By publishing things that come out of your mind (i.e. THOUGHTS) on your blog, you are blogging. By blogging, you are producing something. Producers create content that they want to sell. (i.e. get page views and be popular.) Since your content is effectively your thoughts, or some reflection of them, your product in a sense is you. So by leaving nasty or antagonistic comments under your name, you’re doing so in reflection of your product.
Presenting your product in that nasty, bad light decreases sales.
I can’t imagine anyone would start a blog with the sole purpose of fostering debate for that reason. But I’m not going to say they want to completely avoid it on their own page, and pages on others.
A comments thread I thought I could look at is one in response to Andrew Bolt’s blog on the Herald Sun website.
Despite it being very true that blogs create communities of like-minded people, the ability to comment does not necessarily allow for free-flowing discussion between these parties.
Firstly, all the comments you receive on your page need to be MODERATED by you before they appear. And why would you approve a comment that makes you look stupid, or takes the focus away from your point, or even pushes an online comment war, again removing focus from your work itself?
All the comments published more or less agree with Mr. Bolt’s argument.
This makes sense because as well as being a blogger, he’s somewhat of a personality. So the product he tries to sell, he’s really trying to sell in a literal sense. So I think we can argue calling this comments thread a ‘discussion space’ is a tad self-indulgent.
However, all bloggers are individuals armed with free will, so I can’t really generalize about the intentions of bloggers collectively. But let’s look at this from a logical perspective. Well, from the perspective of my logic.
Being Mr. Andrew Bolt, I can also imagine he doesn’t really have time to get into direct arguments with the general public.
According to Terry Flew, blogs are vehicles of social capital, and due to the widely accessible discussion space created, this kind of participation reinvigorates the democratic public sphere.
To argue with someone, you first need to engage with what they are saying, i.e. CONSUME their product. I’d say this is what most bloggers hope of their work. So for that reason, certain debates may be welcome upon certain pages. And this may well invigorate blogs as discussion spaces. But each blogger still wants to save face in order to push their own product. The two impulses are kind of grating.
So, I don’t think the blogging world is a completely rounded discussion sphere.
I say this because when you enter the blogosphere you do so primarily as a producer. As you troll around, viewing and commenting, you do so under your username, and so everything you say links back to your page and subsequently how others come to relate to it. You want to preserve your online face so that people will like you and continue to read.
So by posting a response on your own blog, you’re really sitting the fence. It’s a half discussion space. You’re indirectly replying, avoiding conflict yet still putting face time in for the participation element of being a blogger. And as Geert Lovink so says, ‘The chance that someone will reply is almost zero.’ Bingo. Discussion over.
But like I said before, my logic can’t generalize for bloggers in their entirety.
Myself, any rude or terrible comments that really make me look bad I wouldn’t publish. I see it as the equivalent of putting a sticker on a box of something at the supermarket that says THIS IS OFF DON’T BUY IT.
I would reply to a comment if it was exceptionally thought-provoking, clever, and BETTER then my own post. That way I can include myself in the brilliance someone else’s mind and even though the focus is temporarily shifted from my written monologues, I’m more likely to get more hits. I say this because I’m just an average blogger like about 408743854086443987540587 other average bloggers out there, and so if I’m frank with myself I’ve got to sway slightly to the ‘any-press-is-good-press’ side if I’ve got any hope out there.
I hope people don’t take this as a challenge and start bombarding me with comments about the meaning of life…awkward
Let's get awkward... 