Maybe it's a post-election-driven-intensity hangover. Maybe it's a general victimization/victimized reaction to the political retrenchments of the past few weeks. Maybe it's just one of those collective mood swing that can happen in any society. Maybe I'm just coloring the world with my own unrequited desire for more peace, respect, courtesy and consideration. It just feels like the blogosphere, such as it is, such as I experience it in my own little way in this miniscule corner of the realm, has been under a gray mist of negativity.

Then again, when I read what Jill wrote, I start to wonder ... maybe it's really just a general trend that comes from more people blogging worldwide, which brings more diverse people into what once upon a time were self-selective empagrokking clusters. For myself, I drifted away from the bunch I hung out with on Xanga as recently as a couple of years ago. That was in part by a diverging of interests, experiences and world views, and in part by the closed nature of that system, like LiveJournal, where clusters of "friends" are defined, in part, by membership in the system -- something that has come to feel kind of distasteful to me. I much prefer the open net, and see nothing to be gained by blogging in a gated community.

For me, I suppose one reason this cyber-malaise that has crept into my dim awareness is because of the so-scorned-yet-so-desperately-sought blog awards, which seem to be a combination of politically charged publicity opportunities and desperate pleas for validation, sometimes with an ironic wink wink nudge nudge say no more. "Vote early and vote often" gets 12,100 hits on Google.

Okay, I'm not a Scrooge, so I did my part and went through all the categories and voted for my favorites -- that is, when I recognized anybody -- and was done with it. I can't do anything about ballot-box stuffing and really could not care less. But these pleas coming from otherwise rather insightful, eloquent bloggers have left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I don't hold it against them -- who doesn't want to be popular? -- but I won't mourn when the winners can claim their accolades and post their blogressional medals, for what they're worth, so all these sidebar blocks and sticky posts can fade away to the net archives with the dignity.

The other things that really has hit me harder than I ever would have thought is the eruption of an apparently long-percolating flame war in the self-proclaimed progressive Democrat realm between the purported Al From loyalists at the Democratic Underground and the most visible electronic voting rights activist, Bev Harris.

Having never found much appeal in the abrasive declamatory style of DU (as exhibited in the cited DC thread) -- I feel much more "at home" at places like the Kos, where (it seems to this humble observer) there's more civility and depth of discussion, despite sometimes radically opposing views -- I did not even know about this war going on until it hit Wired yesterday.

Last night I spent some sleepless hours going through the wrap-up discussions in both camps, and it really comes of as a "he said, she said" situation. I admire Bev Harris, and while I have heard some serious questions of her tactics of late, her explanations make sense to me. It's quite clear that I do not have enough information. And as for the fervent claims that many of the DU flame-throwers are really GOP agitators, and the vitriolic accusations that Bev is just in it for self-aggrandizement and money, I leave to the mind-readers.

As for Bev, I confess some empathy and admiration. I don't think anyone can know what it must be like in her shoes, being the face on the entire electronic voting rights movement, facing lawsuit threats, death threats, and catcalls from all sides who are displeased with whatever. Who among us could handle that kind of pressure with grace and emotional calm? Personally I don't give a damn what she did several years ago. I see her fighting a good fight, and if the DU clan wants to give her the boot, well, all's fair in love and politics. Since DU, too, seems to be dermined to advance the voting rights cause, I hope for a future with no net loss. The more powerful entities fighting for this most important right in our society, the better.

But the dissention is painful. I'm sure Karl Rove et al. have been chuckling all week. The ill feelings within allegedly progressive ranks are so unfortunate. After reading all the muck, I wanted to take a shower, and I slept with troubled dreams. Why do I read the net at night?

Tonight I'm going to watch "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

In case you missed the news, or any of several blog entries on the topic, "blog" has been named Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year!

This might be fine and dandy if it reflected buzz in old media newsrooms (as it probably does), but the world of the year is determined by online look-ups! That's right -- the net-surfing public is only this year discovering that blogs exist. Egad! (Allow me to take this moment to declare that my blogging experience goes way back to 2001 and that I've been doing the web page thing since, well, I don't want to date myself.)

The BBC notes that Oxford wasn't so slow on the uptake:

However, the word is already included in some printed versions of the Oxford English Dictionary.

A spokesman for the Oxford University Press said that the word was now being put into other dictionaries for children and learners, reflecting its mainstream use.

"I think it was the word of last year rather than this year," he said.

"Now we're getting words that derive from it such as 'blogosphere' and so on," he said.

Those hip Brits.

Feministe points out that "defenestration" made the list at number ten, and I, too, have loved that word since the '80s. (Oops - now I have dated myself.) But what about these other words? When I think of the last election, and consider that online Americans were looking up such obscure words as:

...I start to worry about the state of our republic.

(And what's with those lubbers who had to look up "hurricane"??? Don't they watch TV? Maybe not. We can hope.)

-media girl

Since it seems everyone's been posting their hero avatars, I thought I'd share mine.

SWF, 30ish, blonde, athletic, seeks love, intrigue, adventure and romance. No dutch dates. Must love cats. Mailbox #472239

Tom Wolfe has been a writer who has appealed to me over the years, but after seeing him in a smidge of the 3-hour sit-down with Brian Lamb on C-Span this afternoon, I've been wondering how such a smart and curious man could have such blinders about the internet.

Let's first just set aside the silliness he uttered about evolution not being provable (which seems to deny the observable adaptability of bacteria and viruses) and his notions of what college girls want. Let's talk about his thoughts on the internet.

Basically he said the internet is nothing special, just a matter of getting information faster. Maybe it's that he's about to turn 75 and that this is one area where he's a self-admittedly incurious fellow. But it seems to me that he's missing one important and essential thing: the internet is not as much about information as it is about interaction.

People who avidly sneer at blogs (pwasabs) and the blogosphere always rant about how you just get buried in information, and you can't trust any of it because there's so much unreliable information out there. In other words, they complain about too much information.

And it is TMI. Way too much. But they don't even realize what their real complaint truly is.

What's developing now -- really only in the past very few years -- is a new dynamic in how we relate to that information. With trackbacks and watchlists and link lists and referral tracking, we're just adding our first layer of interaction on all this information. On some sites, karma plays into the dynamic, too. All these things are ways of helping to filter out the chaff. The good stuff, once it finds its hook into the higher-traffic sites, tends to rise to attention.

But this is interactivity in its infancy. The fact is we don't even know what interactivity will look like in 10 years, let alone when the little toddlers scrambling around our livingrooms reach college age.

And yet, these pwasabs don't even see that much interactivity. In fact, many don't even grok the concept. To them, interaction is flipping channels with the remote control, or turning pages in a book, or (with a leap of faith) conversation with someone over coffee. So when they are complaining about too much information, what they are really complaining about is too little interactivity -- partly because they don't see what little there is, but largely because that interactivity is still not quite understood, and even feared.

Look at these AOL commercials for "a better internet." A lot of these are Luddite expressions of fear of the future, of uncertainty. Their pitch is to make the internet like television.

I cannot imagine a worse fate for the internet.

Tom Wolfe has been openly soliciting suggestions for the topic of his next book. Being as he prides himself on delving into topics of which he knows virtually nothing, I suggest that his next book is about interactivity and the internet. He just might learn something.

Cows with guns??? :omg:

This has been around for a while, but just in case you haven't seen this, follow this, um, link. :roll: (Be sure to watch the whole, ah, cut :/ or you'll miss the chickens!)

Thanks to online pal Carol Novak, who shared this, erm, link :uhuh: in her office here.

(See more Flash by animator Bjorn-Magne Stuestol.)