Reason To Write

***

It is not why you do something, but how you do it. It is not entirely about what you have already achieved, but there has to be something about the way you go about doing it as well.

I am talking about being gracious. I am talking about dealing with others and treating them with at least a miniscule amount of respect if and when they do not agree with the way you do it. Sure, everyone is entitled to their opinions and you definitely cannot please everyone at any one time. However, there are ways to deal with criticism, be it constructive or otherwise, in a decent manner.

I know I am flogging a dead horse here. I know I have been not so obvious in putting my point across in the past. However, with all the publicity going on about a major event which just passed us during the weekend and how the masses decided to swing out their verbal swords just because the rags did not paint such a rosy picture about the startup they were involved in, I felt disgusted.

There are people whom I respect and visit purely because of the content they offered, but for some bits of the masses to confer some celebrity the title of “the grandfather of local blogs” boggles me to no end. Yes, that bloke has been around since 1997. Yet, from what I can remember, he got on the blogging scene only later (when he decided to revamp the site and upgrading it with a decent publishing tool). Before that, it was basically a site featuring his writings, which essentially were poking fun at local current affairs, and for a while, it was not updated. I would have no problems with people slapping the label on him as one of the web pioneers on local (mild) current affairs satire articles, but to go so far as to call him the grandfather of the local blog scene, that is really stretching it.

I have been around long enough (though not long enough to qualify as being called the father of the local blogging scene) to remember before I got to know about blogging, there were already 60 plus blogs listed on the now-defunct SGBlogs!. Many of these blogs might have gone the way of the dodo, but some of the people these sites are still around. Joan of valska is one of them. She was one of the first few bloggers I visited and subsequently met in person.

There was no such thing as a popularity contest or a personality cult back then. People just spilled the beans on what they felt like saying. There was little or no hypocrisy about it. People did not behave pretentiously. Since there was not much publicity from the press (though the very first article about blogging came from the extinct rag, Project Eyeball and that was where I got introduced to blogging), people just got on with it, with or without publicity. Not every blog listed on SGBlogs might be everyone’s cup of tea, but people went on with it while bearing in mind how these sites were personal to those who took the trouble (i.e., coding their sites painstakingly in html or tearing their hair out with the buggy Greymatter before the advent of MT or Wordpress). There was an unwritten rule where we respected the content or even the style of each other’s site, even though we might not necessarily agree. It was a little thriving community where those more sinister self-serving aspects of humanity were very uncommon.

Everything changed when some bloke decided to model after some blogging awards thing which started in the States. Due to the way the contest was run, it became a popularity contest. From there, the innocence and the primary purpose for starting up a blog site (which I deem as either a repository of interesting sites as gleaned by the blogger with some comments thrown in, or a personal journal) went out of the window. It was no longer something about good writing. It was no longer about how that particular blogger is sharp enough to point others about good sites elsewhere. There is now an audience out there and what you have to do to gain enough recognition to win the popularity contest is simply to get enough votes for word about your site to spread around.

You can spill drivel and be foul-mouthed about almost everything that pisses you. You can be hypocritical or even vilify people who accidentally and without malice stepped on your tail by plastering their names or photos all around your site. Since you have a flair for no-holds-barred writing and that there is no need to respect anyone, you do not think twice about having an anti-social whinge on pregnant women traveling with you on the train, hoping that you would give up your seat while your perky butt sits there. Or throwing in the odd but long entry on cabsnatchers… or because someone else stole the limelight from you, you decide to go all personal by discussing at length the shape of someone else’s anatomy.

While I thought the award was really meant to recognize the achievements of someone who contributed to the development of the Asian blogging community, we got a foul-mouthed whinger winning the popularity contest. Then, the press got wind of how this blogging thing could become the next big thing in the lives of its readers, and then accolades began to rain down on our most popular blogger on this small island. By then, everyone wanted a slice of the popularity prize. From there, blogging became less of the want to achieve a personal aim or a space for personal expression, and more of a popularity contest, where the number of clicks to your site (as evidenced by the proliferation of web counters) or the number of votes (while adopting a very in-your-face and direct method of canvassing them, i.e., “I don’t care how many times you have voted, just click the bloody button!”) became the name of the game.

This is simply because you could get your face featured on the national rags… just because you can get famous overnight… just because you can get on national television… just because you can get an endorsement deal out of it…

So why not? There is money to be made. There is more than half a chance to become the next big blog thing. You can even get enough column space in one of the rags to spill your drivel.

Coincidentally (but not unsurprisingly) the first whiffs of the stench called “politics” which we all are familiar with descended on us around that time. Any morsels of the need to respect one another’s opinions or even sites were all sacrificed in the attempt to milk more mileage out of this blogging thing. Suddenly everyone decided to be foul-mouthed about everything else, including other people’s personal sites or views. As long as I get to say something which will pander to the masses, I don’t care what you say as long as I jostled my way to get my space and therefore, I earned the right.

Sadly, there is no way back now. The foundations have all been laid. It would have been good if the greed for popularity was checked by something else (a code of ethics?) during the growth of the local blogging scene. However, this has come so far that the change has become irreversible. Many things have become so skewed that all things associated with being popular is the main aim now for thousands who penned their own blogs. Popularity breeds elitism and elitism in the blogging scene simply translates into how some opinions have become more equal than others.

In this context, a group blog was set up by a group of popular bloggers. Their intention behind this group blog was good, but since its inception, I have become very disgusted with the way it was run. Perhaps no one on the panel of editors had a public relations background to push their points across without sounding like bigots. However, three months into its infancy, I was not heartened by that site and its desired contribution to the local blogging community. In fact, I got the intention that it was set up to soothe and to inflate the egos of some.

As I have mentioned earlier, it is not why you do it that counts, but how you do it that exposes your intentions.

To conclude, I quote from a comment which I gleaned from one of the entries of the said group blog:

“mmm, no, I have one complaint, this particular article serves to highlight it.

Whatever the case, I'm delighted to find a poster who can coherently argue, with substance, without resorting to attacks and homerisms that are unfortunately far too common in SG forums and blogs. Thank you.”

Posted by reprise* on 20 July, 2005 - 3:11pm

***

I am not sure how things will turn out in the future. Needless to say, I am disappointed at how things have panned out. Perhaps I have been very idealistic about how everyone should be happy enough to be able to find their own voices and there exists a place where everyone can speak out without degenerating the discourses into a mud-slinging or back-stabbing exercise.

Our philosophies have become incompatible.

***
Addendum:

Emphasising the fact that "the first time the CB word is used in a local paper" is as distasteful as making a joke out of "comfort women" just to prove your point.