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Boing Boing & Violet Blue
Jul. 3rd, 2008 12:45 amI imagine that many of my friends are fans of the blog Boing Boing, and/or the sex blogger Violet Blue. If you've been paying attention to the blahgosphere in the last couple of days, I'm sure you've heard of the big upset that recently took place - over a year ago, Xeni Jardin of Boing Boing removed numerous old posts she had written referencing Violet Blue (see them all here), and a few days ago word got out about it and people got very upset. People commented to BB about it, and it got mentioned in the LA Times blog. Finally Boing Boing posted a response to the situation. As of this writing, there are over 1200 comments on the entry. There are two more posts in the LA Times blog, three in Valleywag (including a hilarious diagram), and someone even made an internet flash game about it....
I've been thinking a lot about the issues, and I'm actually pretty unimpressed by the whole thing. I mean, some people are basically just calling it someone else's drama and leaving it alone - and there's clearly that aspect to it - but there are a lot of more general issues going on here. At what point can we edit ourselves online? At what point does content have a responsibility to its community? At what point is a community a commodity? What exactly is "blogging" anyways?
I'm still mulling it over, and I may post more critical comments on the situation later. For now, I wanted to share my comment from the Boing Boing thread:
One of the broader implications of this situation is what it means for blogging as a whole.
Before I go further, I think it is deeply disingenuous to claim that what goes for Boing Boing does not make a statement about the reputation of blogging in general - as the third most widely read blog on the internet, what happens here does have a much greater impact than on just these specific readers and writers.
Blogging as an activity is in a critical stage right now. With court cases and legal situations happening all over the world, from protestors in China to what happened to Josh Wolf not long ago, what it means to be a blogger is currently being decided. We have legal expectations of and protections for journalists, and whether these get extended to bloggers is currently up in the air.
In particular, I feel like the BB crew here is saying that they are not journalists and thus are not beholden to the public record (whether or not they choose to allow one they are claiming is at their own discretion). If that's what they have chosen, that's fine... but I also feel that if we are not allowed to expect them to behave like journalists, then they are also not due journalistic protections like the ability not to name sources should they find themselves with legally controversial material.
Where I find this to be of concern is how this will influence the history of blogging in the future. As prominent bloggers, making a very public statement of subjectivity and artistic whim influences public and potentially legal opinion of blogging as a whole. Whether this is good or bad remains to be seen, but I hope that the authors and readers of this site will think about this as a meta-issue.
I've been thinking a lot about the issues, and I'm actually pretty unimpressed by the whole thing. I mean, some people are basically just calling it someone else's drama and leaving it alone - and there's clearly that aspect to it - but there are a lot of more general issues going on here. At what point can we edit ourselves online? At what point does content have a responsibility to its community? At what point is a community a commodity? What exactly is "blogging" anyways?
I'm still mulling it over, and I may post more critical comments on the situation later. For now, I wanted to share my comment from the Boing Boing thread:
One of the broader implications of this situation is what it means for blogging as a whole.
Before I go further, I think it is deeply disingenuous to claim that what goes for Boing Boing does not make a statement about the reputation of blogging in general - as the third most widely read blog on the internet, what happens here does have a much greater impact than on just these specific readers and writers.
Blogging as an activity is in a critical stage right now. With court cases and legal situations happening all over the world, from protestors in China to what happened to Josh Wolf not long ago, what it means to be a blogger is currently being decided. We have legal expectations of and protections for journalists, and whether these get extended to bloggers is currently up in the air.
In particular, I feel like the BB crew here is saying that they are not journalists and thus are not beholden to the public record (whether or not they choose to allow one they are claiming is at their own discretion). If that's what they have chosen, that's fine... but I also feel that if we are not allowed to expect them to behave like journalists, then they are also not due journalistic protections like the ability not to name sources should they find themselves with legally controversial material.
Where I find this to be of concern is how this will influence the history of blogging in the future. As prominent bloggers, making a very public statement of subjectivity and artistic whim influences public and potentially legal opinion of blogging as a whole. Whether this is good or bad remains to be seen, but I hope that the authors and readers of this site will think about this as a meta-issue.
