Blogs: There's Nothing New Under The Sun
Bloggers crow that they are on the front line of a revolution. So, Jonah Goldberg wants to splash a little cold water in their faces.
According to him, the typical blogger is no shining star.
Technorati says 23,000 new blogs are created every day. And a 2003 survey says the average blogger is a teenage girl.
That means - every day - there are 22,990 new blogs that nobody will ever read.
Because, as we all know, most people you speak to in everyday life don't know what a blog is.
Blogging is like any other hobby: hotrods, ham radios, stereophonic sound. When I was a kid you would often see one of these enthusiasts in a sitcom or cartoon. Just like a beatnik. What they did was of no major concern to ordinary people and never would be.
Even blogs by professionals are not much different from columns in magazines. Andrew Sullivan for politics, Monty's Bluff for investors, etc.
Also, says Joney, bloggers forget that they stand on the shoulders of many other forms of alternative media.
He claims that Rush Limbaugh used the abandoned AM radio band as the vehicle of a populist backlash against established institutions.
Then, supposedly, there was cable TV. Shows like Wayne's World led a fans' revolt against the nasty dudes who populate music's big bad corporations.
(That must have missed Toronto because I've never seen any "alt" cable access - even though Mike Meyers comes from here.)
And, according to Theodore Roszak, the story begins in 1952 with the start of Mad Magazine's attack on stuffed shirts and phonies.
So, now you've got corporate bloggers, who are the new fifth column of business, telling their audiences not to listen to the girls up in head office.
OK, that's great. But, really, "You've come a long way baby", to get where you've always been.
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