All The BlogWorld's A Stage

This blog world can be interesting. The few of you that regularly read this site -- and I do mean the few -- are aware of the metablog that the Chair made the occasional contribution to in its salad days. It seems that the concept of the metablog was not so well received by some of the denizens of the Ottawa blog
community once it recently became public knowledge. Apparently, the “blog about a blog” seems to have violated some unwritten code in the blogosphere that one needs to show unwavering reverence for those blogging their thoughts online. I can appreciate this point of view. I suppose if we treat the blog world as one would treat an open mic night at your local music club, perhaps irreverence doesn’t show the due respect bloggers are looking for when “getting out there” with some of their deepest confessions and personal musings.

The site followed by the metablog is somewhat unique, and maybe it reflects why it was chosen for this little cyber experiment. From our perspective, the Fifth Muse writes in a frank and often-poignant manner about personal matters. She pulls few punches in her editorials about people that cross her path and expresses her passion in a cogent manner – something I have rarely found in the blog world. Yes, who knows whether we were getting anything close to what this person truly is, but the content of her postings were compelling nonetheless. Some subjects resonated with many of us, other subjects less so. And so we used this as a springboard for our own creativity in the same public space. In so doing, we created the “blog about the blog”, mimicking a discussion group of a daily soap opera.

Some of the creepy Big Brother themes were deliberate – the web cams, the bus timetable references, satellite maps of the city – and were part of the broader social commentary the metablog was making about anonymous voyeurs and exhibitionists in the modern cyber world. Obviously, many of the readers did not understand this context, and instead got spooked about the creepy and subversive nature of the metablog.

What I think really bothered some of the local blogger elite was that we were hiding behind a layer of anonymity. It made it somehow creepier and unfair. I suppose if we were anonymously doing such commentary about a blog who’s contributor was not remaining anonymous, then that point may have some merit. In the broader domain, Ottawa has something akin to such poison penmanship and its called Frank Magazine, where anonymous insiders rat out their very public colleagues and bosses.

But therein lies the difference.

First off, never did the metablog contributors “out” any details about the Muse that she did not already publish in her blog. Sure, we might have speculated about aspects of her life she didn’t write about, but in all those instances, it was merely that – speculation. Any astute reader would recognize it as such. And even if there were coincidental small world connections that got us closer to her, we were cautious in keeping such matters outside of our public commentary.

We were actually very concerned about the protection of her anonymity --- particularly since we found that some of the content she was going public with could be considered slanderous and that those whom she was writing about could likely easily identify her. Many of the individuals for whom Muse had disparaging remarks could easily be identified in a small town such as Ottawa. In fact, I was quite surprised that given her connections and close friendships with some of the best known bloggers in the community, that no one had offered some counsel to her on some of her more controversial postings. Maybe she ignored such advice, but when the metablog raised this issue, she did some immediate revisions to her postings, which I believe was wise.

As for us remaining anonymous, I think that was perfectly fair, since we were commenting about an anonymous person. For those bloggers who personally know the Muse, it was probably hard for them to understand this context. They do not view the Muse as an anonymous person. And so, we would hear comments like, “they don’t even know her, how can they write that stuff”? Of course, we don’t know her. And I’m told television wrestling isn’t real either. What was really disappointing about the anonymity issue was the deliberate attempts we encountered to uncloak the anonymity of the Muse, members of the metablog, as well as individuals anonymously referred to in the Muse’s blog. Some of these attempts were by noted Ottawa bloggers, no less.

Some may argue, “fine do what you want, but what’s with drawing all this extra attention to yourselves?” Was there a need to share this with the rest of the blog world? Well, the irony, of course, is that none of the metabloggers posted to Muse’s site. Muse was anonymously contacted through the metablog members. She pointed out its existence to the rest of the blog world. We took that as a sign that she was reasonably fine with what we had constructed, and wanted to share this interesting diversion to the blog phenomena. Obviously, there were comments she did not agree with, but I believe she understood what we were doing, and moreover, that it should be treated as something interesting but benign. And there is no doubt that her content has multiplied since acquiring knowledge of the metablog.

The metabloggers have been referred to as “self-indulgent busybodies” by other noted Ottawa bloggers. I suppose that’s true. I think if one reads the blog, the members are highly self-aware, albeit somewhat irreverent, about that dubious honour. But who isn’t self-indulgent in the blogosphere? The thing is, once you’ve decided that your diary needs to be read by the rest of the world, you must accept how the rest of the world will react. Sure, you can turn off your comments, and insulate yourself to the known few that will stand by you, no matter what you put out there. But you are still out there. If you didn’t want to be out there, you shouldn’t be so public.