Last June, I was lucky enough to participate in both the "blog theory" and "metakos" panels at Yearly Kos. At the time, I thought the two were topics were closely related, and even to this day I have often tagged my posts on either of those subjects as both "blogosphere" and "meta." However, in recent weeks, I have come to notice that the two topics have greatly diverged from one another, to the point where I no longer feel comfortable writing about "meta" (at least in the way the term has come to be used and the type of blogging to which it refers). While I am fond of writing about the role of the progressive, political blogosphere within the broader political ecosytem, which used to be incorporated under the "meta" label, I now refer to that as "blog theory." By way of contrast, "meta" in the way it is now most commonly used, has come to refer to something much more specific: discussions centering on the internal dynamics of a small number of prominent personalities within the Dailykos-centric community and blogosphere. While I will probably write about "blog theory" as long as I am writing online, I will not directly participate in the new style of "meta" discussion, despite the new cottage industry which has sprung up around it. "Meta" discussions have become utterly destructive to the broader goal of coalition building, as they increasing become based on cults of personality, divisive factionalization, violations of privacy, accusations of conspiracy, charges of prejudice, and petty name-calling.
Political infrastructure is one of the main focuses of MyDD and, as such, "God's eye" commentary on the impact of the political blogosphere within the broader political ecosystem has always been one of our trademarks. One of my very first posts on MyDD was
Theory of the Blogosphere As Avant-Garde, where I applied some elements of critical theory that I had originally intended to use in my dissertation on post-WWII, American, avant-garde poetry collectives to the progressive, political blogosphere. Since then, I have had a number of well-linked posts that engage in rather theoretical treatment of the blogosphere, including
Top Down Right Wing Blogosphere Growing Powerful,
Diversity and the Two Lefty Spheres,
Aristocrat Right-Wing Blogosphere Stagnating,
The Emergence of the Progressive Blogosphere (co-written with Matt),
The One Way Flow Of Progressive Movement Money, and dozens of other posts on this topic. In my opinion, many of my better posts on this subject were compiled at the start of two fairly recent posts,
Declaring Victory, Continuing to Grow, wherein the linked posts discuss the netroots contribution to the 2006 election victories, and
On Preaching to the Choir, wherein the linked posts discuss what I term "the activist class war" between insiders and outsiders, establishment and grassroots. I love writing about this stuff and, as many of my off-line friends often note with irritation, I could talk about it forever. It also strikes me as important work. Given the enormous explosion of political blogging since 2002, and the tremendous impact it both has had, and continues to have, on the American political scene, figuring out the mechanisms through which blogging has made an impact, the dynamics of its interaction of other sources of American political power, and the potential / limitations of the blogosphere in the future are all key to sustaining a viable progressive movement.
.
However, that just is not what "meta" means anymore. Now, it means flame wars, rather than theory. It means accusations of conspiracy, prejudice and "selling out," rather than discussion. It means holding up personalities on a pedestal and factionalizing into groups around those pedestals, rather than building coalitions. It also means that some people just can't get over problems the have on Dailykos. Make no mistake--the progressive, political blogosphere as a whole is not plagued by the recent wave of meta discussions. Instead, these discussions are specific to a single hub within the progressive, political blogosphere: the Dailykos hub.
and yes, there are other major hubs in the progressive political blogosphere that have little or nothing to do with Dailykos). These new "meta" discussions are not blogosphere-wide, and are instead specific to the group of blogs that largely arose out of the Dailykos community: MyDD, Steve Gillard, Billmon, BooMan Tribune, My Left Wing, Kid Oakland, The Next Hurrah, Liberal Street Fight, Street Prophets, etc. Literally dozens of prominent blogs and bloggers have arisen out of the Dailykos community, and as such these blogs and bloggers still have a tendency to share links, readers and commenters with one another. In a real way, it is just a new transformation of the community Considering how much they share, it should also come as no surprise that these blogs also have a tendency to share arguments with one another, and the physical space represented by the many different blogs allows those arguments to create factions, and increasingly entropy, much more so than any other time in the past.
I do not know for certain how this happened, but I do (as usual) have a theory. First, many of the blogs that spawned out of the Dailykos community failed to follow
the first rule that I laid out my "meta" post from last Sunday night:
1. MyDD is not Dailykos. If you have a problem with something that happened at Dailykos, if you were banned from Dailykos, or if you just don't like Dailykos, don't bring it to MyDD. We are a different website, with a different focus (albeit, only slightly different). We have different writers, different commenters, and a different community. We are not the Dailykos garbage can, or a forum where flame wars on that site can be revisited and continued.
I am not sure at all why so many bloggers are obsessed with their stature within the Dailykos community, and the level of personal respect they receive from Markos. Dailykos obsession actually does not even make sense to me as a way to grow your blog, since if you treat your blog as an extension of Dailykos, it will never truly come into its own. Apart from being stuck on Dailykos, I also wonder if it has something to do with having a close-knit, socializing community on a blog that tends to function at its best (that is, have its most political impact) when it operates in a more work-oriented, professional manner. I have always viewed MyDD as a professional operation, and as such I have been wary of the dangers of the blog becoming a social site instead.
As I wrote in my first stab at MyDD meta last summer:
As far as I can tell, the reason there is no such thing as Meta-MyDD is because there is no MyDD community, as such. Sure, we have frequent commenters and diarists, but what really separates MyDD from sites like Dailykos, BooMan Tribune, Fire Dog Lake and My Left Wing is that while they build a family-like community, we instead act as though we are political professionals.
Without a family, without a community, there is no need to reflect back on our history. Simply (and sadly) put, there is no one to care. Every single person who has ever been a significant front pager for MyDD has also been a political professional at one time or another. As such, we tend to be much more focused on elections and political infrastructure than upon ourselves. When someone leaves MyDD, they do not post a GBCW diary. Instead, they simply announce that they are leaving to become a full-time staffer or consultant for some organization, official, or campaign. This also explains why we get both a disproportionate amount of traffic to our front-page, and why we get a disproportionate amount of establishment media and political attention relative to our traffic
For me, MyDD is work, not play. Obsessive work that I love, and socializing that I miss, but work none the less. When, at the metakos panel, I was asked if I thought progressives should work to recreate the social organization of blogs in offline environments, I quickly answered "no." While there are some admirable aspects of blogosphere communication--honesty, authenticity and something approaching meritocracy--overall, I shudder to think at how awful offline social situations would be if they mimicked online communication. Since it is so impersonal, it is much easier to be disrespectful of the intelligence, knowledge and feelings of others than it is in person. It is much easier to be aggressive and, for lack of a better word, an asshole online than it is offline. It is easy to accuse people you don't know of bias and participation in some dark conspiracy. After all, a comment thread is an extremely limited means of communicating with another person--a very narrow band through which to express personal feeling. With limited comments serving as the dominant form of communication, the blogosphere is a realm where it is easy to feel suspicious, isolated, excluded, and disrespected, and where it is easy to make others felt that way as well.
I agree very much with
a comment written by skeptic06 in a comment to the Meta-MyDD post (emphasis in original):
I wonder whether it's just that community aspect of some of the sites Chris mentions that leads to the flame wars, troll patrols and other signs of online intolerance.
I like the way it's not high school clique-y round here - as Chris says, whoever thinks about his MyDD UID? - and the level of sycophancy to FP-ers is kept well in check, that I've noticed!
Tight, online communities can add an important personal touch to a political blog, but I also worry if they lead to stagnation in terms of the ideas--and people--that are viewed as acceptable on a blog. I have to wonder if all of these "meta" posts and flamewars come from people at first feeling as though they were welcome members of an online community, and then later on feeling as though they have been dissed, excluded, or otherwise not made to feel welcome anymore. On MyDD, I have instead taken the approach that the blog is to be viewed as a professional enterprise rather than as social one. And I don't even mean the work comes first, and the socializing second--I mean the work comes always, and the socializing comes almost never. If the site was never personal in the first place, it is less likely you will feel pushed out of the community at some point. This may not make people feel very comfortable here, and the lack of socializing and other fun activities on MyDD might keep our traffic down compared to other prominent political blogs, but it does allow us to stay focused on the task at hand, maintain a high level of influence on the broader political scene, and typically stay on the sidelines during these ultimately destructive meta wars.
There are benefits to communities, but there are dangers too. The "meta" fights we have seen recently are clearly one of the dangers. How to approach the balance between the serious, political work of a blog and the social, informal, pleasurable work of meeting people online is clearly one of the main dilemmas of anyone with a large blog. On MyDD, we tack hard toward the professional side of things, perhaps to the determent of our community. Historically, on sites like Dailykos, the social side of the equation has been foregrounded to a greater extent, which for most people probably makes the site more fun to participate in than MyDD. However, given the nature of online communication and the difficulty of coherence within large groups, depressing, mean-spirited, fractious "meta" wars are perhaps an inevitable side-effect. Part of the community will always be in turmoil, and for some prominent members of the community, death by meta will eventually result.
Some bloggers often ask me why MyDD doesn't have much of a social scene, or a family-like community of commenters. Now that more and more sites are being dragged into an ever expanding flame war, I think the question could easily be turned around: why do other sites, that ostensibly are created to impact politics, so heavily foreground a family-like community of commenters? I am not arguing that one is better than the other, because in the end all types of political blogs are necessary to appeal to a broad progressive audience with divergent tastes. If every progressive political blog had a large, close-knit community, then we would all probably be face the constant scourge of flame wars. By way of contrast, if every site as "professional" as MyDD, then the political blogosphere would have far fewer participants, and it would also lack an important element of humanity. We need both, but I am going to stick on the "professional" side of things, avoid meta, and stick to "blog theory." Considering the number of conspiracies, idiocies, and prejudices I have been accused of anyway, I can only imagine how bad it would become if MyDD were to suddenly split into factions of some sort after previously all feeling like one big, happy family. We do not all need to be sociable in progressive politics, and there are clear dangers (and benefits, of course) to being so. I believe the progressive, political blogosphere is the most important political infrastructure development of the past five years, and it would be a great tragedy if it were to die off because we all suffered death by meta. If we are really going to change the country, sometimes we just have to get down to work, and forget about the personalities of the people involved.
