Emptybottle.org

I was reading Jonathan’s post about comments systems and how they have implications he’d not thought about, and it dovetailed so well with some thinking I’ve been doing lately that I left a long comment there, that I want to expand on a bit more here, if he doesn’t mind. (Tangent : Who ‘owns’ the comments you leave on someone else’s blog? You or the person who writes the blog, or if the comments are offsite (like mine), the owner of the offsite system? Damned if I know.)
I’ve been a Metafilter addict (Tap, tap, squeal – “Uh, is this thing on? My name is Stav, and I’m a Metaholic.”), sometimes more, sometimes less, for a year and a half or so, and for me it has always been about the conversations in the threads, foremost. The concept of Metafilter, married so neatly as it is with the useability design, appeals to me immensely. Although I do follow many of the links that are posted to the front page, I have often been guilty of just reading the comments threads behind the posts. Although there has been much (justified) wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth (not to mention the occasional bestial roar of anguish) recently about the decline of the level of discourse around the place, it’s a rare day that there aren’t at least a couple of threads where Very Smart People talk about things that I have, compared to them, a tenuous grasp on, and that I find fascinating and informative. I’ve learned a lot there over the last 18 months or so, sharpened my writing skills (to a small degree, ok, fair enough), and feel as if I am part of a well-defined but very diverse community, a group of brainy folks who, most of the time, are good fun to be around. Although many of the ‘old guard’ are more inclined to believe that a well-crafted post to the front page, with interesting links, is the key factor in what makes MeFi great (in perhaps much the same way that it has been argued in some places that the focus of a ‘real’ weblog should be linkage), I tend to lean towards the discussion that a great link, or even a crap one, can generate.
Now, I wrote a piece for Waeguk when I had had a few beers one night last month about how important I thought comments systems on blogs really are, but never posted it, because it was more laced with invective than usual, even for me. I believe I went as far as to say make references to cowardly lions. And identical cheese hostesses. (I told you I’d had a few beers at that point…) Later it was gently pointed out to me in a discussion thread in the comments system at BurningBird that some people prefer not to engage in the two-way, not to open themselves up to criticism and so on, and this is just fine with me. Reading that, I was actually glad I’d never posted the aforementioned drunken screed. Each to their own, I say, gosh darn it, but I still think keeping the communication flow one-way cripples the power of the medium.
The non-sequiteurs collide here : I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit…I feel what may be happening is like a metastasizing of the Metafilter concept (‘a community blog’) into an overlapping network of distributed micro-metafilters, organically growing, based around virtual peer groups like the ones that I belong to (out along various axes like BurningBird and KeepTrying and Metafilter and 1142 so on and so on and on – different axes, different circles, for different people, variously overlapping). If Metafilter is a community blog focussed on a single site, then the distributed micro-metafilter (Meta-MetaFilter?) equivalent of the ‘front page posts’ are the things that each of us write on our own blogs, and for me the real gold, the real community, the discussion and exchange and ferment and chaos comes from the rolling, cross-blog, intricately-threaded discussions that flare up and die down in the various comments systems we’ve implemented. These thoughts and colloquies are then reflected in our blog posts, and the process becomes auto-catalytic, feeding itself, and growing with each iteration!
And I think it’s happening everywhere, throughout blogspace, in pockets where people have come together for whatever reason and banded into blogtribes, centred around interests or styles or strong personalities or whatever, and where some critical mass of them have enabled comments systems and are using them to talk….it’s endlessly fascinating to me.
Or am I just talking crap again? I have a tendency to do that.

I’ve been scratching my head, not so much due to insect infestation or any of my collection of amusingly rare skin conditions, no – I’ve been doing it all afternoon because I was in Deep Thought about how I could somehow tangentially, tenously tie the stuff that I’ve been pondering to the self-proclaimed theme of this blog, which is, in case you hadn’t noticed :

At this task, I have failed miserably. Thus the lovely background to this post. Entirely too many colored rectangles around here lately, which means that either I’d better start exercising a little self-restraint, or I’d better start thinking about moving the goddamn goalposts. I put ’em up in the first place, after all.
So my little screed for today came to me whilst I was doing my almost daily rounds. There’s a list of blogs (over there to the right, you see ’em? The ones labelled ‘Voices sweet to my eye’ are the ones I’m talking about here, although there are also a goodly number amongst the Metafilter gang and the Blogrolling list further down) that, after I finish reading, I’ve either had a good laugh, or feel like a marginally better person, or feel like ‘Damn – there’s what I oughta be shooting for here’, or some combination of the three.
The rare ones are the ones that give me the Full Treatment. And this is the point of my little sermon today. You see, I’ve found that I most enjoy reading people, at least in blogland, that I feel like I could be friends with. This is hardly a world-shattering revelation, I know, but bear with me. Some of the Voices Sweet To My Eye are serious. Urbane. Frighteningly intelligent. They give the impression that they will brook no silliness, not from a wonderchicken, not from nobody! I come away from their blogs feeling like a better person. I’ve learned something. Spent some time with someone who knows a helluva lot more than me about quite a few things, and can synthesize entirely new ways of looking at those things while having a crap. There are others in the list who make me laugh, make me smile, make me feel that I’m having a virtual drink or two with them, and the cares of the day pale to insignificance. There are still others that, through their elegance and light touch, through the way they deftly and apparently effortlessly turn a phrase, make me want to work harder at this writing thing, or at design, or coding, or whatever. I love all these folks, and I am grateful each and every day for the existence of this medium that has allowed me to share in their creativity and passion.
But there are very few, and this is the crux of my point, that combine those qualities. What I mean to say is that I am a firm believer in both the value of granular analysis of semantics, for example, and in the ineluctable modality of the fart joke, for another. Preferably simultaneously. And I find that the people I enjoy most in real life are able to exist, and in fact revel in living on both of these planes simultaneously. It’s these madcap philosophers to which I am most drawn. This may be in large part because I try to be that very thing, and of course we often love that in our friends which most closely mirrors what we perceive ourselves to be. Which is why most of my pals are inveterate boozers and reprobates.
I’m not going to list the few voices I’ve found in my travels that give me that ‘Here’s a person I wish I knew in real life’ feeling, which at the end of the day, all the crap I was talking above is about. People who challenge me, educate me, make me laugh until I involuntarily pee – who can do all of those things. I can’t and won’t list them, because you always end up leaving someone out, and besides, there are more out there I haven’t found yet. There are a lot out there, though, and one of the great joys of recent months for me is that some of them, even in this rarefied bloggy air, are talking back to me.
Although it’s slightly embarrassing to do so, I offer you this obvious snippet of good ol’ Jack Kerouac as a coda of sorts :

Afterthought : You can infer how impressed I am by the idea that the most important thing about a weblog is the links. Pfft. They merely add torque to the engine of the brain behind the words.