Voice of the Underclass!
According to today's Observer, weblogs are the voice of the underclass - people who are abused not just by corporate culture but also by celebrity culture. This leaves me as a blogger feeling peculiarly socially displaced. It's bad enough being consigned to the middle class just because I have a university degree and live in a vicarage. Now there's the additional reason to be underwhelmed, that I blog because I feel frustratingly relegated to an underclass.
It turns out, however, that the bloggers the Observer has in mind (whose blogs I have absolutely no intention of linking to from here) merely add to the general and sickening fascination with celebrity - they just do it in a ruder way than the celebrities like. Well, my heart bleeds. If blogging really has a social purpose and value, it's because of the times and places where it really does give a voice to the voiceless. Which doesn't include the lackeys of the New York media elite.
It turns out, however, that the bloggers the Observer has in mind (whose blogs I have absolutely no intention of linking to from here) merely add to the general and sickening fascination with celebrity - they just do it in a ruder way than the celebrities like. Well, my heart bleeds. If blogging really has a social purpose and value, it's because of the times and places where it really does give a voice to the voiceless. Which doesn't include the lackeys of the New York media elite.
posted by Tony at 12/05/2004 03:30:00 pm
1 Comments:
I disagree - it's not so much fascination with celebrity as it is fascination with the fascination with the celebrity.
As a transplant living in New York, I don't get the obsession with the rich and famous, but that is part of the culture here and I appreciate a medium that pokes fun at its excesses and emptiness.
And you mistook Jessica Cohen's quote about blogging for the oppressed - she means that *her* posts, not blogging in general, is for the temps and the bottom feeders at big NY publishers. Neither The Observer nor the blog you choose not to mention by name suggests that you should share their motivation or their love of schadenfreude.
Ultimately, blogs will be what bloggers and their readers make of it, and their raison d'etre is going to be different from blog to blog.
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