-- and shall kogan be king?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

when i brought the netroots into my previous post, it's true i was primarily looking at finincially sustainable systems, rather than "similar content"

but another element of overlap was (i sort of felt) actually content-related -- which is that the netroots gather round a cluster of highly critical pundits (viz atrios) whose energy and lure derives from the stubbornness with which they say NO to established media structures, habits, cliches and (this last important obv but not i think overridingly so) actual partisan political positions

so i was interested also -- less clear-headedly, somewhat intuitively -- in the idea that a broad self-generating structure could exist (and, to the point, already perhaps semi-exists) in which kogan-esque commentary MATTERED, precisely bcz a key part of his thought manifests as REFUSAL

i feel within what frank is asking is a potential conflict -- he wants DDR to be all-encompassingly open to types of voice and types of topic, and yet a lot of his personal project does in fact consist of saying (usually correctly) [xxx] IS ACTUALLY STUPID AND UNHELPFUL; in other words, while radically inclusive in one sense, it is also very much defined AGAINST something already in existence (or rather, two related things: what cultural journalism has become; and what the academic humanities have become)

my gut feeling has always been that this apparent contradiction, far from being disabling, has enormous potential gathering energy and liberating attraction, IF YOU CAN SET IT UP RIGHT (my motto when i wz editor of "the wire" was after all "have fun starting arguments")

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"energy and lure" -- viz in respect of the specific larger community they have lured and do energise

"the stubbornness with which they say NO to... actual partisan political positions" -- i mean, they take actual partisan political positions in order to say no to OTHER actual partisan political positions (the latter being the ones which, acc. their analysis, unjustly dominate the MSM), but i am arguing that the attraction is as much NEW SPACE TO EXPLORE DISSENT as it is EXCLUSIONARY CIRCLEJERK AFFIRMATION of NARROW PARTYLINE ATTITUDES (though it is certainly PARTLY the latter)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

The thing with refusal (or irritation, in the less charged world of music discourse) is how well it handles the inevitable counter-refusal, especially in communities where the quickest way to make a mark is to work out exactly how much you can successfully reject an orthodoxy without getting ostracised. In political communities, because there's a notional external goal and focus, this may happen less, but let's take an idea from ILM as an example:

1. A founding idea of ILM (not the most important one, but probably the one most easily picked up on) is "Music criticism should spend more time thinking about music that has a wide audience. Currently it doesn't do this."
2. Founding idea gets simplified in practise into "Let's talk about pop not indie."

Now even of step 1 is a good idea, step 2 isn't a very good way of turning it into action because it invites endless (mostly) boring arguments about what pop is and what indie is and is there even a tension between them, all of which detracts from the central point of step 1, which is to spend more time thinking about the wide-audience music itself.

So step 3 is counter-refusal: people turning up in a community and joining the community to react against it. And I guess the problem comes in the different ways counter-refusal happens. The unhelpful way - "Ahhhhh You have just set up your own set of values ahhhhhhh" - which isn't untrue but doesn't move anything anywhere. OK, fine the idea's been demolished, now what? And the more helpful way - "Right, this isn't working, let's see how we got bogged down and where and see if we can work out how to improve things."

So much of my time on ILM seemed to be spent dealing with the first. It would be nice to have more of the second, which Frank does seem good at providing. Like I say, the first isn't *wrong* in what it says (well, not always), just tends to a kind of stasis in which the community trends towards other communities rather than away from them into its own thing.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Do not have hangover now but still do not understand. Should I attempt to do so?

[koganbot]

Might make sense to start from my preliminary posts:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/14386.html

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/14638.html

Those two posts are very preliminary, so there still may not be enough to make the proposal understandable (also, the "proposal" is searching for itself, isn't really a proposal yet); a reason you should attempt to understand it is that you have a fine mind and I would welcome your ideas. Of course, that is my reason for you to attempt to understand.

Here's another reason: People like me have no place in the world. I am writing down what is so far a pipedream on how I can create a place for people like me. You seem very much like a person like me. I could use your help, and maybe you could use mine.

(Also, when you get the chance, read my book.)

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Hrmm I have had a look at that and something approximating a think (as close to one as you can get while simultaneously trying to work out what to do with 65 pages of Excel spreadsheet which aside from having what is patently the worst layout EVER also contains data which for some reason they haven't labelled with anything sensible meaning constant checking is required to know WHAT THE HELL ANY OF IT MEANS but yes, some sort of thought process) and have concluded that I am in agreement with at least 90% of the sentiment here and indeed would be more than happy to go along with it to whatever use I might be (o hi dere, sentence stucture) I think the whole concept isn't a million miles away from a lot of ideas I have toyed with myself, although on a much lower level, certainly it seems to hold a resemblence to a lot of what I sort of mess around with in my head with regards to desperationism.

Regarding funding it might be easy enough to simply get people to pay to be allowed to write/participate, facilitating one and then increasing numbers of people to be able to be supported off it, assuming a success, in the style of a pirate radio station (actually what is springing to mind is a trade union more than a pirate radio station but still) until possibly it would be possible to start charging people to *read* it or at least, netroots-style advertise with it and thus ...actually I think this is basically just me saying I don't think it necessarily needs the massive windfall it might look as though it would. That said, I was going to illustrate the point with the face most international relations academic journals are glorified fanzines, however, the entire discipline was started by Lord David Davies getting philanthropic on my university's arse so that is possibly a bad example.

I have confused myself now. I hope that made sense.

[koganbot]

My next post on koganbot's livejournal may well be about a tension in the word "dilettante." It is pulled between two meanings, the first often considered derogatory:

1st meaning: A dilettante flits from subject to subject and project to project, alighting on one, taking shallow sips, and then heading for the next, without really concentrating his efforts on anything. (Most crucial defect: the dilettante leaves off from an inquiry before the subject matter can work any changes on him. In fact, his being this sort of dilettante may be due to his aversion to being changed.)

2nd meaning: A dilettante is someone who is endlessly curious and follows questions and connections wherever they lead. ("Dilettante" derives from the Latin verb that means "to delight.")

My vision includes the idea that at least some of the participants engage in conversations that they won't allow themselves to break off until each is convinced that the others understand him or her. This is a very ambitious dilettantism, since it's suggesting that in one's journeys one tries to master other people's ideas.

(And my hope is that the type two dilettantes not shut themselves off from the impatient and the lazy and the hostile, that they don't lock themselves away and concentrate on each other's ideas free of distractions.)