Honesty is the Best Policy (only when you’re doing it for free and your opinion’s worth shit anyway.)

Since I’ve moved any new comics I do offline in favour of printing them up in The Abyss comic book (due out next month by the way plugplugplug) my internet consumption has shrunk dramatically to a few choice sites. Namely, this, this and this.

And, while I was on this straightened internet diet, I came across this post here by Eoin Butler which brings up a very, very good point. For those who can’t bare to navigate away I’ll include the most pertinent part here.

But as a journalist and blogger, I don’t have to worry about that. We consider it completely beyond the pale to submit our own peers to anything like the same level of scrutiny we hold musicians, let alone politicians. Think about it. When was the last time you heard one blogger openly criticising another blogger? I don’t mean respectfully disagreeing on a given point – I mean criticising the overall quality of another’s work? It simply never happens.

This had me nodding my head so spastically I actually gave myself an epileptic fit and swallowed my tongue.

If opinions are like assholes because everyone has one and they all stink then the Irish Blogoshphere is like a giant Harvey Norman full of butts. And all the butts are getting off with each other because they all think that everyone’s the finest thing they’ve ever seen.

Why are the bloggers here so cosy with each other? Is there some sort of blogger sleepover fun-a-palooza that goes on in Damien Mulleys garage? That I’m apparently never bloody invited to? I wouldn’t know any internet person if I saw them.

I’ve only met two other internet people and that’s Liam and Craig from the Comic Cast and, sexy and erotically frightening as that episode was, that’s it for me when it comes to Webbuddies. I mean for fuck’s sake, Bock the Robber could walk up to me on the street and be 20% more offensive than I thought was humanly possible and I wouldn’t know him from Adam, Eve, Moses or the Virgin fucking Mary herself.

I used to think that this, the idea that everyone know’s each other and doesn’t want to cause a fuss at the Xmas party, was why never a cross word was ever said. It’s not, though, because you never have to meet another blogger if you don’t want to. Just don’t go to the Irish Blog Awards.

So why the kid gloves? Here’s why. Convieniently numbered for your convenience. How convenient.

The reason why bloggers rarely row with each other are… [drum roll]

1: They potentially might need links (or have previously asked for a link) from that shite blog with the large readership that they now hate so they are reluctant to go there. This is a stick you would rather not be beaten with.

2: When you call a popular website crap, the Sycophant Squad descends and implies that it is you, in fact, and not their gloried master, that is the one who is crap. And there’s one of you. And, like, 400 of them. And being critical of another website might highlight how bad your writing is, because you have a throwing stones in glass houses complex that you just can’t quit, you sensitive fucker.

3: It’s the internet so no one cares what you think anyway.

So, like Eoin alluded to in his post, it is quite difficult to harshly criticise someone you might potentially meet walking down the street, even if that street is a virtual one. Because, your opinions, and how much of a cunt you are while expressing them, are the only ways you, as a writer, are perceived by the people who read your work.

You could be the soundest man ever to say “howya”, but if you write that all rapists are doing gods work in your column in the Irish Times you can take it for granted that most people are going to think you’re a big fat slobbering dickhead, with a twin pair of cocks molesting a puppy where your eyes should be.

It’s harder for journalists, because more often than not he or she does so under their own name, which means that any criticism that they do of a band, or a celebrity or a politician is counterbalanced by how likely they are to be percieved as a cunt by actual real people who could know and recognise you outside your bubble. It has to be a consideration, especially over something as marginal as a fucking band. Sure, you could get a job in Hotpress and, in your first review, call the Corona’s aural rapists that shouldn’t be allowed to eat the shit of La Roux’s latest opus but don’t be surprised if the Corona’s don’t want you to be their kids god parent.

And besides, only those with a psychopathic need for attention and skin thicker than Jade Goody’s mother are this much of a cunt under their own name (John Waters, Kevin Myers, I’m looking at you.).

If you’re cool with that though, cunt on brother! Just please please please have the balls to do it under your own name because, when you blog under a pseudonym you may as well be a donkey braying out in a field for all the weight your opinions are worth. No, your not some anonymous deepthroat exposing the worlds underbelly with your sparkling with. As far as I’m concerned, if you can’t put your name next to what you say, it’s worthless, no better than leaving “lolz cockz” anonymously in a comment section.

A quick look around the anonymous internet sites show in Ireland that these are the one’s more likely to be reactionary, nasty and have the word ‘cunt’ said more often than a gynecologist with tourettes syndrome.

Would Twenty Major or Bock the Robber be so gung-ho with their opinions if it were their real names in the headline?

So what’s my point? Anybody attacking any anonymous blog about the quality of their blog is more likely to do it anonymously from their own anonymous blog, making it worthless. Like two turds arguing over who’s shittier it just ends up doing the regular ol’ Internet Lol Cycle of going from hilarious to retarded in 3.5 posts.

Take for example, this Clash of the Internet Titans from earlier this year. Twenty VS Bock. So dramatic! Look at each tribes Sycophant Squads launching into each other with twin assaults of stuttering outrage, hyperbole and the heinous twins of SHOUTY CAPITALS and written sarcasm, actual sarcasms oft misunderstood brother. It’s like the Battle of Thermopylae with fat, socially maladjusted slobs, and nobody outside the 300 people reading the two blogs could give a shit.

Then, conversely, anyone blogging under their own name that isn’t insane just won’t be bothered attracting the ire of the SS because, hey, regardless of whether Captain MonkeyNinjaPirateStain is a talentless hack or not, who wants to scroll through 50 posts of hysterical drivel from people you’ll never meet calling you a cunt in 50 different ways just because you dared to question their Master’s titanic genius.

Who want’s that?