The Losers� Club

Music: �All the Love in the World�, Nine Inch Nails
Mood: geeky

I ganked this off of the Canadian Press� newswire this morning:

Michael Keren, who has written "Blogosphere: The New Political Arena," suggests individuals who bare their souls in blogs are isolated and lonely, living in a virtual reality instead of forming real relationships or helping to change the world.

So, let me get this straight: bloggers are losers who, instead of living in the real world, prefer to live a world of make believe. (Also, we�re all talk and no action.)

(Something tells me that Keren�s a little bitter that he�s not the celebrity blogger du jour.)

Oookay, there, dude. You studied NINE people. Hardly a representative sample to be calling EVERY SINGLE BLOGGER IN THE BLOGOSPHERE a loser, doncha think?

Christ. It�s like those assholes who think that all fans are fanbrats who go batshit screaming fangirl crazy over their object of affection and who devote their entire life to it. (And consequently, because they meet online, they�re also losers who live (and die) in their parents� basement and can�t form healthy relationships in the real world.) /my own issues with fan studies

I call bullshit. (And no, not just because he called me a loser for having a blog.)

I can�t say with absolute certainty that every single blogger is not a drama queen attention whore who gets depressed when his/her online minions turn from his/her to go to the new kid on the block. (Trust me, there are plenty of them � they�re the Big Name Fans (BNFs) of the Blogosphere.) Nor am I going to say that everyone on the web is well-adjusted and has relationships in the real world.

What I can say is that it appears that Keren came to his study with a bunch of presuppositions about who uses the interwebs and who blogs.* (Negative stereotypes abound in popular culture.) In the end, these presuppositions ended up being reflected in his work. (Hey, this happens. We�re not robots � academics� own biases do get reflected in their work.)

* I haven�t seen his methodology or even read his study. This is my own supposition that�s directly informed by what I know about the subject.