Ah, more experts on blogging

No time to do this justice at all, but is it just me, or is this post on blogging over at IHE somewhat annoying? The author, Jeff Rice, argues for greater "playfulness" in blogging and that being too "serious" about blogging robs bloggers of the opportunity to experiment with a new genre. Well enough. I had a little bit of difficulty following the logic throughout the whole article, but sure, it's an argument.

But.

Yet again there are slams at the anonymous/pseudonymous bloggers, who, apparently, are way too "serious" about our blogging. Where I missed the logic, I guess, is what anonymity and seriousness really have to do with each other. Anyone want to explain? A quote:

Lost in this seriousness [of anonymous bloggers] are a number of quite amazing things blogging has provided writers: ability to create discourse in widely accessed, public venues, ease of online publishing, ability to write daily to a networked space, ability to archive one’s writing, ability to interlink writing spaces, ability to respond to other writers quickly, etc.

Ummm...okay. I kind of thought that was in fact what I and lots of other anonymous bloggers were doing. Guess I was wrong (I'm not academic enough).

But what bother me more are the comments (always the cherry on top of any IHE post). What do we get? More snarky comments about bloggers who talk about politics, or movies, or, you know, life. Because after all, why would you want to do that? when you can be talking about Big Ideas?

Some examples:

I differ with you on whether people should be seen as human or not. Being seen as human seriously runs the risk of alienating people. For instance, some people like sports. While many Americans consider sports to be some sort of “lowest common denominator,” I think that anyone that talks about sports in public to strangers isn’t serious about their work (and I will not hire them.)

Also, in encouraging anonymous blogs, those who do so are indirectly adding to the wealth of horrible material on the Internet. It’s surely not a good idea to whine about co-workers on a public website, but the anonymous blogs are filled with such whining. and talk about relationships and favorite albums and whatnot. If they’d post under their own names, the blogs might be more interesting.

Instead, if a blogger sets an example for other people (students, professors, and outsiders) of being continuously aware of all the scholarship, and its implications in a field, there is no reason to call him unprofessional. Ironically, it seems that people in “practice” in various fields (lawyers, engineers, accountants, etc.) seem to have a much easier time of staying on topic.... But, for some odd reason, too many academics feel compelled to talk about politics, their grandchildren, and movies.

Thankfully, Jonathan Dresner offers a great response (quoted at length):

The chief virtue of blogging is easier communication; the chief characteristic of academic blogging is.... diversity!

Historians and Asian Studies scholars, my own fields, tend to a more textual, source-oriented and straightforward presentation. My blogs are visually simple, but nonetheless communicative and (dare I say it?) fun, at least for me. Why should I be mucking around with styles that don’t appeal to ME, just to satisfy someone else’s Bakhtinian judgements?

The caution of anonymous/pseudonymous bloggers is not, the author says, the point, but he spends an awful lot of time on it. Academia is a society as well as a business, a set of disciplines, an educational endeavor; anonymity is a perfectly reasonable response to that social dynamic, and gives bloggers a chance to be much more free and experimental, not to mention honest.

Pleating “Blog like me” is no more convincing than the Ivan Tribble “don’t blog” whine. If we take public writing seriously (and if blogging is anything, it is public), its because it’s public: there’s no shame in being serious about the face we present to the world.

Anyway. No time for any cogent conclusions; I have to run back to campus. And survive the next two days of work!

Comments

[kristiface]

And doG forbid anyone with academic passion have anything going on in their lives aside from Big Ideas. What a mess.

[kermitthefrog]

not just you, NK... I left a comment on IHE and on my blog, which I won't repeat, but it's not just you...

[Another Damned Medievalist]

Two words, I think. Ass. Hat.

Yeah. You know, this kinda pisses me off, and I could definitely get up enough of a head of steam to write a post about how bizarrely illogical both the article and many of the comments are.

Just as one teeny little example, I'm wondering whether Rice actually read any of the blog posts about Trimble or just tallied up how many links the post got and arbitrarily decided we all had our panties in a bunch over nuthin'?

But I don't think I want to take it seriously enough to bother.

[Celandine]

Humph. I'm a non-academic blogger and proud of it. That is, I'm an academic, but I don't blog academically. That's not what I use my blog for. Why should I? If I feel like talking about something academic, I can. If I want to vent about personal life, or politics, or the weather, I can. If I want to post fiction, I can. What's this idea that blogs must be single-purpose? Seems silly to me.

[profgrrrrl]

I think it's hilarious that people seem to care so much about some folks blogging under assumed names. I mean it's not like they're being forced to read them. It's not like there's any shortage of bandwidth and server space out there. Ah, but the core message is an old favorite, isn't it? Not like the author = bad. Conformity with the author's standards (under the term playfulness here, apparently) = good.

[Nels]

The funny thing is, when I was reading his blog a few weeks ago when he was making this argument there, I wondered how many of you (NK, PG) would respond. I thought of posting about it in my blog but never did. The comments then were somewhat wild, including the outing of an anonymous blogger, but I had no idea he was turning it into an article. Not surprised, though.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Nels - wow! I'd never read his blog before (and frankly am not all that interested, based on what I saw going back there - which isn't intended to be offensive, it's just not my cup of tea, and I'm quite sure he'd find mine boring and trivial. Ironically, I find from that brief foray that his blog is MUCH more "serious" than I want in a blog, i.e., it requires real serious thought to read! But it's a little hard to tell because I couldn't find any archives links). That comment thread you're referring to is pretty wild. I'm not even sure what to say, and should really just ignore it because I don't have the time to think about it now anyway! But it does frustrate me that there are academics out there who want to "experiment" with new media or whatever (and I recognize that that is a valid scholarly endeavor, if one that doesn't interest me, in the same way that I doubt that poring over medieval manuscripts appeals to someone whose research area is new media) who, like so many others, seem to feel that this is the only acceptable way for academics to blog. Which is not to say that his way to blog, and his proposals for blogging, aren't interesting, valid, or valuable; it's just that (how many times do people have to say it?) it's not the only way. Let me say something else again: I am an academic who writes a blog. I am not writing an academic blog. There may be academic content on my blog, but it's not the only thing that's there. Nor do I make any claim that this blog is academic. It is, on occasion, about academia. Because that's where I work, and, much of the time, live. But I don't consider this scholarship and I don't really engage my scholarship here (heck, y'all don't even know what it really is). Nor am I somehow upset or offended that people aren't engaging with my blog as scholarship - of course they're not. Sure, it's nifty to get asked about blogging, but I'm never going to sit in a corner and sulk, "Why aren't people consulting ME about blogging?" And it would be even more ridiculous to sit in a corner and sulk that medievalists aren't taking me seriously! So, since I'm not trying to do what some bloggers are trying to do, why do I get criticized for putting myself in a position where I can't do it properly? Why can't some academic bloggers grasp this? I mean, think about it - what is the advantage to my scholarship of "experimenting" with blog forms? It's not a natural fit. If I were studying new media, yeah, sure. But there are a hell of a lot of different kinds of academics out there, studying all kinds of different things.

Okay, this has clearly deteroriated into a complete and utter rant. My apologies. I'll leave it because, well, it's what I think.

(And if anyone's curious, the post/thread I'm talking about is here. I'm not sure if it's the same one that Nels was referring to.

[Nels]

Yep, it is. Though I hadn't been back to that post in so long and did not realize how many comments there were.

While I know he is not arguing that there is only one way to blog, it does come across that way. Yet, his blog is very, very different in terms of style and content. And not something I could replicate if I tried. I am noticing that different schools of academic blogs/blogs by academics are forming.

It's just a shame that rumbles are developing along with them.

I was reading some old posts in my blog in connection my most recent entry, and the tone and style have changed so much over time. I mean, when it began, I kept track of my weight in the sidebar! It's evolved, I've evolved. And blogs can evolve along with the self, which is why I keep one.

[anoN]

I'm sure people lobbied the same criticisms at early radio producers, early TV producers, early movie producers. Gutenberg himself probably got slammed for the "crap" he was printing. You are part of a nascent technology so there will always be critics.

[Dr. Crazy]

Hey everybody! Did you know I quit blogging? Yep, that was my old blog that the ass-hat quoted from. What an idiot. I posted a comment over at inside higher ed. I may post something about it over on my blog, too. But yes. What you all have said.

[bitchphd]

Yeah, it annoyed the crap out of me, too. (I paraphrase from memory): "All the anonymous bloggers do it out of fear, which proves Tribble right; they don't do it in order to experiment with forms or personae."

Yes, that's right. It's an either/or thing, and we are completely unselfconscious about what we're doing. None of us have thought about these issues in any kind of constructive or thorough way.

Phhhttttbbbbb.

[Scrivener]

I don't have much to add to this discussion, really, except to wonder why such pretentious academics who are completely uninterested in blogging feel such need to criticize all of us who do enjoy blogs. WTF?

[negativecapability]

I read blogs by academics precisely because they are about life, broadly construed, and are usually NOT academic. Especially all you working-for or recently-tenured profs out there -- it's reassuring to see the real people (pseudonymous or not) with lives, loves, kids, hobbies, whatever behind the overachieving academic types that I interact with on the surface IRL.

[Zeno]

Anonymity and seriousness are independent qualities in a blog or blogger. Playfulness can be combined with anonymity or seriousness, too. My blog is semi-anonymous because I want to be able to talk about what occurs at school with my students and colleagues without identifying them. I say "semi" because my friends and a couple of my colleagues know about my blog and visit it to see what I'm writing about, so it's not a big, dark secret. My posts are both playful and serious (sometimes both at the same time). However, I never write about sports, which is good because I know nothing about it.

[dr. m(mmm)]

You go, kid.

[Jonathan Dresner]

Glad you liked my comment, NK. By the way, as if there wasn't enough of this discussion going on, I discovered recently that there's a

[Jonathan Dresner]

oops, I guess html doesn't translate well in these comments.

...carnival of metablogging: http://carnivalofblogcoverage.blogspot.com/

Academia is the mother lode for them, but they don't know it yet.