I don’t know how I missed this–sometimes I think my RSS reader gets a little lazy now and then, or is maybe just in the vanguard of the machines’ war on humanity and this is its first tentative steps toward full-scale slaughter–but Curt Purcell added another post to the ongoing discussion about whether a more cohesive horror blogosphere would be a good thing, and whether the kind of big-deal linkblog that might help create such a blogosphere could also keep it on its best behavior. My instinct was that no, it couldn’t, not really: at best it could lead by example (which is no small feat, to be sure), and at worst it would simply be one less jerkwad blog.
Curt points out something that hadn’t even occurred to me: Given such a linkblog’s ability to generate traffic for the sites it links to and attention for the ideas on those sites, by choosing to focus on better-behaved (or just qualitatively better) blogs it could indeed help shape the discourse. That’s an excellent point, and I’m sure it would work in that way.
But then again (and uh-oh, here comes the Eeyore in me again), it would only work on blogs that were in it for the traffic and attention, which (while I can’t read anyone’s minds) I would imagine would be the blogs most deeply prone to cattiness, dogmatism, and other negative traits that don’t begin with domestic animals. That kind of thing would be tough to shake.
My guess is that real quality blogging comes from a “blog gratia blogis” mentality. I know Curt frequently says he wants to reach as wide an audience as possible, But I can’t help but feel that even if his audience consisted solely of googlebots and people who screwed up an “austin powers groovy baby” search, he’d still be rolling merrily along, blogging about Nazisploitation and whatnot. That’s what makes his blog great, and the kinds of folks who tailor their blogging to make themselves more acceptable to linkfarms are probably not so hot to begin with.
All that being said, I really have no idea why I’m being such a gloomy gus about all this when I would be genuinely happy to see a horror blogosphere develop, where more voices interacted and more people were around to hear those voices. (Though I must say I’m pleased with the sites I regularly visit right now.) I hope I’m totally wrong about all of this stuff!
Well, now I’m curious as to what Curt thinks about my other, less personality-driven quibble: the inherent difficulty in creating a cohesive blogosphere around a genre rather than a medium. I hope he posts on it…
Hey Sean–I don’t think you’re being “gloomy”; it’s just the devil’s advocate in you, and all the points you’ve raised have been well worth considering.
I wasn’t sure whether you were ready to be done with this topic, which is why I haven’t addressed that other point yet. I’ll get on that! 😉
“it’s just the devil’s advocate in you”
Man, ain’t that the truth!