Picture of Tara Smith who blogs at Aetiology.
Picture by the wonderful photographer Lindsay at Majikthise
It’s pretty hard to avoid the topic of Yearly Kos while cruising around the blog-o-sphere this weekend. I myself didn’t go. I originally had a ticket, but ended up getting a job that required me to be around and I didn’t feel like spending the money on the bus for 16 hours to get there. I haven’t actually been reading all that much but I’ve come up with a couple of thoughts surrounding Yearly Kos.
There are things in this world that bother me. I’m not usually a complainer, nor do I find it productive to criticize people who are trying to make a difference. But Kos bothers me. The “organization” as a whole bothers me. Mostly for two reasons, it’s ability to deliver false hope and it’s inability to be fair to women.
The people at Kos generally have one big thing in common besides all being liberal commies - they blog. Many of them, in fact, think that one day they’re going to be huge big bloggers like Kos and are going there to network and get solid advice on how to make it big. But really, all their getting are panels of ill informed people who basically got lucky. On top of this, they think coming together is going to make a big different. But really, who is going to start paying these big salaries? It seems as though people are a little too involved with the idea of the proletariat, either that or they’re going to start sucking the money out of Google ads in a week.
There are a few problems here - people spend too much time blogging and end up with little result. I blogged non-stop for a year and developed a pretty good readership, but they sure as hell weren’t going to start sending me money. This new method of blogging, linking, is just so ineffective. People think that if they create a post that just links to someone else, and they add one or two thoughts of their own that they’ve created a really great post. But really they’re just conforming to the masses of what everyone else writes about. When I think of the “big blogs” I see some common traits. They all have a solid subject that they stick to. They all have fantastics writers. They all write posts that come out of their own heads, not just links from other people (feministing the exception, but women only go there so that someone else can think for them… ) And finally, they all have a hint of personality. (Oh, and many of them have books - which helps)
Now when I read the smaller blogs I see links, topics all over the board, unoriginal writing and nazi control of the comments. But very few of the little blogs are going to change. The problem with picking a subject and ceasing the linkage is that all of the sudden - you become *gasp* an individual. But bloggers are so painfully striving for any ounce of main blog-o-sphere acceptance. They’re willing to blog just like the big leagues and agree with them on all their points and bow down and kiss their feet just for a link. And this weakens the entire liberal blogosphere as a whole. You want a strong blogosphere? Have your own voice and be willing to fight with people on your own side.
So why does this link to Kos? People are there because they see the success of Daily Kos, so if you go to their conference you’re going to be up to par with the “intellectual masses” of their “movement” instead of staying at home coming up with real ways to create a unique voice that will actually be heard. Kossaks are all the same.
The reason I wanted to go to Kos was to see Chris Mooney - btw - not to become a big time blogger. My time with him will come.
Next - women. Have you heard of the BlogHer conference? Believe it or not, it is the biggest conference from women on the blogosphere. The BlogHer conference invited all presidential candidates to either appear or… send surrogates. Edwards and Clinton both sent surrogates. Edwards sent his wife. And then you look, apparently, a week makes a monumental difference in making presidential candidates available because at the Yearly Kos convention, a gathering of bloggers whose main attendees appear to be white and male, all of the candidates showed up… in person… together even!
Alright, alright, that’s not really the fault of Kos - but Markos being a sexist pig is. Gordo has blogged about it before. Gordo isn’t the only one to have written about it, and it’s not even just in the past year… it’s been going on for yeeears. Read the following for more:
Godless Liberal Homo
Skakes’ Sister
Echidne
Shades of Grey
“Yeah, but Katie… Yearly Kos isn’t held by Daily Kos” … Seriously, THEY HAVE THE SAME NAME AND MARKOS IS LIKE IDOLIZED! After the earlier sexist out break at the beginning of the year I was convinced that the feminists of the blogosphere wouldn’t even step three miles close to the Kos convention - but turns out the majority of them were there for a panel. Using the exact same defence of “It’s run by different people” …
Sure, the thing may not be planned by Daily Kos, but they’re affiliated - closely. When you think Yearly Kos - you think Daily Kos. Yearly Kos is the child of Daily Kos and while Markos may not be the one running the show - he’s running the name. It’s too bad all the women had to jump at that chance for stardom while completely leaving their ethics behind them. And the really sad part is that they’re not going to a) convince anyone of anything or b) get any new followers because they people that are they already agree with them, already want to be their friend and already follow their every move for hours upon hours on the net.
Anyway, that’s my rant on Kos.
cross-posted at appletree
I only stayed for a day and a half, but it seemed to me that small-time bloggers like myself were very much a minority. Most of the people fell into one of a few groups:
1) Big-time bloggers, who came as panelists and attended some of the events.
2) Political candidates and their staffs.
3) Senior citizens who are concerned about politics.
4) Fans of blogs like FDL and Kos, and Kos diarists.
5) Political activists. There were actually a whole lot of these.
About the only group I noticed that had less representation than the small-time bloggers were the half-crazed anger junkies who would shout 5 paragraphs of their manifesto before spitting a question at the panelists.
I really liked the structure of the convention. On the one hand, you wound up missing a lot of stuff you wanted to see. On the other hand, it enabled anyone to put together a schedule that would be personally appealing. If you wanted to take one of the workshops on blog writing or promotion (I did a promotion workshop, which was absolutely worthless), you could spend almost all of your time doing that and networking.
On the other hand, if you wanted to spend the time networking with activists and trying to get a job as an activist, you could do that. If you wanted to spend the whole weekend in relatively small sessions with luminaries like Gen. Wesley Clark and Senator Dick Durbin, you could do that. You could spend a day doing nothing but watching documentaries. You could spend your time watching experts like Glen Greenwald and Juan Cole discuss current events. The bottom line is, you didn’t have to spend your time in a futile attempt to build traffic for your D-list site.
Katie, I’m pretty sure the big blogs have Nazi control of comments, too. Pharyngula bans anyone who defends theism or attacks Dawkins too much. Amanda Marcotte bans anyone who disagrees with her (her expression is “bores me,” but I’d think hordes of ideologically uniform commenters would be boring). FDL is all about therapeutic screaming.
Also, I don’t know about this convention, but the last one didn’t feature much “How to make it big” crassness. I don’t even remember hearing anyone pitch any blog, except Lindsay pitching mine to people we both met (”Alon blogs at Unscrewing the Inscrutable”).
[...] your site, you wasted your time. But I had a great time. Here’s what I wrote about it over at her site: I only stayed for a day and a half, but it seemed to me that small-time bloggers like myself were [...]
ciao, interesting piece and nice blog, visit mine!
By the way, Bruce of Crablaw has just posted about the convention, saying he had planned to go but didn’t in light of Kos’s sexist comments.
Well, since my picture is on this and you say the women there “completely [left] their ethics behind them,” I have to admit I’m feeling a bit singled out. First, I think you’re wrong by assuming everyone who attended is the same. I don’t consider myself a “kossack” at all. I read the blog, I often disagree, I rarely comment. Ed, one of the other science panelists, isn’t even a Democrat. The idea was never to get everyone to agree with us. Rather, we were trying to introduce an issue we all cared about–the distortion of science, and what bloggers can do about it–and I think we were fairly successful at that, at least as far as I can tell from comments I heard following the caucus and science panel.
Some were there to support and promote their candidate (this wasn’t me, as I don’t even have a favorite candidate yet). Some, I suppose, were there to pimp their blog, but as you note, I find it unlikely they were successful at that–there were just too many people there to be able to gain a wide readership from this conference. However, I did meet people who have similar interests, and hope that will mutually benefit us by working together in the future. To me, that’s the benefit of conferences like these.
Finally, I think BlogHer is great–but notice their big gap as far as science blogging goes (and, ugh, “astrology and horoscopes”). I’ll go and speak where I think I can spread my message, and I think this year’s YearlyKos science talks were quite successful in that manner.
And I didn’t hear a single person mention Markos, let alone “worship” him, in the company I kept, just FYI…
I’m going to have to make a more full reply to this tomorrow, because I need to go to bed so I can plop out to make it to work in time tomorrow… but I just wanted to say to Tara that I in no way meant to single you out for the criticism I made about the women at kos… It was simply my favorite picture from the conference. And it’s fair enough to call me out on grouping all the people together as having similar interests and motives.
I appreciate the thoughts.
And will respond more tomorrow.
Okay, first, Tara, it’s good that they invited you this year at all; last time the only woman on the science panel was Wendy Northcutt, who only got about 3-4 minutes to speak because she went last and Wes Clark, who went first, had gone way overtime.
If YK ‘07 was anything like YK ‘06, then the problem wasn’t with the panels. I enjoyed the YK ‘06 panels on science, energy, feminism, and abortion quite a lot (the others not so much - when I asked Tom Vilsack at the education panel about funding disparities between rich and poor districts, he responded, “If it’s really happening, then it’s bad”).
The real problems were at the convention-wide events, like Kos’s speech. Forget for a moment that it was demagogic; he basically implied that every issue that’s not on his personal shortlist, which includes health care, education, Iraq, and domestic spying, doesn’t really matter. Then there was the open thread, where people kept making the standard-issue comments: why are we always defending? Why do the Republicans control public discourse? Why can’t those ignorant sheeple all vote our way (okay, I made this one up, but the subtext is there)?
On the other hand, it’s not just my shrillness sensors that have become more sensitive this past year; the blogosphere really has gotten worse. So okay, Pandagon has always been a collection of blogwar bots ever since Amanda took over, and Feministing has always been about Boss Valenti telling the soldiers what to think, but Pharyngula, Majikthise, Ezra Klein, Echidne of the Snakes, and A Blog Around the Clock have all gotten far, far worse.
It could just be that the Democrats regained control of Congress. After 2004, a lot of Republican bloggers took the election as a vindication and a license to engage in disgusting partisanship. Instapundit, who had previously been a fairly rational guy, turned into an LGFer; Josh Treviņo began to gloat about his awesomeness instead of continue to make the measured conversations with liberals that had underlain his readership. So it’s entirely possible that the blogospheric left’s fall will reverse itself after Giuliani wins. Or maybe not - instead of making Redstate evaluate why the Republicans lost, 2006 made the posters start rant uncontrollably about how the Republicans just weren’t conservative enough.
Alon, you have a great ability to talk a lot about things you apparently have little knowledge on. BWA ha ha ha. oh dear.
I’m way over the YK thing already. Im sorry if people were offended, but I can’t see why feminists and women would want to be around such a pigheaded jerk and support something that he heads. Gross. Fo Serious.
Katie, most of that comment is just my observations of the first convention.