Välillä on virkistävää lukea blogeista toisenlaisten silmälasien läpi. Feminismistä Adonis Mirror -verkkolehteä pitävän Richard Leaderin pitkä essee "Kill your blogs" suhtautuu otsikonsa mukaisesti erittäin skeptisesti blogeihin lähtökohtanaan fakta: suurin osa merkittävistä bloggaajista on amerikkalaisia valkoisia miehiä. Tämä on toki huomattu blogijournalismin puolestapuhujien joukossa. Essee kannattaa lukaista, koska se perustelee, ettei massamedian mahdollisuuden leviäminen kaikille blogien muodossa automaattisesti tarkoita mikrokustantamisen, kansalaisjournalismin ja paikallisyhteisöjen vahvistumista.
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Toki essee kannataa lukea myös siksi, että se kertoo skuupin meistä valkoisista miehistä: kuinka me valkoiset miehet olemme konservatiivisia ja lukutaidottomia ja siksi suosimme blogin muotoa reagoida ja kommentoida muiden tuottamiin kirjoituksiin sen sijaan että vaivautuisimme itse ajattelemaan ja kirjoittamaan jotain aitoa.
Ja sitten esseen ytimestä pitkä lainaus – tai lyhyt pätkä riippuen näkökulmasta – meille konservatiivisille, lukutaidottomille ja laiskoille valkoisille miehille, jotka emme kuitenkaan pysty koko esseetä lukemaan:
The conservatism and illiteracy of men in general regularly works to their advantage in the world of blogs: not only does the reactionary nature of the format (responding to news rather than reporting it) suit most men’s proclivities quite well, the constant struggle between aggressive egotism and indolent Laconism, those who are otherwise often receive more than their fair amount of attention. And while very few men strictly journal in intensely personal and vulnerable ways, compared to the number of females of all ages who engage in such writing (the “confessional” genre synonymous with “chick lit”) it is these men who are most rewarded of all for their disclosure. Even as the media creates paranoid fantasies about teenage girls acquiring gifts (facilitated by Amazon.com’s “wish list” feature) from lecherous men who feverishly watch their diaries, men themselves stand to benefit even more for their forays out of the political and into the personal: many of the most well red and respected of the “mommy” bloggers are themselves male parents and, on the professional front, not much in chick lit can compare to the success of Dave Eggers and his A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Even collaborative blogs created for the express purpose of furthering female writers and artists have become launch pads for male pundits to get their start, as they are bound to receive more interviews from the mainstream press than their female peers, given the unique edge that sitting at the “girl’s table” affords a man.
Conversely, men with popular blogs are often able to harness women as “guest bloggers,” who are granted a larger audience in return for volunteering their work, even as they—due to their gender—become a form of social or political currency to the man who runs the show. Sometimes the politics of this are hard to discern for most readers, as in the case of blogs like Wonkette.com that are created purely as a product: Nick Denton, a minor media mogul of sorts, needed to slap a nubile female face on his Wonkette.com in order to make it more marketable than its competitors. Despite being a corporate creation staffed by an entire paid team, the supposed personality of its editor, Ana Marie Cox, had to be inflated to eclipse those other facts—and thus become “Wonkette” herself—to meet the genre requirements of the blog format, banking on the new medium to reap financial dividends in the future. Wonkette is best known for launching Washingtonienne (a twenty-something DC intern’s salacious blog recounting bad sex with a variety of barely-veiled politicians) into the limelight, a Playboy appearance included in her fifteen minutes of fame. Cox credits herself for discovering the young intern, but for many Wonkette fans, Denton himself remains invisible in his role as puppet master and profiteer.
(Kiitos Timolle esseen linkistä)
