Internet culture

I found a very interesting article about the influence of blogs. Which is funny because I was once told by a media buyer that blogs were irrelevant.

The latest findings from Technorati’s 2013 Digital Influence Report show that “consumers are turning to blogs when looking to make a purchase.”

In fact, blogs rank favorably with consumers for trust, popularity and even influence.

Read more »

Here it is…the post you have all been waiting for.

Which blog is the best political blog in the land. If you go by Open Parachute stats then the most popular and well read blog is this blog, but is it the best.

Perhaps you may prefer David Farrar’s lesser read travel, arts and fitness blog…he does sometime blog about politics.

THen there is Russell Brown’s lambchop recipe blog and old hippy blog…he used to be rated the best of the best.

Cactus Kate surely must get a mention, though she doesn’t blog nearly as frequently as she ought.

Comment away.

I missed this a couple of days ago, Scott Yorke reckons the left need a hero blogger.

What the left needs right now is a blogger who treats every political occasion as a game in which someone wins and someone loses. Someone who reverts to nastiness at every opportunity, while insisting the other side are the nasty ones. Someone who will politicise every occasion to their team’s advantage, even as they accuse others of improper politicisation.

Ideally they’ll be politically connected, so that parties of the left can feed them material for their blog. They will need to have a robust attitude towards defamation laws, and be prepared to post prolifically. They will need to maintain cordial relations with the press, in order to ensure journalists copy and paste their material as often as possible. This means not writing posts attacking journalists. It also means maintaining a public profile. Being anonymous just won’t work. Having integrity and high ethical standards also won’t work.

The blogger will claim to be even-handed, and will scoff at claims they are little more than a partisan hack. They will point to that one time they were mildly critical of their own team as evidence of a lack of bias.

The left is never very good at media because they spend way too much time hating each other rather than hating the government like good right wingers do. On the right we all hate the same thing, there are no splitters and we remember the real enemy is the Labour Party, the Unions, big government and an honourable mention to the Greens.

Sometimes we have to bash our own side like when Farrar goes all pinko on us, but we know deep down his heart is in the right place and the occasional brain fart for money is permissible for someone of his ethnicity. When the pressure goes on we all know that he will be on the right side even if it is a clusterfuck, and mateship counts for a lot more than ideology.

If the left were serious about this they would pay someone to do what Scott advocates, but being a bunch of broken arses they don’t have the money to pay, so it won’t happen.

Farrar releases details of another protesting prinicpal, this one though clearly hasn’t heard of Godwin’s Law.

Godwin’s law (also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies) is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1989 which has become an Internet adage. It states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” In other words, Godwin put forth the sarcastic observation that, given enough time, all discussions—regardless of topic or scope—inevitably end up being about Hitler and the Nazis.

Of course she went right to losing side by starting the comment by mentioning Hitler.

There are many corollaries to Godwin’s law, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself) than others. For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically “lost” whatever debate was in progress.

I have taken the liberty of taking a screen shot of the comment, because it is now likely to disappear.

Marlene Campbell is the principal of Salford School in Invercargill

The childish petulance of these principals makes one wonder whether the problem with discipline in schools doesn’t in fact rest with the tweetchers.