It’s hard to disentangle the personalities and their positions at this remove, but (speaking from outside the tower, these days) it does appear that to overly emphasize the “gesture of withdrawl” as an ideologically significant one is to miss out on the notion of “withdrawl” as a human need.  Must all forms of activity which touch upon the professional sphere be scrutinized for their contribution to/destabilization of hegemony?  Or is that attitude itself —one which denies us the freedom to believe in our choices to share ourselves with the world in a variety of ways—one which confines us, rather than liberates us?

But maybe I missed the point of it all.  I’ll easily submit that I may have.

A follow-up—why is it that the trolling of some…thing like “Bob” gets our goats?  Even I felt the “ouch.” It’s odd, since beyond the rudeness, the idiocy of the remark is plain, the insincerity of the “opinion” rendered even plainer: this particular toad wasn’t actually inconvenienced, but was happy to find an unexpected place to leave his slime.

I guess it’s the act of rudeness itself that hurts, content aside; the notion that someone would pause and take the trouble to say something shitty.  We invest ourselves in the agora, and then someone pisses in the fountain.  It’s too bad that “Karma is a Boomerang” has been devalued by its appearance on a million coffeehouse tip-jars.  It sums up what I more or less believe about the fate of toads.

Sometimes I wonder if people don’t try to stir things up just out of boredom. There’s not much substance, imo, to the criticisms of Liz’s call for a private conversation about these issues, and the person/people who started the criticisms don’t seem to have much to contribute in their follow-up comments beyond vague instructions to “Think about…” certain things they’ve already said.

Ok, whatever.

It does have echoes of the professor/student debate you’ve linked in this post, particularly George’s last comment. We’re putting ourselves out here (putting ourselves out, here; putting ourselves out here) - even if it’s not every day or in every possible way, because sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way - and some anonymous blob interprets it as an infringement on their space, or feels they’re entitled to something else, or that webloggers should keep in their place and only write about one narrow subject so as not to taint those precious Google searches.

But yes, this certainly predates the online world. Used to get similar anonymous morsels in response to student newspaper articles. The comments box just makes it easier.

Of course, even masked and linkless posters leave IP address footprints, so anonymity only goes so far.

But I think there is something particular about the blog as a form that invites such responses; the author puts herself forward as sufficiently interesting subject matter (whether strictly autobiographical or memoirish or not) to warrant reading, and then—literally—opens the floor to comments.  One can imagine that, if there were such a comment function built into the writings of Dave Eggers (to take a not-so-random example), similar rudeness might ensue.

What is it about weblogs that inspire such rude responses? Do these people turn on others mid-conversation and say, “I wanted a critique of planned obsolescence & Capitalism and instead you’re talking about your travel trips. I have to say conversation with other people merely clutters my massive brain up with even more narcissistic crap. Please disappear in a few months as your obsolescence becomes apparent. Mother.”