Bless this din
To escape criticism: say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.
– Elbert Hubbard
There’s an odd feeling when you go online, like entering the set of a dream sequence: long corridors of space ending in imagined men and women hunched over computers, the hum of voices and cogs, cubby holes and bright open halls cluttered with voices, mementos and preoccupations, sudden pockets of cackling, high-fiving cliques, people wandering about aimlessly looking for a friend, skyscrapers under construction blocking the view…
The sense of entering a parallel universe.
It’s such a curious combination of highly personal and impersonal, raw and polished, passionate faceless voices – entirely new but still so very familiar: so utterly, gloriously, annoyingly human.
Some appear to think that what transpires on the web should be better than it is in real life – more thoughtful, more civil, more… That’s naïve and only clouds our judgement.
It rarely seems to be said that there are as many reasons for writing on the web as there are online writers, and I’m allergic to any attempts to categorize or impose rules or frameworks on this fledgling medium.
Along with writing more, people involved with the internet are reading more, and I really think we need to learn to be more discerning, a little more “sophisticated” in how we approach all these words.
We need to accept that everyone creates a persona to some extent and (aside from extreme cases involving extortion) if someone chooses to create an entirely fictional one, I don’t see how that constitutes a betrayal.
I believe that you only ever betray yourself.
Why there is any controversy at all over the honesty of editing posts is beyond me.
Your site is your room on the web, and what you do with it is entirely your responsibility. I don’t adhere to the idea that any of us owes anyone, anything. Pandering taints. If you’re dishonest, you’ll lose any respect you’ve gained and people will turn away. Just like life. And so be it.
Of course it’s dishonest (and entirely juvenile) to make brash statements or, worse, accusations and later erase them completely, eschewing or devolving all accountability. If you’re not willing to stand behind your words, it’s vain and hypocritical to make them public in the first place.
But the fact that words are suddenly married to an open, intangible mass medium makes for strange bedfellows.
In the main, I say thank goodness some people care enough about their writing to go back and tweak and polish. I see no value in adhering to a surrealist, stream of consciousness approach to creation: drink a bottle of absinthe and let it all out; disdain subsequent attempts to make your inner ravings intelligible.
This approach to writing is a primordial rite of passage for anyone new to the game, and is best got out of the system at the time of loving Jack Kerouac, unfortunate experiments with LSD and of asking your friend to ask his friend to ask him if he likes you.
Anyone who takes their words “seriously” soon learns that the first draft is the seed and the edit, the fruit. It’s as simple as that and there’s nothing to be ashamed of, or apologize for. Quite the contrary: it’s a sign of respect.
It rankles me to see the words “moral” and “morality” being regularly tossed about when speaking of the dynamic of the online community.
Whether meant to refer to acceptable behaviour or ethical tenets, they’re pompous and loaded words and, to my mind, have no place in this free for all.
Our words may be valuable, but they are not sacred and you cannot both display them in public and continue to guard them jealously. I’m sometimes astonished by the ways in which people misinterpret what I write, but I’m even more astonished that most do not.
I find it amusing (and somewhat disingenuous) that people who make strong statements are surprised when others respond in kind.
I suppose I’ve been lucky that, aside from a few numbskulls who take these pages as a forum for their newfound hatred of France, my readers appear to be a thoughtful and elegant bunch, and I would never hope for a larger audience at the expense of becoming a hang out for the many spit and runners that (also) populate the net.
While crucial issues are sometimes involved, and works created that rival universally lauded prose, 95% of what we are doing is picayune and fleeting and essentially just interactive entertainment. It’s the noise of humanity, crammed into some lines, photos and dancing punk kittens, displayed on screen for all the world to see and comment upon.
It’s as messy, petty, eloquent, stupid, nourishing, exhilarating and indescribable as life itself.
Get it while you can.
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Comment
- Well said. I think that most of these complaints are from people who don’t take the craft of writing very seriously, yet want to be taken seriously as writers. These are often the bloggers who want to be seen as the new journalists. They want the easy road.
Writing is not an easy road. Inexperienced writers are under the impression that writing done be “real” writers (whatever that means) is done at the first swing; writing is actually rewriting, rewriting, rewriting. Most of what is in the blog world are first or second drafts, a quick flail at a subject that is often well done or very interesting, but is, to borrow your excellent metaphor, mostly see and not much fruit.
I rewriting dishonest? I guess if you are trying to decieve people it is, but if you are getting that worked up over the writing of someone you don’t know anyway, you probably need to turn off you computer and work on getting a real life.
— Beerzie Boy Jul 18, 9:47am # - Well said, dear. Certainly better stated than I could hope to accomplish as I tend to ramble to incoherency with my passionate responses. Well done.
— roggey Jul 18, 3:21pm # - As someone who writes plenty on the Internet in a manner not unlike your own, and as someone who has dealt with all manner of subsequent reader weirdness, I second this sentiment, in its every facet Cheers for OpenBrackets, that it is what its author means it to be rather than what some audience would have it be. Cheers for writing, literature, prose, and fromage. And cheers for Oliver, whose digital visage battles even the most esteemed vintages as to which is France’s most valuable export.
— Paul Ford Jul 18, 9:26pm # - bravo…it seems that another bonus for webpub is that the four-legged, floppy-eared companions wont have the opportunity for compositional delicacies….so edit dat hugo!
— calvino Jul 18, 11:41pm # - Thanks for at once illuminating our foible-ridden human nature and absolving us of our quirks in your inimitable style Gail. This community is indeed a boisterous, exhilarating town square, the new commons. Now where’s that Absinth?
— SF Jul 18, 11:53pm # - I’d add that it does depend on what the purpose of one’s blog is. If it is to share and explore and improve one’s writing, editing perforce is necessary and appropriate.
In my case, however, I think of my blog as a journal in which I record not only words, but attitudes and selves-of-the-day—in this case, I feel it is not appropriate to do too much editing without a disclaimer; the record is faulty if I can go back and change it on a whim. I feel I would be dishonest to edit too much after the fact, especially if people have commented on what I have written.
Perhaps the problem comes when one set of blogging assumptions encounters another without the two being aware that differences exist?
— Rana Jul 19, 3:47pm # - The complainers must be people who came here for an argument, not for being-hit-on-the-head lessons. Arguers B and C scream “no fair!” when Arguer A goes back and adjusts the previous day’s rant, which they have just wasted hours counter-ranting.
All of them need to listen to another line from Elbert Hubbard: “Don’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out of it alive.”
— eeksypeeksy Jul 20, 4:06am # - In an effort to allay any controversy in my own work, I have decided to exclusively cut and paste from Gail’s site from now on (giving due credit, of course). I don’t actually need to write anymore, when you fine people can so articulately capture my brilliant ideas and secret thoughts.
— amber Jul 20, 1:04pm # - As a new reader of OB, I understand now why I was promptly struck with the unusual quality of your prose. You just take writing seriously :-)
While I take a lot of pleasure in writing, I am, I guess, a member of the first-or-second-drafts bloggers, which certainly differs from my relation to more traditional forms of essay… I couldn’t say why, but I think I view my blog mostly as a public sort of diary, not as a forum for prose that matters, and somehow I provide less effort. Who knows.
Cheers for OB, though, I sure appreciate the issues you discuss, and how you discuss them, both from a form and substance standpoint.
— TDD Jul 22, 1:44pm # - Moved office and home and was down for over a week… It’s actually nice to have so much here to catch up on.
openbrackets.com, the best part of waking up.
and that’s all I have to say on that now.
~A (and thanks)
— AlbertOMG Jul 24, 4:18am # - If nothing else, you are an amazing writer. I have not always agreed with what you write, but I admire the fact that you write what you feel.
Passivity is such a bore.
Applause for {
— eddeaux Jul 24, 6:45pm # - Touche.
— Shanna Jul 25, 3:49pm # - As the keeper of a small site devoted to writing style, I can only say You Got It. Recently (7/11) I marked Henry David Thoreau’s take on “revision.” My double thanks for yours.
— Styles Jul 26, 3:24pm # - We all have such awfully adorable navels. While we have them, that is.
— peggy Jul 30, 12:57am #
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