SHOTS IN THE DARK

This is overdue on my part but Lynne D. Johnson drops wisdom on the politics of hip-hop and the blogosphere.

...and Kris Ex rains acid on shook bloggers.

Put these two entries together and you start to recognize the upside of what blogs have to offer. I've been working on a longer musing but the short story is this: there's much about blogging to complain about. As a medium for writing, it promotes way too much pretentious, narcissitic, aimless, navel-gazing that just wastes bandwidth and other people's time (my site not excepted). But hey, that's the price of a democratic medium and I can live with it since it's our choice what we read and don't.

However, what I can't stand is how incredibly uncivil the blogging world is. It's not just blogs of course - it's message boards, comments sections, etc. - anywhere the safety of anonymity is perverted into an open license to act like bullies and assholes. The examples are too numerous to mention - we see the vicious, ad hominem spirit manifest everyday. That's why I can't mess with the Okayplayer.com forums despite the intelligent dialogues that can spring forth. It's why I've learned that when people try to bust shots, it's far better to let them to play themselves out rather than firing back. You can't win an argument with people who act with impunity and refuse to accept accountability. And as many have pointed, this lack of basic decency stings harder since people are acting in ways they would never dare in person. That's why I had to laugh aloud when Kris Ex predicted, "One day after the first hip-hop blogger gets punched in his (or her) face, all the slick-n-snide talk will come to a halt."

This is all why I appreciate both Lynne and Kris' respective postings. Lynne is willing to call people onto the carpet but she doesn't do it in a way that's mean-spirited or a rush to judgment. Likewise, Kris has received a fair amount of hate for what people call an egotistical attitude (and let's face it, I don't think he'd disagree with the description) but he's also been one of the few people I've seen who've simply asked people to account for their words.

Blogging is such an incredible, unpredictable medium and it's so very young, with a potential that I don't think we've seen even a fraction of yet. I just hope the growing pains aren't going to be strong enough to kill most of interest in the process.

In any case - here's some more things to read while you're here already:

Jon Caramanica on Cam'ron.

The updated and frighteningly thorough Kanye West production list.

Personally, those NYC "Pigeon" Dunks seem too plain to be commanding $500 and up but if you really need to get your sneaker addiction taken care of: Kicks Finder to the rescue.

I didn't quite fit into my high school cliques either but this is a rather extreme way to make up for it, no?

They might have two teams in the playoffs but Pennsylvania also has "intelligent design" in their schools. I'm sure tonight creationists are partying like it's 1899.