Can real readership survive in the age when blogs play Mr Newspaper?

 Last essay 21st Jan 2010 by the Brotherhood Press 2010Our Infantile Fascination with Celebrities – Tiger woods a la Ris LowThis has to be mini skirt (15 min is all, I have so do correct for me) – so lets dive in. What do you think about the idea of blogs mirroring the role of newspapers? Well if you ask me; that’s a bit like genetically reviving the Dodo bird and hoping that they can save Kenya’s diminishing fauna by making it to the top of the food chain. Its a really dumb idea and sometimes you dont need many bullets to kill an idea; all you need is a one bullet.

Here’s the kicker; newspapers are dying – they’re dying big time, not only here in Singapore, but all over the world – so to cut a really long story short, if you’re a big fan of replicating an online newspaper; you have as much chance of succeeding as making the ticker parade as the Titanic on her maiden voyage.

The idea is tragic. I hope its clear that by tragic. I mean there are some “serious,” people out there who really believe this is the best way to go – my take is simple; the whole idea raises more questions than it answers – for starters, I am repulsed by the very idea as what I suspect is its one crack brained way to revivify a dying newspaper (not mentioning any names here for obvious reasons). Another gripe that I nurse is its a backdoor way to sell us all this is the gold standard of what blogging should and must be – that’s to say, it pays homage to the very idea your goal as a blogger and a regular reader of blogs is to strive for the whole idea of credibility.

That’s fine if a newspaper happens to be the WSJ or the Herald Tribune, but where the role model happens to be our beloved rag that churns out nothing but perfidious faced happy stories when everyone is munching on their mud cakes and exclaiming yummy, more pleeeeeeze. Then I think the whole idea of modeling your blog as a newspaper is really bad idea – as even if you manage to build something with all the whistles and bells along with garnering 99.9% of the readership share market – what you have really created is nothing more than an apparatus of assimilation; where life is increasing seen in binary terms; you are a success – a failure; you’re on – or off; you’re with us – or against us!

My point is simple blogging is blogging; its a take on the world; a way of winnowing the world as you and I see it; not some assembly line producing stuff like vibrating toys to give pleasure to lonely spinsters; neither is it a means to perpetuate what I term the necessary lie that every “successful” regime has to seed if it to keep the status quo ante firmly in place. Or some homily sugarly means to mythologize the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat; where the narrative has to be written in such a way where its drummed into your head, the regime has made the world a better place! And if there are going to be improvements; it has to come at an exorbitant cost; that nothing ever last forever and you cant get anything for free but rather a fee – so pay for it!

I suspect that is one reason why there is a certain blog out there is (once again, I cant mention any name, I am getting used to this actually) that trying so hard to tell you and me; they are the one’s; we should all be reading and hopefully modeling our blogs on; that’s OK, if what they serve up isn’t what I call state inspired material laced with saccharine, “I hate you Mr Gahmen.” That to me is the most dangerous type of propaganda as what it actually presents is a heady blend of fact, brutishness and contrived opposition that just slowly bends your mind and at the end of the day raises more questions than it answers.

Whatever the outcome; come what may – only understand this: the internet is still in a state of flux; and what we are witnessing right now is nothing more than the artifact of their infancy in its various guises – sooner of latter; a process of winnowing the truth will occur; no amount of wordsmithing plastic surgery is going to be able to stop the tide from turning the other way; very much in the way some people these days are insisting on slow food instead of fast food; real faith, instead of take my money and build another shopping mall; retiring at 40 and enjoying life instead of leading the glorious life of the battery chicken and work till the day you die – at some point, what newspaper self styled blogging is going to do is turn on itself and commit online hara-kiri and provoke the same cosy insiderism whenever we talk about the tobacco industry in those days with the prefix, “they didnt know better then in those days….”

History testifies to the belief; real readership will eventually find a niche and a place called home; it may take sometime; but as the age of electronic apotheosis threatens to turn us all into some great faceless mass; where the mantra is “you jump and I will follow!” They’re bound to be a few of us out there who will one day aspire to real readership very much in the way coffee cognoscentis will always aspire towards gourmet Arabica instead of freezed dried 3 in one Nescafe – truth of the matter is; reading has always been self selecting and with the advent of fake oppositional blogs that attempt to blur the line between reality and fiction; the end may very well lead to the perverse effect of heightening the demand for real and authentic reading material; in the way black truffles and beluga caviar will always be highly sought after items – so if you’re a blogger that writes from your heart; you’re on solid ground – as even in the harshest environment when one day the Mr Newspaper blog claims he has 99.9% of the market share; that just another way of saying real reading has reached a terminal end and it’s morphed into something generic instead of individualistic – rest assured, you are on good ground; it bears repeating only because history is firmly on your side; you’re good to go!

The irongrid world of Samizdat that once germinated like buck wheat beneath the pineapple eye of the Stalinist state, the flowering of readership in the age of the Spanish inquisition that once tried and failed to preserve their perfidious face idea of what is good for me is good for you so dont rock the boat; the pelt racks that once tried to preserve the power of the clergy against Martin Luther; all those attempts were eclipse when the truth just came right out and one or two people simply came together and found each other and said, “Oh my God, there are actually people who think like me.”

When that day come, may I be the first to say to you: Welcome to our community, we have been waiting for you.

Meanwhile, I remain yours very trully.

Darkness 2010 – The Brotherhood Press 2010

N.B DO BOOKMARK THIS SITE, IF SOME OF YOU CLAIM, YOU ARE MISSING OUT, BOOKMARK IT, THAT WAY WHEN WE DECIDE TO TAKE OFF SOMEWHERE ELSE, AT LEAST YOU CAN FOLLOW US ON THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD TO CONT READING SOME OF OUR STUFF . BOOKMARK, IT AS WHEN THEY TAKE OFF, AS THEY DO, AT LEAST, YOU WILL HAVE A LINK, DO IT NOW!– ANOTHER GOOD REASON TO BOOKMARK THIS SITE IS THIS HAS HAPPENED  RECENTLY – http://singaporedaily.net/2010/01/11/daily-sg-11-jan-2010/#comment-7611 , THE BP HAS BARRED ALL FUTURE ESSAYS TO BE POSTED BY THE SINGAPORE DAILY. I DID ASK BABY DARKNESS ABOUT THIS AND THIS IS WHAT HE HAD TO SAY, ” There are two ways to read, one is you let someone spoon feed you like a baby. The second is you choose what and how you want to eat.  Remember, if your body is a temple. Your mind has to be the altar piece; it’s the linchpin that makes possible the grand idea of La Convivencia with you and your community, spirit, mind and perhaps 7 million other things– without this one thing, the power to choose, you are simply a cactus on a window sill! 

So understand this little rich girl, there is reading and there is reading, there is a world of difference, if you dont even bother to argue with the belief, you are what you eat. Then you would have absolutely no problem understanding – why, you are most definitely without a shadow of doubt what you read and dont read.

You can certainly categorize what I write, but you have no right to judge ……that was what Singaporedaily did – a broad line has to be drawn, otherwise, dont be surprise, if someone decides its card blanche to give you and me the mushroom treatment, “feed you shit and keep you in the dark.” So this has nothing to do with Anime 3 and her rubberband brigade. I value her readership and support, but this is a bigger sphere we are dealing with here – so this is where I will draw the line…it will hurt…like that other fake site, Temasek review that kept faking doss attacks; but how could they let the real wolf out without first planting the idea in peoples mind, “if it can happen to me, it will also happen to you,” Think about it – they cried wolf – we helped, but this time, I am not going to stick my neck out for no one…its everyman for himself….I dont even care, if the whole house catches fire…call it tough love, but if you aren’t a hard man, then you shouldn’t be in the ring and that’s the only way to deal with people who cry wolf, its all here, the explanation

http://singaporedaily.net/2010/01/12/daily-sg-12-jan-2010/#comment-7618 – dont worry dotty, the readers will eventually pick up the scent…they always do, you just wait and see, dont ever sweat the small stuff, life is too short – Darkness 2010……”Missy Dotty