beauty, it's that they never even entered the contest! So yeah, you can pick those sites apart all you want, but what's the point?
So what is the point? The point is that people are people and we should live and let live. I’m tired of people trying to be the deciding factor on what is good or bad on the web. Personal choices. We make them when we read the web, we make them when we do the web. Not everyone sets out to try and be some internet superstar that NO ONE else in the world knows except other people on the web. Live and let live. Jason said “do what the beat say do”. I agree with that.
Lastly - What's next? People are going to get called sell outs if their site starts getting lots of hits? "I remember when he used to be real, a straight up standard BlogSpot template, broken permalinks, no comment function. Now he's cleaned up and started doing more than just commenting on CNN Entertainment links, he's not down anymore..."
Now you are just taking it totally out of context. Stop it.
edit - 10/5/02 i guess i really need to add those comments cause it really was a great discussion
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