blah blah social status blah economies of foo malarky blah blee blo
By shag carpet bomb • Mar 8th, 2009 • Category: Feminist Fight Club, WMFha ha. reading further in the comments, as the comments keep spinning out of control, off of the issue at hand, people start talking about the limitations of time.
Lauren writes: http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2009/03/02/who-gets-to-say-what-part-ii-blog-hierarchies/
Now a few years out, working full time, over time, the primary breadwinner of the family, the boy is in school and has homework and project demands of his own, and the other banal, regular stuff that is required of an independent adult, I don’t have time like I used to. It sucks because I have ideas and can’t execute them, or because by the time I’ve gotten to them, eight other people have covered it better than I can, or I just don’t have ideas at all. I read a lot but don’t comment. Huge lurker.
Which, interestingly enough, the changes in Lauren’s (and then Jill’s) life correlated to the introduction of new bloggers to the Feministe line up (piny, zuzu) and, when travel and law school interrupted Jill, the introduction of guest bloggers.
Funny how that works. Instead of just being like so many other bloggers who simply post less, you chose to use your social capital to keep what you started going by farming out the work of keeping up the blog’s position in the hierarchy to other women. Which you see happen over and over at other blogs. It starts out being convenient to their lives, their lives change, the blogger, instead of giving up and letting the blog become a smaller, less trafficked, and different blog, decides to take on other workers to keep it going.
It’s sort of like capitalism, huh?
Now, to be clear: that’s just the way it is. We live in a dirty world, so we have to make our way in it, one way or another.
But like it or not, really, let’s just be honest here about, among other things, the motivations for bringing on new bloggers. Yes, you wanted to be inclusive and you did a good job — here’s a cookie. a whole box even — but you also did it because you didn’t want to lose your place in the hierarchy. because you felt your voices had something important to add to bloglandia that no one else could offer — in spite of claims about how blogging isn’t a meritocracy. yadda.
you see this happen at all the bigger blogs: once the original one or two people’s lives changes, they have to do something to keep the thing going and the thing that gets done is to take on other bloggers — via guest blogging, or turning it into a group blog, or by use of software that make use of user-generated content (a la dailykos and feministing), etc.
*that* is the kind of stuff mandy and brittany should have written about. http://professorwhatif.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/what-if-the-feminist-blogosphere-is-a-form-of-digital-colonialism/”>http://professorwhatif.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/what-if-the-feminist-blogosphere-is-a-form-of-digital-colonialism/
seriously, if it isn’t a meritocracy as you say (and i wholeheartedly agree) and it isn’t about keeping up feministe’s place in that hierarchy, then stop blogging so much and start participating on other people’s blogs. and not just on any old blog, but make your participation and support of other people’s blogs the kind that reflects your commitment to social justice. instead of inviting jack to blog at feministe, visit jack’s blog. read it. post a comment and engage jack on what she’s said. and not with some superficial shit, but with a serious, engaging comment. maybe come back to your own blog and write about the post at jack’s blog, but keep comments closed, so that the discussion might happen at jack’s blog.
now, let me be clear: i don’t think you should actually do that — unless you are so inclined and genuinely think it’s a good idea. no. it’s a dirty world and we all do what we gotta do to get by.
all i’m saying is, ask yourself and answer yourself, truthfully, would you? would you make a commitment to spend as much time blogging and commenting and working on your own blog as you do to commenting and participating and working on other people’s blogs. when it came down to it, would it be a choice between posting and participating elsewhere — would you voluntary stop posting as much on your own blog and engage more on other people’s blogs? would you let your ranking and traffic slide, in order to walk the walk?
i don’t want an answer — ha! don’t expect that anyone but my five readers will read this post — but just to be clear, this isn’t some smarmy call for transparency and it certainly isn’t a call for yet another blog post at a big, white, mainstream feminist blog that dives deep into their collective navels in order to extract lint and turn it into another 100+ comment blog post. it’s just a question: an ask-yourself-and-be-accountable-to-yourself-question.
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These are very interesting questions that you’ve raised. One way FR deals with this is by making the time to read and comment on others’ blogs, which we see as a necessary part of community building in the blogosphere. Also, many of the writers/editors use the name “Feminist Review” instead of our own personal names when we post on other people’s blogs (again, a part of community building w/in FR itself since this prioritizes *all* of the writing and perspectives represented on FR, not just our own writing). We have the benefit of large numbers in order to do these things, and many of the FR writers/editors don’t have their own personal blogs to promote. So it’s less tricky in that regard. But the larger point that you’re making is important: how is community created in an environment of individualism?