Bloggs - A Prediction
In its end of year issue The Economist treats its readers to some fascinating essays on various subjects. One article this time round entitled ‘The Writing on the Wall’ discusses graffiti.
There are two sorts of graffiti. The puerile, and the sort that attempts to makes a point be it political or on a taboo subject etc. This post concerns itself with the latter.
Allow me to repeat two points that are blog-related.
Number 1:
Instances of graffiti have gone down in the last decade. Why? The Economist proffers what I think is the obvious answer; The Internet. People who want to make anonymous points can do so far better on the Internet.
Number 2:
In the 1970s American academics began collecting graffiti from the walls of university lavatories. They were puzzled with finding that the most hateful anti-black graffiti were found on the walls of the most progressive institutions, while in the conservative universities there was hardly any offensive graffiti at all. Strange?
The answer is again pretty clear. There is no need for graffiti were people can express their feelings openly. Graffiti exists were people are afraid to express themselves; were they have to be carefull about what they say on a given subject.
Well now for a bit of ‘lomdus’. If graffiti is an expression of pent up ideas and blogs are the new graffiti then the ‘chareidi’ community is going to see lots and lots and lots of blogs. There is more than a handfull of people in the community who are totally fed up and only need to find an anonymous forum to vent their frustrations. They now have one. We have already seen some fantastic blogs– all barely ten months old. The quality of some of are fantastic and a few are refreshingly subversive. Have a look at this: theshaigetz/ or this: mis-nagid/ for starters.
Gob smacked?? There will be a lot more.
There are two sorts of graffiti. The puerile, and the sort that attempts to makes a point be it political or on a taboo subject etc. This post concerns itself with the latter.
Allow me to repeat two points that are blog-related.
Number 1:
Instances of graffiti have gone down in the last decade. Why? The Economist proffers what I think is the obvious answer; The Internet. People who want to make anonymous points can do so far better on the Internet.
Number 2:
In the 1970s American academics began collecting graffiti from the walls of university lavatories. They were puzzled with finding that the most hateful anti-black graffiti were found on the walls of the most progressive institutions, while in the conservative universities there was hardly any offensive graffiti at all. Strange?
The answer is again pretty clear. There is no need for graffiti were people can express their feelings openly. Graffiti exists were people are afraid to express themselves; were they have to be carefull about what they say on a given subject.
Well now for a bit of ‘lomdus’. If graffiti is an expression of pent up ideas and blogs are the new graffiti then the ‘chareidi’ community is going to see lots and lots and lots of blogs. There is more than a handfull of people in the community who are totally fed up and only need to find an anonymous forum to vent their frustrations. They now have one. We have already seen some fantastic blogs– all barely ten months old. The quality of some of are fantastic and a few are refreshingly subversive. Have a look at this: theshaigetz/ or this: mis-nagid/ for starters.
Gob smacked?? There will be a lot more.
posted by yoinoson schreiber at 1:00 PM
3 Comments:
That's an interesting thought.
If your prediction comes true, I'm betting that the cult leaders will assur [forbid] blogs, over and above the "aveira" [sin] of using the Internet. They'd probably have a stroke if I used my forbidden cell phone to connect to the forbidden Internet to post to my forbidden blog. Well, we can only hope.
Don't worry, graffiti and poorly, drawn non-sensical, offensive tzetlach will never die as long as chasidus lives. That which they refuse to do on the keyboard, they can still spray out of an aerosol can.
Excellent piece!
I agree of course, wholeheartedly.
How about being Blog smacked!
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