Dr. Frank's What's-it

On Not Being able to Stand the Heat and Getting Out of the Kitchen

David Greenberg "subbed" for Daniel Drezner recently, and wrote this interesting essay about his first blogging experience.

Sheila O'Malley has this response:

The essay illuminated for me why I have no interest in blogging about politics anymore. I like to share my opinion, but frankly, it's the COMMENTS I don't want to hear... I think someone actually made this comment on my site once: that it's not those who disagree with you that are annoying, it's those that agree!! Anyway, it's a very interesting topic for me, because I started out as a political blog, mainly, and got a lot of readers that way. But I read what happens on other political blogs - and I do not want to be the host to a party like THAT. I'm not saying that what works for me should work for everyone. I watch other bloggers flourish in that hostile invective environment, they love the dogfight. I don't.

I'm basically in the same boat. Somehow, blogging about politics brings out the worst in everyone. I used to do a lot more political blogging myself; the email and comments could be helpful and illuminating, but there was a lot of contentless invective. In one way, I enjoyed the discussion; but in another I didn't really care all that much, and the nastiness became more and more of a drag. It gets boring. I found myself shying away from posting about political matters, thinking "do I really want to do this?" More and more often, the answer was "no, it's not worth it." I suppose my continual posts on music, "found" items, and random stupid stuff finally drove away the politicos. I didn't do it on purpose, exactly, but that's how it happened. I think it works out better for everyone.

And I'm with Sheila on another thing, too. "Blog credibility" is an inherently hilarious phrase and concept.

UPDATE: just by the way, if you want an example of a typically fruitless "political" comments thread, this is a pretty good one. "The Left" vs. "The Right"! Awesome! (this via Jeremy of Who Knew, whose views on Che Guevara t-shirts are being "discussed.")

Posted by Dr. Frank at May 15, 2005 05:18 PM | TrackBack