Revolting peasant metaphor
August 16th, 2006 11:58:02 am pst by Sterling CamdenTo those who lament the supposedly undemocratic, even feudal nature of the blogosphere, I have one question: exactly how would you like to see things operate differently?
Did you really think, when you started blogging, that putting a few posts out on the web was going to lead to an audience of millions? Without the help of someone who has influence? There’s more self-delusion there than “innocent fraud”.
If you’ve got an Internet connection, you can post. If you work at it, you can get indexed by the search engines. Is this not more democratic than the old media system of submitting content to a publisher?
You don’t have to live in a shack outside the castle waiting to pander up to an A-lister. And if you’re there, nobody is forcing you to stay.
Sure, links from A-listers drive lots of traffic, but there are other methods that work. 51% of my traffic comes from Google. WordPress.org sends 10% for widgets I’ve written. Technorati provides 6%. Sure, a lot of the search engine rank comes from links from other blogs, but very few of my inbound links come from A-listers, and those are only from comments or trackbacks I left on their blogs. Most links are from bloggers like me who are in the Technorati 2,000 to 200,000 range. Build conversations with those people, and the search engines will notice.
So while you’re certainly welcome to wallow in your disillusionment, that’s not for me. When something disappoints me, I do one of three things:
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Change it. Tell me what you’d do differently, and let’s see if we can make it happen. Come up with some constructive ideas, instead of just moaning that Mama didn’t tell you there’d be days like this.
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Leave it. Can’t change it? Still don’t like it? Then why are you still hanging around?
Determine the value of N, where (readers > N) => still blogging. Or maybe it’s not the quantity, but the quality. The conversations you have with commenters and trackbackers, however few they may be. Or then again, maybe you’re just blogging to hear yourself talk. If that’s your gig, that’s OK too.
Time to ask yourself, “Why do I blog?” Then evaluate the likelihood of achieving your goals. Then get on it.
And no, you don’t need your feudal lord’s permission.
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I’m not so much interested in having it operate differently as I am in calling BS when people try to say it operates differently that it actually does.
My original post that started all this was a writing exercise about examining who we are writing for. It arose out of a conversation Lee Gomes and I had in which I said that I believe bloggers mainly write for each other, and he said that lots of old media writers also tend to write for each other.
What gets my dander up is when someone like Mike who got to the top of the hill, in part, due to relationships with the Scobles and Winers of the world, tries to say the blogosphere is an equal opportunity place.
It ain’t. It’s OK that it ain’t, as long as you don’t try to pretend it is.
[...] Hot topic of the day I found on two blogs I read. Nick Carr talked about unread bloggers, and Sterling objected to the metaphor Nick made about peasants. I also read this comment here (which I found quite silly). Got me thinking a bit about why I blog, so I thought I’d take a moment and pontificate. [...]
Kent, thanks for stopping by and commenting.
I can see both sides on this. Compared to earlier publishing models, the blogosphere is exceptionally democratic. Barriers to publishing are nearly non-existent.
But it’s not quite like open mic. You really have to work to get heard, so if you were lead to believe that the entire web would be your immediate readership, I can see why you’d be disappointed. In such a wide open, lawless system, influential patrons will always evolve. But in my experience, you don’t always need them to get along OK. Technorati and Google usually have me on the first page of any search topic I’ve been writing about (try newsome.org on technorati right now).
BTW, I really enjoy your blog. Thoughtful and to the point — and great metaphors.
The attack-of-the-strawmen is *so* tedious.
“audience of millions”? No. More like “Much more than in practice than a few dozen”. And being able to *effectively* reply to the downright abusiveness of the BigHeads.
Can that BE ACCEPTED AS VALID? That there was a reasonable expectation, given the hype, and that hucksterism was a misleading sales-pitch? Without playing the confidence-man’s card of “You can’t cheat an honest man”?
Submit to a publisher, submit to an A-lister, it’s not more democratic at all – arguably a little less, because the publisher doesn’t tell you that everyone has a printing press, so shut up about the degrading process already, love it or leave it.
I must be missing something here, Seth. I don’t see any abuse. Who took your money? Who made you do anything?
Perhaps you could reread the posts under a basic assumption of reasonable dissatisfaction, and see if it’s clearer. Or let me just say “What Kent said”.
N.b. “Who made you do anything?” is pure confidence-man (i.e., it’s what the con-man says to the mark to self-justify the deceptions).
But the con man took your money.
The blog man took my time, and then claimed me as one of their flock to sell software or promote themselves as leaders of The Movement.
That’s what makes the con *worse* – it’s a very tawdry, cheap scam, where only a few pennies are made per mark – but they add up over millions. It’s actually somewhat innovative that way, in terms of new levels of sheer imbalance between the peasants and the lords. That is, it’s astonishing how many peasants have to labor with practically no readers, in order to provide the basis to convince someone to give a single A-lister a lucrative consulting gig as advisor on the New New Thing.
Well, Seth, I guess our motivations differ, and I didn’t have those kinds of expectations going in. I’m sorry for you that you did. As I’ve said before, you have every right to your view on this subject, it’s just not one that I could endure holding myself.
And of course like every other political system the ruling class cannot survive without the working class. The only difference is when some politician lies about that, everyone knows it’s a lie. In the blogosphere the oligarchy denies its own existence and a lot of people buy it.
At the risk of being redundant, it’s not the way it is that bugs me, it’s the repeated attempt to paint it as some other way.
Go read the tone of Scoble’s post today about this. I thought it was almost seething with contempt. I guarantee you he began to mentally prepare his amicus post the second he saw his buddy Mike under attack. Because if he took a moment to actually read what the “others” are saying, it is simply not possible to dismiss all of their arguments with a simple “I think the whole thing is bunk.”
This is going to come across as arrogant and I really don’t want it to, but I firmly believe that the reason some of those guys won’t engage us other than to dismiss us is because they know we’d eat their lunch in a rational, reasoned discussion.
The really sad part is that at the end of the day we’d find out we’re all partly right and partly wrong- there would be a natural move to the middle.
Those cats don’t like middle.
The Blog Man didn’t take Seth’s money. Seth’s own content took his money.
I’ve been a pro writer for almost 20 years. The successful writers I know personally, without exception, take responsibility for their own experience. Seth doesn’t, as far as I can tell.
In 6 months’ time this argument will be ignited again, and Seth will be there, front and center, arguing the same stuff. Again. And six months after that? Again.
Hey, everyone needs a party trick.
re: the printing press
The whole point here is that we do have a printing press. Everyone in the world with a reasonably good ‘net connection (and even many with unreasonably bad connections, like 28.8K ISA modems) essentially has a printing press. To expand upon the publisher/press analogy, the problem is that people seem to assume that means they can produce 40,000 copies of a novel they wrote and it will automatically sell out, making them rich.
Bollocks.
You still have to get stores to carry your books (search engine ranking, link love, et cetera), and you have to get people to want to read it (marketing and actually writing something someone wants to read). If you’re not writing what anyone wants to read, and you’re limiting your distribution options in some way, nobody’s going to buy what you’re printing (or, at least, not many will do so).
I’m pretty impressed with my ability to get from less-than-zero to a Google PageRank of 5 in about six months, all without knowing a single A-lister or, for that matter, even reading what they have to say. That doesn’t sound very feudal to me.
Maybe the problem with all these peasants is that they’re trying to steal readers away from the A-listers, rather than creating a homestead and enticing passers-by between stone castles to pause for a rest and some hot soup.
The technology and the (social) network are very “democratic”, in the sense in which everyone’s using it in this debate. It’s not the fault of the technology or the network that your business model sucks.
“The successful writers I know personally …”
I suspect this says something more about you, rather than being a moral lesson of global import.
It’s akin to “The rich people I know personally all attribute it to their faith in God”. That could be a true statement as far as it goes, but the objective meaning is not what you intend.
Your propensity to mock and bait “down” is really quite mean-spirited.
[...] (For reference, see Nick Carr, Kent Newsome, Labnotes, and Chip’s Quips.) [...]
Reality: not one A-lister has ever prevented any blogger from posting.
But the disillusioned bloggers were expecting the A-listers to promote their content. That’s like starring in a high school play and then moping by the phone because Spielberg hasn’t called.
Sorry, no tears from your truly.
But thanks again for reading and responding.
[...] Revolting peasant metaphor [...]
You’re right, Hugh, this meme gave us all some good blog-fodder.
Good points, apotheon.
Both of your arguments lead back to the idea of personal responsibility for success. My motto? If someone else can help me, great. If they won’t, screw ‘em. But I don’t cry about it.
[...] In response to the recent Chip’s Quips entry titled Revolting peasang metaphor, I found myself pointing out to some apparently chronic whiners (and perhaps a merely misguided ponderer) that a failure to produce content people want to read or to promote it effectively is not the fault of me, of society, of the technologies in use, of the A-list webloggers, or even (at least for the most part) of one’s parents. It is, in fact, largely the fault of poor writing, poor choice of subject matter, poor judgment of what the public wants to see, poor goal identification, and/or poor marketing for the Internet market. This sort of approach to telling people to get over themselves seems to be a regular hazard of reading the common whinging of t3h Intarw3bs these days. [...]
[...] There’s a flaming going across the blogosphere right now on Nicholas Carr’s Blog posting, The Great Unread. Shel Israel is in on the argument, as are a ton of other bloggers (example). [...]
[...] Then there’s appreciation. Sterling Camden wrote a thoughtful reply (link love here, more personal here). [...]
Hey, everyone needs a party trick.
Seth, tricks are for kids and if you keep pouting, why would anyone want to come to your party?
Zing Kathleen. Nice to see a new virtual face. Thanks for reading and commenting.
[...] Kent Newsome tracks much of this including Hugh MacLeod, who has been mean again. Bad, bad, Hugh. If you don’t stop, we’re going to make you drink that wine you keep hawking. But he points back to the original post that seems to have started this latest, where he tells Seth he’s wallowing in his disillusionment. Survival of the pricks, indeed. [...]
I added your site to my bookmarks. I’ve got this growing list I’ll actually be coming back to.
Yeah, other than the ones we all ignore. For know though I have to go back to work. No rest for the weary!
Thanks for reading and commenting, “golf school”. And thanks for responding to my e-mail so I could find out you weren’t a spammer.
These days the comment spammers have been using a lot of compliments in their comments, linking back to sites with lots of links. Yours has plenty o’ links, but is apparently a legitimate blog on golf training.
Thanks again for the legitimate compliment, and I’ll look forward to hearing from you again in the future.
I guess I don’t really care if anyone reads my blog or not. I write things for others, that I hope will be relevant and helpful to them, whatever that may be about. I try to be as relatable as possible with things which I think others might have issues with as well, but have no real way of knowing, because no one ever says anything. I also write for myself, on specific issues that are entirely specific to me, because I am not foolish enough to thing for one moment that someone else on this planet hasn’t had this, or that thought, that situation, that moment, that feeling run through his or her head at one time or another. So specific situations, that one might think are relatable only to themselves, especially REALLY specific, I mean, ABSURDLY specific (not going to site examples, but you probably know what I mean, or you will), someone else may read that in some future text and find it to be exactly what they had been going through that day, or at least a portion of it was, and feel that much better about what had been going on with them.
If no one ever reads my glob, that’s totally cool too. I don’t write things for kudos, or because others are doing it. If I didn’t have something to say, and I mean really say, I wouldn’t even bother. There are times when I have written 3,000-4,000 words, and realized that what I just wrote was not true. Either not true about myself, or others, or rambled onto something it wasn’t supposed too, or to egomaniacal, whatever ‘it’ might be, it ended up turning into rubbish. Ctrl+A, then proceed immediately to the Del key is the only way to go when that happens. And I post nothing for that day.
I have no expectations. If something I write hits someone in the face like a snowball, and makes them realize something that they didn’t know about themselves, their friends, the world or environment of which they live, people they pass by on the street every single day, taking a chance on a restaurant they’ve never been in because it looked “weird”, whatever, then that is reason enough. Writing what is true and real simply for the sake of it being true, and real, is the only reason I started writing in the first place.
I’ll have to wait and see if it leads anywhere but here. Here is ok too. ; )
Thanks for reading and commenting, “Stop, Dave”. Good attitude about expectations. One thing: even though it might be true that a thought isn’t completely new to the world, it certainly can be new for a significant number of people, or newly stated in a way that allows them to appropriate it.
[...] Revolting peasant metaphor (8/16/2006) [...]
[...] his recent post, Revolting Peasant Metaphor, Sterling Camden at Chip's Quips hits a significant nail on the head of an issue I've written about [...]
[...] much the other day. We’ve been talking about the gatekeeper thing for years. There are a hundred theories about the cause, but there is only one effect: that there are those on the inside, where the [...]
[...] to have a conversation about it in the comments to Nick’s post as well as the comments to Chip Camden’s post. I guess it looks like we’re hopelessly confused again and so, presto, Shel graces us with [...]