The burden of blogging…
Apr 10th, 2007 by Simon
This isn’t a new topic – in fact, it’s a sort of spin-off from “Is Blogging killing planning” really. But I thought this article was interesting (snippet in picture above)… I found it at CNet, but there’s probably other reviews of the same book out there.
And, this snippet they quoted was great…
“If we keep up this pace, there will be over five hundred million blogs by 2010, collectively corrupting and confusing popular opinion about everything from politics, to commerce, to arts and culture. Blogs have become so dizzyingly infinite, that they’ve undermined our sense of what is true and what is false, what is real and what is imaginary. These days, kids can’t tell the difference between credible news by objective professional journalists and what they read on joeshmoe.blogspot.com.”
Ironically – and I think this is a good time to mention it – before writing the book, the author sounded off with his opinions (all steadfastly true, I’m sure) on his personal blog.
However, once you get past the deeply ironic thought that someone used a blog to rant about blogs, I think he has a great point… and, from a glance a few minutes ago, rather a good blog too. Anyway, the bit I like is that we risk being less educated through blogs. The sheer volume of information is impossible to filter, so the truth gets blocked out by the mass of subjective opinion. It’s true. I probably conspire to make this worse here on this blog! I don’t try to, but I am writing opinion – and don’t expect much more!
Maybe we do have some moral or general duty, though – to be clear what is commentary, what is supposition, and what is fact… then clearly tell people which camp we’re in? At least then, it’s up to the viewer to decide…
(As a sort of PS, I personally think that planners are better than most about being clear what is fact and what isn’t – but then it’s only human nature to think that we’re in the right, eh!)
I think the key thing (or at least, what I noted) at the IPA talk was the duty, it would seem, more senior advertising and marketing professionals have in their blogging.
The reason, I feel, that Russell’s Account Planning School of the Web was critiqued was that it purported to teach Juniors about planning – and some of the tasks were picked apart as being shallow.
Personally, I don’t think junior planners or planning wannabes are THAT naive; we can tell when something is written to provoke or amuse – it’s no more dangerous than over-reading Campaign and imagining that it’s all long lunches and fat expense accounts.
Couldn’t agree with you more.
I think the nature of planners is to inherently question and prove things.
To hypothesize and then back it up.
So, it’s a safer terrain and one we all read as critics/questioners, not just sponges.
Whereas the idea of ‘blogging journalism’ fills me with genuine dread.
Politics and religion have long been taboo subjects outside of close company for good reason.
If you don’t know a lot about what you’re talking about, you are likely to make naive decisions and comments based purely on personal bias.
Hey ho.
Blogs are just like sports, journalism, the Internet and art. The early stage is one of unbridaled exploration which, in the next stage, become behavior governed by formalized standards.
I could easily see bloggers starting to self-organize themselves (herd) and govern their metaphysical “city states” by agreed upon standards and identifications.
Two new studies show why some people are more attractive for members of the opposite sex than others.
The University of Florida, Florida State University found that physically attractive people almost instantly attract the attention of the interlocutor, sobesednitsy with them, literally, it is difficult to make eye. This conclusion was reached by a series of psychological experiments, which were determined by the people who believe in sending the first seconds after the acquaintance. Here, a curious feature: single, unmarried experimental preferred to look at the guys, beauty opposite sex, and family, people most often by representatives of their sex.
The authors believe that this feature developed a behavior as a result of the evolution: a man trying to find a decent pair to acquire offspring. If this is resolved, he wondered potential rivals. Detailed information about this magazine will be published Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
In turn, a joint study of the Rockefeller University, Rockefeller University and Duke University, Duke University in North Carolina revealed that women are perceived differently by men smell. During experiments studied the perception of women one of the ingredients of male pheromone-androstenona smell, which is contained in urine or sweat.
The results were startling: women are part of this repugnant odor, and the other part is very attractive, resembling the smell of vanilla, and the third group have not felt any smell. The authors argue that the reason is that the differences in the receptor responsible for the olfactory system, from different people are different.
It has long been proven that mammals (including human) odor is one way of attracting the attention of representatives of the opposite sex. A detailed article about the journal Nature will publish.