Snappy the Clam

allied: Trying to leave a comment

Jeneane said this in regards to what I found to be a pretty snotty post over at Halley Suitt's this am. Apparently we have a new meme starting to take form amongst the non-existent A-list. The way this one goes is roughly:

People say bad things to me, and I don't like it. It makes me sad. How do you expect me to make more rich, savory posts about conference going and airport wi-fi if you keep saying bad things about me?

The first example I saw of this was a post from Joi Ito, in which he wondered out loud whether his blogging was becoming boring due to a sudden bout of self-consciousness. It actually had a certain amount of thoughtfulness to it, and wasn't just the standard "wahhhh meanies!" type deal. Unfortunately the comments to same post rapidly degraded into a ton of bloopies (blog-groupies; I can make these up all day) saying:

Joi, you rock! Don't listen to all those losers who wish they were one-billionth as kewl as you. Please visit my blog at unctuoussycophant. blogspot.com.

Though the fact that he felt compelled to write "I'm not fishing for compliments here" indicates that he knew he was going to get pretty much just that.

Then we get Halley, in the post Jeneane commented on above:

Man, it must suck to be you. But then further along in the same whine, we get this:

Jeebus, it's amazing to see how fast the populism and digital democracy and such devolves into this sort of "MY ball" sentiment in the presence of dissent. Even Jarvis did a version of this 2-step recently, where he told us all that he was 'Mr. Transparency" (if only) but he was only obliged to fearlessly crusade against back-room, off the record deals that didn't involve him. Why? Because it's bidness. And that's different somehow. Then they're "conversations." And nobody blogs all their conversations, right? Hoo boy. Interesting take. Transparent as mud. But wholly necessary if you're going to milk this blog thing to resuscitate your career. All of a sudden, "our new media world that we're all creating as citizens but only I'm profiting from" has borders.

Also, interestingly enough, it's sort of the next fractal level down in the media food chain. A-list makes a career out of wailing on the big bad old media. The SCMSM responds by largely ignoring the A-list. Now that the SC-A-List is itself starting to become the BigBlogs (translate: assimilated,) we get them wanting to ignore any dissent or criticism of them or their actions.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.