The State of the InterTubes

A (not so) final word on BoingBoing jumping the shark into hypocrisy and The Communist’s Consumerist creates new “commenting rules” so ridiculous and censorial that I gave up reading it.

BoingBoing Update:
If any of you were betting on last night’s conspiracy theories regarding the unpublication of Violet Blue, you’ve just hit pay day if you bet on option number five, at least according to ValleyWag:

“Sex blogger Violet Blue may have tried to ride the Boing Boing coattail express to microfame by airing grievances publicly. But once upon a time she waged the same kind of war on Boing Boing cofounder Xeni Jardin’s side against Matthew Neal Sharp, curator of xenisucks.com, and the New York Times. Now, after the bad breakup between the two bloggers became serious business”

Moreover, a liberal reading of an interview Xeni Jardin and a few other member of BoingBoing did with the LATimes seems to hint at “affair gone sour” as the reason for Jardin’s deletion of Blue from BoingBoing existence. Jardin admits she unilaterally made the decision to exorcise BoingBoing of the specter of Ms. Blue for personal reasons.

“But at the time, I did that for personal reasons, and for a back story that will always remain private.”

“…I didn’t bring it up again in part because it involved some personal, private stuff that I don’t tend to get into. Like whether someone’s character is this or that, or whatever kind of personal dirty laundry was involved.”

So there you have it.

Interestingly, while Pescovitz (who seems genuinely upset by the whole thing) and John Battelle (BoingBoing’s business manager and CEO of site sponsor Federated Media) were interviewed for the article, Doctorow and Frauenfelder have been very quiet about the whole situation. As I mentioned last night, I can’t imagine Mark ever saying a bad word about anyone, but despite my polar opposition to most positions of Cory, I’ve got to feel bad for him right about now. If there are two things Cory loves, it’s BoingBoing and free speech/transparency in publication, and now there’s a cleft between the two because of Xeni’s actions. And then her lovely, not at all self involved quote:

“But –- it was my work. And I felt like: This is my work, this is my blog. This is not the same thing as Wikipedia or the paper of record. It’s BoingBoing. And I have the right to take these things down while I think about whether I want them out there or not.”

…and I have to feel bad for Cory. If I was in his position, I’d be ready to inflict some serious bodily harm to someone who had just made my website, which I love, look like it compromised its integrity. Because if there’s one thing that Cory doesn’t want to be seen as, it’s a hypocrite, so I imagine he’s torn between presenting unified support for a team member or the copy-left, anti-censorship rage he’s probably feeling right now.

Or he could be cool with the whole thing. Who knows.

What I do know is that, because Cory and Xeni are the two BBers who tend to post about certain subjects (if it’s copyfight or anti-government, it’s Cory; sex or space, it’s Xeni) they are most likely at odds with each other right now. Because Xeni is, essentially, the sex blogger of the site, any post that wasn’t written by Violet Blue is hers, and copyright would remain with her. But copyleft isn’t so forgiving.

The Consumerist: Think Similar!

In other Leftist blog news, to show solidarity with BoingBoing, The Consumerist has also jumped the shark. The Consumerist is a Gawker Media site dedicated to helping shoppers fight back against corporate oppression, which usually entails how to get through to humans in customer support, how to get through to executive customer service, what consumer rights are, and how to execute an Executive Email Carpet Bomb (EECB) to get results when all other avenues have failed.

Except the oppression has recently seemed more like consumer inconvenience and entitlement, and the commentors have responded with ire and disbelief at the petty shit people will use EECBs on, like managing to get themselves on the wrong plane and only being flown home for free by JetBlue, or a fast food chain that is completely incompetent and should fire all workers at one store because they forgot the pickles. And the fries were cold!

Any other website wouldn’t take the readers to task for calling out bullshit abuse of utilities that should be saved for truly horrendous customer screwing, or wouldn’t post such ridiculous complaints at all, except on a very slow news day. The Consumerist, however, Is Taking This Seriously and put forth a Ten Commandments (of sorts) regarding posts. No longer can you say that the original poster’s argument is without merit. You cannot blame the consumer. You cannot, essentially, criticize the consumer or the site moderators. Oh no. All you are allowed to do, in public on the site, is offer advice, unless the only advice warranted is “shut your fucking mouth and stop your bitching, you idiot.” Oh no! Their consumers are beautiful, precious, infallible snowflakes that cannot be criticized or called to task for acting like the humans in a certain new Pixar film.