Over at the Shaperner, Mr. Nosemonkey is worried that the British blogosphere is cliquey and almost elitist.
Meanwhile Mark Holland notices how many of the top political bloggers went to grammar or private schools.
Coincidence? Or blogging reflecting society?
I think it depends on what you consider to be the British blogosphere. If you simply ignore the mutually self-appointed British political blogging ‘elite’, then it isn’t elitest at all.
That makes sense to me, anyway - they’re only something if people think they are.
David - I was going by Technorati link numbers (useless as that service is), if they appear in the mainstream media and so on.
British bloggers are tedious in the extreme, especially ‘London bloggers’, with their oh-so-original topics like “things I saw on the Tube this morning” and riveting photoblogs of street signs, bits of the Tate Modern, piles of rubbish etc. Most of them might as well have been written by grammar school almuni, they display so little imaginative backbone.
Oh give them their clique status if it makes them feel better. The bottom line is that every red-neck American who thinks Pincess Di was murdered by the Queen and Dick Cheney holds the secrets to UFO activity in the States can read their high-falutin’ blogs while they polish their guns and pray for salvation. As long as the Internet stays the way it is, it will never be elitest. In my opinion, the Internet is the only truly democratic engine out there–anyone can post and say whatever they want. Let’s just hope that the Christian Right doesn’t decide to start a revolution and begin spamming all ‘liberal’ bloggers with Bible verses.
leon: The problem with being a “London blogger” of course is that as edf seem to keep reminding everyone, it’s 7 million people, plus all the commuters, living a similar experience.
In-law: Are you trying to suggest Princess Di wasn’t killed by the British Secret Service? And it’s not so much Dick Cheney knowing about UFOs that I’m worried about, but the black helicopters and the UN World Government conspiracy. Obviously, as soon as I have US citizenship I’ll be building myself a bunker in Idaho, stocking up on non-perishable food, ammo and recordings of Pat Robertson broadcasts. The end times are a comin’ I tell you.
I seriously saw a special on American TV (the Discovery Channel) about a group of people who believe that the current Shrub in office appointed the people he did because they have been briefed in the past about UFO activity in America. There are too many tv channels if they have to resor to that sort of malarky.
In-law: But I thought the Discovery Channel was relatively serious. Okay, actually I thought they have six different programmes called “When Grizzlies Attack” that they play on an endless loop, but my parents subscribe to that. Okay, they also subscribe to the Playboy channel, but that’s because my father managed to convince my mum that “it’s all part of the Sky Family Plus Package”….
And did you just refer to the second greatest American president of the 21st Century as “Shrub”? Isn’t that against the PATRIOT act?
In China they call him bu xi, pronounced Booshie, which is a phonetic representation of his name in pinyin. However, by remarkable coincidence, this means ’small plant.’
So it’s all part of some red commie propaganda campaign?