Danny Butt’s stopped blogging, partly because he finds that blogging encourages him to write too fast, almost as though he’s part of the media he does not trust – “my ìprivateî is thoroughly colonised by the ìpublicî”, he writes, and also notes that “because I grew up a smartarse white Australian male,” (he writes) “I am well versed in the art of having important-sounding opinions about things without any real experience or knowledge.”

I do think blogs have a very important role as a tactical media form. Theyíre very useful in a) building community, b) being a direct information source of views excluded from organised media, or c) an informal view into organisations or structures of power. These are all processes that feed into longer-run, more strategic questions of situated political action of the type Iím trying to foster. But my writing does not provide any of these great bloggy traits. I already fail to make the most of the communities I belong to – I donít need to meet any more people! And I donít really represent a collective voice that needs to be heard all the time. And Iím not working within a structure whose internal workings I can break down for those outside it.

Anyway, an interesting post with somewhat different ideas for people thinking about why blogging’s good and why sometimes it mightn’t be.


Discover more from Jill Walker Rettberg

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Leave A Comment

Recommended Posts

AI copyediting: how Paperpal butchered my paper on AI-generated writing

This morning I received the copy-edited version of a paper I recently submitted to a journal. This is always cause for celebration, another step towards publication accomplished! But this time the copy-editor wasn’t human, it was an AI. We have undertaken a light text edit using the tool Paperpal Preflight; […]

From 17th century book factories to AI-generated literature

When I studied literature we mostly read the classics. Great literature, the canon. But that’s not necessarily what most people actually read. What if instead of comparing AI-generated literature to the literary canon, we tried comparing it to super popular and commercial forms of literature instead? Like the folkebøker that […]