Are ‘diggers’ the internet’s neocons?

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A couple of disclaimers to start with:

  1. I don’t use digg (outside of setting up an account which has rarely been touched).

  2. The analogy is probably quite strained, and I keep bouncing between two ways of expressing it, neither of which I think are quite right:

  • internet : politics :: digg : internet
  • neocons : politics :: diggers : internet

That said…

Wil went on a rant today about diggers dragging the ‘net down to somewhere below the least common denominator.

I’ve been a Digger for a long time, and always felt like I could rely on Digg’s homepage to reliably and consistently direct me to interesting and useful content, accompanied by insightful, funny, and interesting commentary.

My, how things have changed in just a few months. The links (that make it past the bury brigade) are still pretty good, but for whatever reason, the maturity and behavior of the average Digger has evolved into, well, something resembling a middle school lunch room. While Digg has always been a great way to share your creation with a large audience on the Internet, the associated grief that frequently comes with being exposed to Digg’s userbase has lead to several sites blocking Digg, shutting off comments because of abusive Diggers, and using complicated .htaccess rewrites to send Digg’s traffic away.

This struck me as being the same basic premise of part of what Mike was talking about here (some of which I mentioned yesterday) only applied to neocons and the internet in relation to politics, rather than to diggers.

I think this is a specific result of the rise of neoconservatives to cultural and political power. Note that I don’t attribute this to conservatives or conservatism, but specifically to _neo_conservatives. I don’t believe that the neoconservative political or social culture is interested in conducting their affairs with civility or with any degree of compromise — and therein lies the problem, as it creates a culture of war. I may not have written about politics in quite a long time…but during that interim, I’ve constantly linklogged to neoconservatives’ actions throughout the American political and social culture, and they are always extremist and seemingly operating under the slogan of “no quarter given.” And although I had hoped this extremism might die with the end of Bush’s Presidency, it seems as if moderates are willing to metamorphose into extremists if it gets them the power they seek (McCain) or that other extremists are ready to jump into the situation the moment a void forms (Romney).

It’s that same all-or-nothing, no-quarter-given, us-or-them, black-and-white viewpoint that our culture is rapidly sinking into. No matter whether the arena is politics or the net, online or off, there seems to be no room left for people who actually want to talk to each other, even if they don’t agree. Respectful discourse, on the whole, doesn’t exist anymore — and how can it, when we’re too busy shouting down the opposition to actually listen to what they have to say?

Happy Valentine’s Day

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Me and Prairie on Valentine’s Day (Smooches), originally uploaded by djwudi.

Okay, so this is going up a bit late in the day, but that’s just how it goes sometimes. We took the pictures before heading out the door to school this morning, this is just when I got a chance to get them uploaded.

Hope everyone’s V-Day (or anti-V-Day, depending on how you look at this particular holiday) was a good one!

Hatred Fatigue

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I missed this when it was first posted, but thanks to this (also excellent) post of Mike’s, I’ve just discovered a nicely concise explanation as to why I’m not posting about politics as much as I used to: Hatred Fatigue:

I also seem to be experiencing something that, for lack of a better word, I’ll call “hatred fatigue” — namely that, after over five years of abhorring almost every single action, day in and day out, the Bush Administration and neoconservative movement takes, there’s a part of my brain which is simply screaming “I can’t stand it anymore!” — it not being Bush and neocons, but instead the sheer weight of continued pessimism and fear.

Similarly to Mike, while my primary posts have lost much of their political content, my linklog is not exactly devoid of links tagged ‘politics‘. As frustrating as it is to see what I see going on in this country, it’s hard to bother trying to make my voice heard when discourse today never seems to be a rational, respectful discussion of differing points of view — instead, anything that isn’t what we believe is to be damned, vilified, cast out, and exorcised, by any means necessary.

What strikes me as particularly troublesome…is how this incident demonstrates the uncivil demeanor of this country and our relationships with our political opposites. And my definition of civility needs some clarification: I do not mean prudish stuffiness. I mean the treatment of another human being with simple, decent respect, even as you acknowledge with no rancor that your position differs significantly from theirs.

It’s a rather sad commentary on our current culture that as a whole, we’re so intolerant of other viewpoints. There’s nothing wrong with other viewpoints, and neither is there anything wrong with disagreeing with other viewpoints. When we stoop to destroying people in order to destroy their viewpoints, however, there is something seriously, seriously wrong.

Bonus thought experiment that Mike brings up, but that I don’t have time to poke at right now (other than to say that at first blush, I agree with where he’s going):

The Internet is a powerful tool, and it has wired us all up to each other in metamorphosing ways that I still believe our culture hasn’t fully assimilated yet, and perhaps won’t for generations to come.

The Internet allows that intrinsic incivility — that Hatred of the Other — to be both concatenated and ring-led with no lag time or delay. There’s no organizational time needed; all that’s needed is a charismatic figure and its followers.

[…]

The Internet has done such great harm to us as a political culture because, viewing it on the much larger scale of societal development (as opposed to human lives), we’ve suddenly become wired up to each other far more quickly than we ever were before.

[…]

As a species, I don’t think we were sociologically equipped to be hooked up to each other’s beliefs and to handle the combined weight of Internet-scale movements and politically biased memes. I simply don’t believe that as a species we’re going to get an okay handle on this situation, wherein we’ll somehow, someday resort to a situation where we find an easy peace with each other. I think that unless somehow such vitriol and rage falls out of vogue, a possibility I find so small as to be nearly non-existent, we’re going to be culture-warring and meme-warring with each other until the sheer massive neglect of society’s normal business causes something catastrophic to grind us to a halt.

What do we do if the only way to combat this culture of hate is to unplug?

Which Super Villain am I?

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Your results:
You are Magneto



































Magneto
54%
Mr. Freeze
54%
Lex Luthor
54%
Poison Ivy
53%
Dr. Doom
52%
Apocalypse
51%
The Joker
49%
Dark Phoenix
47%
Catwoman
45%
Riddler
40%
Mystique
40%
Juggernaut
40%
Green Goblin
32%
Venom
27%
Kingpin
24%
Two-Face
20%
You fear the persecution of those that are different or underprivileged so much that you are willing to fight and hurt others for your cause.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

Wanted: One Apology from the Seattle PI

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Generally speaking, I tend to like the Seattle PI better than the Seattle Times. However, when a crane collapsed in Bellevue last November, I was disgusted by the PI’s response: an immediate front-page article digging up and detailing five-year-old accounts of the past drug use of the poor guy operating the crane that day. As if this guy’s day wasn’t bad enough — he goes to work, climbs to the top of a tower crane, and then rides the thing down as it collapses into nearby apartment buildings — he then has to endure the ingominy and public humiliation of having his past transgressions dug up, splashed across the front page of the newspaper, and implicitly blamed as the cause of the accident. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t had a drug conviction in five years, nor that his employer required drug tests that he had reliably passed, nor that there was no indication of drug use at the time of the accident. What mattered was that he was guilty! Guilty, guilty, guilty!

This morning, the PI reported on the official determination of the cause of the crane’s collapse:

A poorly designed foundation was the primary cause of the tower crane collapse in Bellevue, a deadly construction accident that spurred state lawmakers Friday to introduce crane-safety bills that would rank among the toughest in the nation.

A three-month investigation into the crash by the Department of Labor and Industries has found that the crane’s steel foundation failed, and that the 210-foot-high structure would not have toppled if it had been bolted into concrete like most other tower cranes, sources close to the investigation told the Seattle P-I.

I, along with more than a few other people, feel quite strongly that the PI owes the crane operator an apology. Easy as it may have been to do, their public vilification of the crane operator — based on nothing more than sensationalistic items in his past, not through any verifiable current information — was a slimy, sleazy way to grab eyeballs and sell papers at the expense of his reputation. Trial and conviction should be handled in the courts, not in the headlines.

PostSecret

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If you haven’t run across PostSecret yet, check it out. The concept is incredibly simple: people write their secrets on a postcard and send them in. Every Sunday, a new batch of secrets is posted on the site.

They’re funny, sad, uplifting, heartbreaking — and incredible.

Blarch Badness: Me!

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Put your voting shoes on! Er…that doesn’t even make sense. Moving on…

Metroblogging Seattle is kicking off Blarch Badness today. Um, what? Blarch Badness!

As I was writing my last post, I was thinking if there were a way we could figure out what the important, meaningful, and wonderful blogs in this city were. Maybe a tournament. You know, like March Madness. Only with blogs.

Sadly, the best I could do for a name was Blorch Badness. Or Super Fantastic Mega Blogger Ultimate Supremacy Championship. I need to work on names.

But a tournament! And it will be just like March Madness, with regionals. You will get to vote on matchups between the 32 highest rated, most popular, possibly best blogs the Seattle metro area has to offer. Even the Slog (if they behave themselves). And there might even be a prize at the end. (Hey! Anyone out there want to donate a prize?)

Surprisingly enough, I made it into the opening round!

3 Seattle Daily Photo vs #6 Michael Hanscom

And finally, a battle of photographers — Kim’s daily shots of Seattle vs. the most famous camera store employee to ever be fired by Microsoft.

Admittedly, I’m not quite sure how I ended up in the West Seattle round (will I have to move if I win?) — truth to tell, I think I’ve been to West Seattle once or twice, and have only lived on First Hill and up here in Northgate — but hey, no complaints!

I should also probably make sure that I actually have a photo up here somewhere, seeing as how I’m matched up against Seattle Daily Photo (some pretty stiff competition…I might not even vote for myself!). Sure, I’ve got lots of photos in various places, but with nothing on the main page…hrm.

I know! I’ll shamelessly stoop to using a photo of Jessica Rabbit kissing Betty Boop (from last Halloween at The Vogue) to court a few votes! I’m sure that’ll work!

Betty Boop and Jessica Rabbit

In any case — check out todays round, and vote! Vote early! Vote often!

(Vote for me?)

Initiative 957

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This has my support, my signature if I find someone canvassing for signatures, and my vote if it should actually make it to the ballot: the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance‘s Initiative 957.

If passed by Washington voters, the Defense of Marriage Initiative would:

  • add the phrase, “who are capable of having children with one another” to the legal definition of marriage;
  • require that couples married in Washington file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage automatically annulled;
  • require that couples married out of state file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage classed as “unrecognized;”
  • establish a process for filing proof of procreation; and
  • make it a criminal act for people in an unrecognized marriage to receive marriage benefits.

Absurd? Very. But there is a rational basis for this absurdity. By floating the initiatives, we hope to prompt discussion about the many misguided assumptions which make up the Andersen ruling. By getting the initiatives passed, we hope the Supreme Court will strike them down as unconstitional and thus weaken Andersen itself. And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric.

I’m in. Of course, other people aren’t so excited…

Cheryl Haskins, executive director of Allies for Marriage & Children, agreed with [I-957 filer Gregory] Gadow’s group on at least one point about the initiative: “It’s absurd,” she said.

Haskins said opponents of same-sex marriage “have never said that the sole purpose of marriage is procreation.”

“When we talk about defending the institution of marriage, we’re talking about the union of a man and a woman,” she said. “Some of those unions produce children and some of them don’t.”

With I-957, “you’re dictating people’s choices in a way that is utterly ridiculous,” she said.

Which, of course, is the point.

The [Washington State Supreme Court majority] opinion [upholding Washington’s ban on same-sex marriage] written by Justice Barbara Madsen concluded that “limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers the state’s interests in procreation and encouraging families with a mother and father and children biologically related to both.”

Gadow said the argument is unfair when you’re dealing with same-sex couples who are unable to have children together.

“What we are trying to do is display the discrimination that is at the heart of last year’s ruling,” he said.

I’d add that the language as written is also unfair to heterosexual couples who can’t (or for any reason prefer not to) have children, hetero- or homosexual couples who adopt, or any other combination or situation you can come up with that’s not the husband, wife, and two point five children scenario. I was disgusted with the ruling them, I still am, and I’m quite amused by I-957’s approach to poking at the issue.

Sign me up!