Courteney Cox and Ian Hart star in this new drama from FX, and also acts as an executive producer. The series follows the exploits of Lucy Spiller, an executive editor at two tabloid magazines. Lucy possesses the power to manipulate the lives of celebrities through the articles she prints in the magazine. (photo and text from TV.com)
When I was growing up I used to read all of the magazines that My mother bought the Australian Women’s Weekly (when it was still weekly) New Idea and Woman’s Day. Not because I was that interested but simply because I was a voracious reader and I read every thing that came into the house, ( but I will admit that my dad’s ” Wireless world” was not a favourite) anyway this rather catholic reading style of mine did lead me to believe that the doorway to understanding how people think can be opened by reading what they read or watching what they watch in film or on TV. My catholic tastes have remained and these days when it comes to the DVD collection held by the public library is like my own personal lucky dip because you just never know what will turn up. Which is a round about way to introduce “Dirt” which I selected without giving it a second thought and what a delight it turned out to be! However this post is not really intended to be any kind of TV review. What I am getting around to is the thought that I had about how some blogging seems to be just like the tabloid gossip magazines that are parodied by “Dirt” and like the gossip mags or even the girlie mags like Penthouse and Playboy these gossipy sites do have the occasional well written article that is actually worth reading in its own right. But no one who frequents such sites would ever be able to pretend that they do so “for the articles” people inhabit these sites to compete in the far from edifying game of sniping at those people that they have decided are for one reason or another worthy of scorn.
One such site was called “The Spin Starts Here“, now nothing but a memory, after its then anonymous authors were exposed and they had to reap the crop of hatred that they had sown. TSSH targeted Lefties in particular but no one was actually ever considered off limits. What motivated them was a particular brand of cyber nastiness intend to upset and humiliate their targets. They were at their Zenith in mid 2005 when I first started blogging. Some of their pieces were genuinely funny and their deconstruction of some popular culture icons was actually worth reading but I could not quite get my head around just what they were about at first, initially I just thought that they were a rather out there bunch of righties determined to thrash lefties but they were a rather extreme example of just why easy anonymity on the net is a far from grand idea. They so infuriated some of their targets that a cash reward of $1000 was posted for the names of Caz and the Hack(the main authors and owners of the site). Now this was an unprecedented thing to do and such a reward was much more than a rhetorical token, it was real money.
This brings me back to “Dirt” and the tabloid gossip mags and the paparazzi that that inspired the TV series they too are willing to pay real money and trade favours for that currency of gossip, information. The obsessive interest in the private life of celebrities has reached the ridiculous situation where who is fucking whom and in what perverse manner is just another rung on the ladder of fame. Now it is not about what they do but how they manage the revelations. Thus some a celebrity can commit a rather silly indiscretion the way that Hugh Grant did when he was caught being blown by a prostitute in his BMW and still have a film career because he rode the storm rather well, admitted that what he did was rather stupid but more importantly he cleaned up his act and did not let the head in his trousers continue to overrule the one on his shoulders. On the other hand we have celebrities who very publicly go from one drug bust to the next and very publicly self-destruct. Think about Robert Downey jr’s stints in and out of various rehab clinics and his stint in prison.
Now am I the only one who can see some aspects of celebrity, Paparazzi culture is analogous and the more inane end of the Oz bloggosphere? While gossip Mags like People , Who or The National Enquirer act as news stand vigilantes and they will mercilessly attack an individual who does not play the game to their rules. TSSH was playing the same sort of game with some of the minor blogging celebrities and their demise has not meant that such behaviour has ended . There is always some new group of players who are so very keen to get into the vigilante game. A game that can be played by individuals but mostly it seems to be played by electronic gangs the usually use the excuse of politics and they will talk about wanting to “fight the good fight ” of one sort or another but what they really seek is to humiliate the object of their ire, the actual political arguments are less important and merely the conduit to this end. And like all Bullies they love the affirmation of going in “mob handed” and, they will often descend upon some minor players and try to intimidate them, and by example, others bloggers into submission. But there is another similarity between these gangs and the Paparazzi in the way that they will sometimes follow their targets all around the place trying to humiliate them even at venues that do not concern the politics that is the excuse for their bullying.
Now some victims of this behaviour may just decide that they can’t stand the heat and they will just quietly retreat from the fray, closing up their internet efforts and maybe try to reinvent themselves under a pseudonym. After all it is any easy thing to do, but for some writers who have the courage to blog in their own names are understandably rather unwilling to cede their actual identities to the bullies.
For what it is worth I can offer just a little simple advice to someone who is the target of the Cyber paparazzi and it is this:
In the first instance use a blogging platform that gives you, the author ,the best possible control of who can comment on your site, and which allows you to effectively ban those who would torment you from doing so in your own electronic living room.
Create a comments policy for your blog and enforce it , give a new commenter one chance to behave; if they cross the line and if they re-offend then add them to your moderation list in the first instance, if they won’t play by your rules add them to your banned list.
Take NO shit from anyone on your home turf and ban without a second thought if someone ignores your warnings to behave civilly.
Never allow truly anonymous comments, a Nome de plume is fine as long as you have a real email address and you take the time to test it.
Be aware that the person that you ban under one name may well try to return under another, such “sock puppets” may actually fly under your radar for quite some time, they may even be civil in debate but my experience is that eventually they revert to type and before you know it they are back to bullying and harassment. Be aware that although they can change their identity it is a substantially harder trick for someone to write in a different voice so take note of stylistic cues as well.
Learn to love resources like an IP address locator because although it won’t give you the name and address of a commenter but it may give you an idea of their location which will help you decide if they are what they claim to be.
Under no circumstances let the bullies dictate the terms under which they can play (comment) in your blog because if you do they will own you, lock, stock and barrel. Always value your autonomy and don’t let a lack of commentary make you willing to accept bullying as a substitute for debate at your blog.
Finally behave well yourself even if you have, in the past, played similar games to the ones being played against you. If you get into tit for tat sniping the forces of darkness have won and you have lost no matter how many points that you think that you are scoring . If you manage to reach an accommodation with an old foe be scrupulous about keeping that agreement because your word has to mean something and if you break your word you will be ceding the moral high ground for a very fleeting pleasure .
I hope that I have shown that certain cadres of bloggers are like the paparazzi but I am sure that we all need to really think about just how we want this blogging game to be played. The only way that good honest people can thrive in a hostile environment full of nameless scum bags is to support each other’s desire for a moral and civil debate no matter what the colour of our politics may be.
Cheers Comrades
8)
