Gimlé

“Blogaria”, a horrid word for sure, seems to be used to describe the web of webloggers, as if that web were something separate from our old world wide web.

I am one of only two people in the whole of Blogaria who accept that writers might wish to exert a degree of control over how their work is used and who also feel no obligation to donate their work to the public domain.

The words are Jonathon Delacour’s, he’s engaging in a cross-weblog discussion on copyright issues.

It begs the question of what is and isn’t a part of Blogaria proper.

Isn’t Mark Evanier? a weblogger?

His website is updated frequently. He calls it a weblog. And he’s very pro-copyright. With well thought out reasons behind his view.

It’s a weblog, but not a part of the “Blogaria” proper. Obviously. ’bloggers don’t read him.

It’s not a matter of popularity. Evanier is the writer of the Groo comic book (amongst others), several animation series, tv series, and columns on showbiz trivia.

He’s read by a lot of people.

I’d like to posit a theory.

“Blogaria” is a function of the weblogging queen bee mentality. What belongs and doesn’t belong to it is defined exclusively by the online reading list of the weblogging “celebrities” (I won’t name names, you know who they are).

So, ’blogging is not a technology or a way to communicate but a societal game—ritual—created by the few, for the few.

I’m playing the game, so that probably makes this a weblog but not necessarily a part of “Blogaria”.

But to pretend that I’m not submitting to the rules of the very same class of people that annoyed me in school, as a teenager, is a piece of blatant self-deception.

Here, as in journalism and media, the game is theirs.

Baldur Bjarnason.
Clifton, Bristol.