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03/05/2007
State of the Singapore Blogosphere, May 2007
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I think my original rant was that there had yet to be a 'golden age' of the Sg blogosphere, not that there used to be. As for the infants now winning I agree, however I see it in a different light, it is those who argue for 'objectivity, fairness, unbiased and personal accounts' of their lives that are winning. In a regime that prides itself in de-politicisation of the polity then yes there has been a shift towards non-political narratives. But surely this is an acceptance of the Singaporean hegemony, so while the political blogs and aggregator blogs continue to be busy building resistance identities rather than project identities, the Singapore blogosphere is nothing other than a bunch of predominantly middle-class, university educated males constructing a space for self-referential echo chambers - myself included.
By Elia Diodati
Authoritarian, yes. But transparent nonetheless. - Kitana, b.Itter s.Weet sym.Phony, The Final Post, April 17 2007.
Back on April Fools’ Day, I wrote about how the Singapore blogosphere is losing its vitality; now akikonomu, the former high priestess of Ise, has already written its epitaph, an ode to rampaging infants. Even back when I started blogging, there were whispers that things weren’t as good as they used to me. Soci, then Steven McDermott, famously ranted long and hard about the “infantile sub-intelligentsia nonsense” permeating the ether.
But now the infants are winning. The great practitioners of online political discourse have declined into moribund obscurity, or sought out other, more rewarding, pursuits. Singabloodypore itself has degenerated into a post-and-boast groupblog. The old Singapore Angle is busy with his second child (congratulations!), while the new Singapore Angle is trapped in its self-pleasing, obsessive groupthink over academic rigor as applied to things that really don’t deserve such standards. Molly Meek’s feline invective somehow seems less vituperative of current affairs and has taken on the tone of self-indugent mockery, in exasperation over her1 inability to satirize the absurd truth. Even Mr Wang has tired of his self-effusing posts on how stupid the Singapore government can be at times, and has made a subtle shift toward “a new thematic focus” as announced on March 30. And in the past six months there has been a noticeable string of prominent self-imposed rigors mortis: Yuen Chung Kwong (December 1), Gayle Goh (January 28), Kitana (April 13), Zyberzitizen (April 18), and now sieteocho (May 1). Vox Leo, by my measure, has joined the ranks of the officially moribund, having last posted on August 22 2006. En & Hou (of Students’ Sketchpad fame) have yet to make good on their promise to “see you after the ‘A’ levels“. And Kway Teow Man’s personal blog seems to have been abandoned since sometime in March.
Unlike the L’Enfant that built the great architectural masterpieces of Washington DC’s National Mall, the infants now overrunning the Singapore blogosphere are killing it through apathetic karma. Sure, it’s not like the infants are engaging in wanton destruction, but on the rare occasions they leave their self-enraptured bubble of photos, linkwhoring ^o^~~~ posts to various offline friends and their pink Comic Sans CSS stylesheets, they tend to form the incessant, one-dimensional chorus of “cannot lah!”
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10:00 Posted by soci | Permalink | Comments (6) | Email this | Tags: Singapore
Comments
"vituperative"?? i mean, really?
can dumb down abit not? not everybody get full marks at SAT you know?
pls lah.
Posted by: reader | 03/05/2007
moribound? some may be blogging under another name, you know
Posted by: sgsociety.com | 03/05/2007
just wrote this on my own blog
—————–
the disappearing blogs
Ever since computers changed from early generation computational tools to the middle generation data handling tools (Fortran to Cobol transition), sociologists have been arguing about their impact on power distribution in organizations and in society generally: would they promote free thinking and democratic processes by increasing the availability of information, or would they provide more efficient control mechanisms for those in power? The same argument is being repeated today with blogs versus organized mass media: everyone can freely express himself/herself, but would this actually produce bottom up consensus, or merely make it easier to manipulate this from above?
Let me describe my own experience as a blogger. As you can see by going to the root blog asiayouthmedia.com and exploring various links, I have written on a wide variety of topics, truly living up to the free-ranging nature of blogging; in particular, I am genuinely bilingual, and have the experience to discuss sensitive topics in a safe yet informative manner. In theory, these writings should have considerable appeal (one example, if you search on google on a number of topics I covered using both English and Chinese words, my articles would often appear, e.g., kra canal 克拉运河, because such bilingual discussions are rare), but the page view numbers do not support this. In other words, web surfers might say they are interested in particular topics, but do not do what they say. We know only too well that the very popular sites were those with revealing photos, like SPG last year, Michelle Quek this year, and very recently, when a couple in Taiwan put their love making photos on the web without adequte security protection, they had ten thousand hits in a matter of minutes before the photos were taken down.
In blogsphere it is easy to talk but hard to be heard, unless you are some kind of celebrity or power figure. Occasionally a blog might become popular for a transitional reason, e.g., when Philip Yeo had his quarrels with Chen Jiahao, but they tend to die down. In the mean time, the official mass media stick around, with staying power lying in their income from advertising income, so that they can support teams of reporters to acquire local news, obtain early access to international news, provide analytical editorial writings, and present these in some form of attention arousing package, in a way amateur, unpaid bloggers cannot compete with. The official media, however, do not always do this well or do it economically, which ought to give bloggers encouragement, that they can do a better job; the question is how long they can keep it up.
Comfortably retired, I can afford to spend time, and a small amount of money, registering a whole pile of website names and yapping away on anything that interests me but I doubt many others can follow my example. It is easy to become discouraged and give up.
return to blog start sgsociety.com to index blog.360.yahoo.com/sgpsociety?p=1
Posted by: sgsociety.com | 04/05/2007
just wrote this on my own blog
—————–
the disappearing blogs
Ever since computers changed from early generation computational tools to the middle generation data handling tools (Fortran to Cobol transition), sociologists have been arguing about their impact on power distribution in organizations and in society generally: would they promote free thinking and democratic processes by increasing the availability of information, or would they provide more efficient control mechanisms for those in power? The same argument is being repeated today with blogs versus organized mass media: everyone can freely express himself/herself, but would this actually produce bottom up consensus, or merely make it easier to manipulate this from above?
Let me describe my own experience as a blogger. As you can see by going to the root blog asiayouthmedia.com and exploring various links, I have written on a wide variety of topics, truly living up to the free-ranging nature of blogging; in particular, I am genuinely bilingual, and have the experience to discuss sensitive topics in a safe yet informative manner. In theory, these writings should have considerable appeal (one example, if you search on google on a number of topics I covered using both English and Chinese words, my articles would often appear, e.g., kra canal 克拉运河, because such bilingual discussions are rare), but the page view numbers do not support this. In other words, web surfers might say they are interested in particular topics, but do not do what they say. We know only too well that the very popular sites were those with revealing photos, like SPG last year, Michelle Quek this year, and very recently, when a couple in Taiwan put their love making photos on the web without adequte security protection, they had ten thousand hits in a matter of minutes before the photos were taken down.
In blogsphere it is easy to talk but hard to be heard, unless you are some kind of celebrity or power figure. Occasionally a blog might become popular for a transitional reason, e.g., when Philip Yeo had his quarrels with Chen Jiahao, but they tend to die down. In the mean time, the official mass media stick around, with staying power lying in their income from advertising income, so that they can support teams of reporters to acquire local news, obtain early access to international news, provide analytical editorial writings, and present these in some form of attention arousing package, in a way amateur, unpaid bloggers cannot compete with. The official media, however, do not always do this well or do it economically, which ought to give bloggers encouragement, that they can do a better job; the question is how long they can keep it up.
Comfortably retired, I can afford to spend time, and a small amount of money, registering a whole pile of website names and yapping away on anything that interests me but I doubt many others can follow my example. It is easy to become discouraged and give up.
return to blog start sgsociety.com to index blog.360.yahoo.com/sgpsociety?p=1
Posted by: sgsociety.com | 04/05/2007
I hope you are alright...don't see any posting for sometime now. I was hoping if you would post this video on your blog. Thanks.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=d1YJLwM4iPk
Posted by: kussel | 08/05/2007
kussel
I am fine and was merely attending a family event.
Posted by: soci | 08/05/2007