Comments on: Comments on 4283

Post number 4283

Mr. skullhead — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 12:08:10 -0800

Blogma2001: A Manifesto for Better Weblogging

Virulent Memes's riposte.

By: john

john — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 12:16:51 -0800

That's the trouble with getting on pedestals. Time for compelling content and whatever trendy words you might think of.

By: rebeccablood

rebeccablood — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 12:20:14 -0800

anybody wanna talk about napster? or nader? rcb

By: schlomo

schlomo — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 12:35:09 -0800

I was entertained by the manifesto-- not in actual agreement-- but entertained. That is until I went to his actual blog and read the first two posts: (1)Anyway, I'm going to buy fuckloads of CDs _and_ a discman-type thingy that's more resilient than my '97 Sony today. (Umm, contravening my own Manifesto, but anyway. Hypocrites have more fun.) I'm going to bore you shitless about them later on, no doubt. (2)Everybody's doin' it, doin' it, doin' it...: Skykicking redesigns as well. One, in his words, backpedlling on his own Manifesto. And Two is the LinkyLove he kind of lambasts... Can't we just let everybody do whatever they want?

By: waxpancake

waxpancake — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 12:39:16 -0800

I think we should have a contest to coin the stupidest term with blog in it. Just today, I've seen blogma, blogtastic, bloggeuse, and blogorrhea on pages linked off of Metafilter. I submit blogarithm, electroencephablogram, epiblogue, gastroenteroblogy, and medulla oblogata for your approval. Of course, we don't really need a contest. We could just let the press and the blogging community stumble across them organically.

By: gluechunk

gluechunk — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 12:50:53 -0800

I submit: blogectomy - as in "A blogectomy would make that site a lot better."

By: grimmelm

grimmelm — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 12:58:53 -0800

When did the rhetoric of Dogme 95 get hijacked by anyone with some kind of big statement to make? What's the thought process -- something like "Must have manifesto. Dogme Manifesto. Me call manifesto ???m[a/e] !" Gosh durn it, not all manifestoes are the same. Dogme 95 had some pretty specific demands: natural lighting only, no "genre" movies, only props found on location. If you want to go start an anti-celebrity-blog movement and democratize a content-is-king blogiverse, sure, go ahead, but what does this have to do with the technical components of weblogging, with the artistic statement one makes in a blog?

By: daveadams

daveadams — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 13:01:31 -0800

What else do you expect from Aussies? They obviously don't have any semblance of a reasonable sense of humor. Just look at Neale.

By: Succa

Succa — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 13:06:12 -0800

One word: Bloggystyle

By: davidgentle

davidgentle — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 13:22:50 -0800

Bloglodyte? A troglodyte with a blog? I've been thinking of putting down a few words about blogs myself recently but it would never actually occur to me to tell other people what to do. It might piss me off slightly that other people's blogs get more attention than mine but blaming them for that seems pointless. Or was the guy just joking?

By: frykitty

frykitty — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 13:25:05 -0800

I thought it was hilarious, though I was looking for guidelines, preferably far-fetched and difficult to attain. In the spirit of Dogme 95, how about:

Design elements must be entirely of one's own making.
All coding must be done by hand in a text editor.
No superfluous design elements. Animation is forbidden.
All blog entries must be completely factual. No exaggeration or changing names to protect the innocent.
Clever aliases are forbidden.
Blogs not following Dogma rules may not be linked.

Other suggestions? Oh, I submit: Bloggunity. Gack.

By: CrazyUncleJoe

CrazyUncleJoe — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 13:35:48 -0800

Damn. Now I'm gonna be hearing "Who's in the Blog House? [meme] [meme] [meme]" in my head for the rest of the day. I love the idea of putting together some sort of blogliography, but I think you have to at least use the word in a sentence (er, in blogtext?)...

By: grimmelm

grimmelm — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 13:58:24 -0800

blogiography? nuh-huh. I like biblioblography better, because it sounds like something Homer Simpson might say.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 14:00:08 -0800

y'know, there would be no "a-list" if people would stop saying there's one. No one within the "a-list" has ever seriously proclaimed they were a member of any elite. It's all these people on the outside saying "look at them, they're elitist! they won't let me in their secret cabal!"

By: john

john — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 14:05:44 -0800

To follow such rules is a blogcrafice.

By: judith

judith — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 14:23:54 -0800

hmm. well then matt, how do you explain THIS?

By: frykitty

frykitty — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 14:26:17 -0800

Blografice, bloglodyte, bloggystyle...this over-use of a word to say many things is feeling familiar. Ah yes: SMURF.

By: sudama

sudama — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 14:45:40 -0800

Kerouac's belief and technique for modern prose is all you need.

By: CrazyUncleJoe

CrazyUncleJoe — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 14:48:44 -0800

Outside of *what* Matt... ;^)

By: daveadams

daveadams — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 14:55:45 -0800

Of course, this is also proof that Matt's a member of the cabal.

By: BozLee

BozLee — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 15:14:39 -0800

I'd suggest the word blogouisse, er, bloggouissie, er, but I can't spell it. (I feel like such a bloghead...)

By: BozLee

BozLee — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 15:23:28 -0800

BLOGEOISIE. I guess.

By: Graham

Graham — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 15:48:51 -0800

Nice to see you're all paying attention. The first rally will be on Saturday!

By: PWA_BadBoy

PWA_BadBoy — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 16:43:17 -0800

Watch out for the blogshit!

By: grimmelm

grimmelm — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 17:56:12 -0800

Blogfrastructure. Weight-balanced blogary tree. Blogolatry. Blogduck. Card catablog. This whole blog-coinage thread reminds me of a Smurfs comic I had when I was a wee lad, in which the Smurfs split into two bitterly-opposed factions at loggerheads over the right way to translate compound words into Smurf. Should it be "fruitsmurf" or "smurfcake"?

By: gluechunk

gluechunk — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 18:11:10 -0800

Which faction won?

By: dogwelder

dogwelder — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 18:20:57 -0800

They probably ended up calling it "smurfsmurf."

By: skinnyjimmy

skinnyjimmy — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 20:46:34 -0800

Or from SouthPark - the Marklar (or something like that). I guess all conversations must be in the form "blog blog blog? blog, blog, blog blog blog. Blog blog!" This whole thread is making me smile again!

By: bradlands

bradlands — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 21:22:25 -0800

Er, Grimmelm, shouldn't that be "at bloggerheads"?

By: th3ph17

th3ph17 — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 21:39:56 -0800

totally agree with frykitty that the Dogme 95 film manifesto is totally different.....blogs aren't films...This whole argument isn't about technical or artistic purity, but Popularity, and attacks against the "Holy Circle" of web sites....and that is just too petty. Web pages aren't films. arrrg. so many things to take more seriously than who is friends with who, or who links to who.

By: centrs

centrs — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 22:25:57 -0800

i think it should be "smurfcake"

By: grimmelm

grimmelm — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 22:34:27 -0800

bradlands: point well taken, but I prefer "loggersmurfs"

By: bradlands

bradlands — Wed, 15 Nov 2000 22:55:36 -0800

Well who wouldn't?

By: ed

ed — Thu, 16 Nov 2000 02:02:44 -0800

So does this mean that Kottke, Ev and Meg are the noveau riche bloggers? If so...cool! I say: Down with the old regime and in with the new! Someone call Lars von Trier to make the movie. Here are some supplemental rules for the manifesto:

Thou shalt not reference conspicuously consumed items (examples include Palm Pilot cases, Nokia cell phone enhancements and $200 lip gloss) within a blog.

Thou shalt not blog about what one had for lunch.

Thou shalt write in complete sentences, applying publishing house reference books to the blog.

Thou shalt adopt an angry stylistic tone.

Thou shalt avoid linking such odious mainstream sources such as Yahoo News and Salon.

Thou shalt not comment upon what another blogger thinks of your blog.

Thou shalt refrain from adopting such silly concepts as non-negative blogging.

Thou shalt, under no circumstances, use the words "cool," "great" or "peachy" to describe your state of mind.

Thou shalt implement an anti-bourgeois, populist take within the blog to quash the blog elitism.

Thou shalt not lust after other bloggers.

Thou shalt place frequent bolding, underlining and rollover HTML tags within blog entries to distinguish the blog from less pure blogs.

Viva Blogma 2001!

By: holgate

holgate — Thu, 16 Nov 2000 03:39:10 -0800

Blogrilege, n. taking the Holy Blog in vain.

By: Graham

Graham — Thu, 16 Nov 2000 05:27:13 -0800

Why don't you people get a life?

By: cCranium

cCranium — Thu, 16 Nov 2000 06:10:30 -0800

(um, sorry to actually discuss something on-topic, but I only got around to reading the article now :-) These decadents, however, have nothing better to do than talk about themselves BWAAaAAAHAAAAAHAAAAAHAAAAAHAAAAAA. Holy shit, that's the funniest thing I've ever read. What the fuck else are you supposed to do with your blog? Am I not allowed to have a journal-style blog where I talk about my opinions and my thoughts and my life? Must I only post links? Screw that noise, there's other people out there who troll for links far better than I'm able to. I write what I want to write, same as this supposed a-list. Yeesh. (note, the "a-list" urls mentioned above are not for you. If you need to go to metafilter or blogger, use this and this instead. :-)

By: bradlands

bradlands — Thu, 16 Nov 2000 08:26:45 -0800

Ed, I was with ya, buddy. Right up until #10. Dang, I'm always having trouble with one commandment or another.

By: camworld

camworld — Thu, 16 Nov 2000 12:52:57 -0800

Who - Who! Who let the blogs out! Who - who...

By: bradlands

bradlands — Thu, 16 Nov 2000 14:47:06 -0800

Cam's a little frisky today. His weblog must have gotten him laid again. ;-)

By: davidgentle

davidgentle — Thu, 16 Nov 2000 15:47:37 -0800

What else are you supposed to do other than talk about yourself? Isn't that a slightly reduntant question? Given that whatever you say it's always going to reflect something about you? So whenever you talk you're talking about yourself to some extent. The trick, I would imagine, is to say things about something else at the same time. Which is easy if you're not doing a diary blog. There are other options than ldoing a link log.

By: heather

heather — Thu, 16 Nov 2000 17:43:50 -0800

Who put the blog in the bloghouse? You did, you did, baby...

By: DoublePostGuy

DoublePostGuy — Wed, 22 Nov 2000 11:54:47 -0800

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