The new tribalism and you

A couple of weeks ago, I commented about a review on Strange Horizons that seemed to have kicked some sort of a hornet's nest, based on the responses that followed. Almost a week ago, I blogged (in a rather weak post, I'll admit) about those who do stir up the hornet's nest. And last night, I posted about a sense of disconnect that I was feeling, which generated quite a few responses (nearly 50 at this point) and a few posts elsewhere. What I found interesting were the connections (Jonathan McCalmont also noted this in his first response to my post from last night) between the three.

Blogging for me is like masturbating in a fish bowl world - everyone is going to witness every single stroke and to praise/condemn you for how you are jerking off. But that's only part of the picture. What I find intriguing is this sense of "tribalism" that's become part of one small branch of a larger blogosphere. Take for instance the reaction by SQT, both in the comments section and over at her blog. Or rather, consider the reactions of those who follow her blog and who, for the most part, have nothing invested in the discussion at my blog outside of how it affects SQT.

I never named names in my post last night. I felt like it would be counterproductive and would detract from the main thrust of my own post, which was more a venting vehicle about my own frustrations about how I'm failing to live up to my own ideals. The quotes around "selling out" are meant to be ironic, in the sense that this term is so devoid of a singular definition as to be practically worthless. But yet they sparked something.

I read through the 30+ comments to date over at her blog. It's rather interesting to read the value judgments on myself and a couple of others who commented in my post. In many ways, the outrage that a few expressed is akin to that which appeared in that Strange Horizons review that I linked to above. There is something personal in the responses, as if a clan member had been attacked and that their honor had to be defended. McCalmont made an astute observation there, one that I find myself thinking upon now.

I like social groups, but at the same time I distrust them. There is always that vague threat of a mob mentality developing, of people investing so much of their own selves into what an outsider might consider to be a picayune matter. Yet despite the ultimate insignificance of the matter (for example, this blog might on a busy day get a shade over 1000 page views. The average porn site will see millions, if not tens of millions, of page views over the same time span), some find themselves defending vigorously some sort of "chosen champion."

Let someone attack or even just merely question a particular point of view supported by a self-selecting group. Might as well be seeing the internet version of a cockfight after it's all been said and done. And is that attacking (or in their minds, "defending") group necessarily in the "right?"

I could care less if the readers of this blog (which technically is a group blog, even if my co-editors have mostly abandoned it over the past few years) support my stance or rip into me for whatever reason. I value honest comments about things that I slack off on doing more than I do most praise. Groupthink, or the "new tribalism" as I prefer to call it, rarely advances discourse much. Then again, neither does Quixotic tilting against windmills, which is a topic that will have to await another time and perhaps place. I'm off to read and perhaps exercise for a bit - that does me much more good than fretting over what so-and-so might be thinking or not thinking about me. Not bad advice, that.

Update:

Seems that this post was taken a bit personally by some. Normally, I'd just let this blow over, shrug, and move on, but I think I'll address a few things being discussed in other quarters for clarification's sake (and not to start a third post on a subject that originally was centered around myself and not others), as the interpretations of what I have written recently have been...umm...interesting, to say the least.

The title "When do you ever stop whoring yourself out?" was meant to apply to myself as much as to anyone else. Posting just to post is really bad for me in the long-run, so I devoted quite a bit of that blog entry to mocking my own self there, while addressing a few other points.

I didn't really want to address this directly, since it wasn't the central part of that original article, but the reason I said "This isn't about 1 or 2 or even a handful of blogs, but more about some that are in my blogroll, others that are not. " was because it was a feeling after glancing through several dozen blogs, some in my blogroll, others that were in the blogrolls of the ones I was reading at the time this past weekend. In other words, it was an aggregate, not an individual blog or two being singled out (for the record, the comments in this post and I think elsewhere that presume it was directed at Pat's blog are wrong for the same reason that SQT thought I was singling her out - I wasn't thinking of particular blogs but instead of a general impression).

So when people asked if I were talking about them, the answer had to be "of course not," because I wasn't thinking about their blogs. Sad to say, but I rarely read half of the blogs in my blogroll more than once a week or so at the moment. I was blogging about an impression, how the reflection on that impression made my own faults as a blogger stand out to me, and then I thought I'd move on. Guess I should have known better (see the fishbowl masturbation comment above).

In this article as it originally stood (this update being the only edit to the content, as the original post is preserved in its entirety), I referenced one blog and the reaction there to my original post. I used the blogger's screen name by name, noted the perceived behavior. It wasn't done to "attack" this person (who I barely know) or to seek publicity (I get enough of that, to be honest). It was an immediate example of something that I had contemplated first when reading the responses to a few things this year alone: Racefail '09, Amazonfail, and (to a lesser extent) the reaction to Martin Lewis's recent review at Strange Horizons. If I had a do-over, those would have been cited as well as examples of what I perceive to be "internet tribalism."

As you can see from the response to that link at the beginning of this update, this caused a bit of a mini-tempest. Yes, I blog to have conversations. I like discussing a few things that aren't treacly sweet. I like disagreements and debates. But I'm not in the habit of engaging in ad hominems here (or most anywhere at most any time). That's why I'm writing this apologia, to address those people who don't know me (know of me, perhaps, but certainly not an acquaintance of mine) but who seem to have fallen into acting out what I described in my original post above.

As I said there and I'll reiterate here: I don't want defenders. Honest critics are fine, however. All I would suggest (and not even ask) is that these posts be read from a more "distant" point of view. I'm not interested in "controversy" for controversy's sake. I could care less about cheap traffic spikes, since it is as large and as worthless as a squirrel's shit in the middle of a forest. What I'm interested in is how these reactions have shaped up. Some have taken my words too seriously. Why they have is between them and their own selves. Some have made reflective essays of their own that hopefully will be of value to them (and which hopefully won't lead to misunderstandings and accusations). But of course, the best response to all that has to be the Hook Giveaway. Levity is so underrated in these matters.