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The Golden Age of Blogs

Published by digby on December 20, 2018

This post will stay pinned at the top of the page for a while. Please scroll down if you’ve read it already. thanks — d

The Golden Age of Blogs

by digby

Holiday Fundraiser Soother: Otter pups! 

I didn’t use that term. It came from James Fallows the other day:

Today is the age of Facebook, twitter and Instagram so blogs like this one seem like something out of the dark ages. Time passes quickly during periods of technological innovation so it was only a few years ago that platforms like Blogger and WordPress were the very latest in online communications. And since it happened at a time of crisis, right after 9/11 and the insane crusade to invade Iraq, they were briefly an important player in national politics. There were New York Times profiles of bloggers and politicians sought our attention and favor. We became a big player in fundraising on the left (the right never really got that part together) and formed the basis for organizing around causes, protests and partisan politics. It was a heady time.

I was never in the real big leagues like Daily Kos or Crooks and Liars which had massive communities and big traffic but I’m proud of the role I played in creating what we used to call the Netroots and now simply refer to as the Progressive Movement. And the results of all that early work are coming to fruition. I would argue that the early days of progressive activism centered in the netroots is at least partly responsible for the emerging progressive majority we see in the Democratic Party and the country at large.

In recent years, online organizing and activism moved to the newer social media platforms, particularly Facebook. And it’s been enormously powerful. Facebook is now an intrinsic part of electoral politics. Unfortunately, it’s also been revealed to be a pernicious threat to our system of government. The revelations over the past year about Facebook’s (and others’) behavior and the ease with which nefarious actors have infiltrated and used it to undermine democracy is one of the scariest political stories of my lifetime. Something very dangerous is happening right before our eyes and nobody really knows what to do about it. (A good first start would be to sack every Facebook executive, starting with Zuckerberg, since they knowingly aided and abetted the misuse of their platform.) We have a propaganda problem and it’s monumental.

Anyway, I guess my point is that while the golden age of blogs is long past, and this one is certainly a relic of that early age, I suspect that single trusted voices plugging away at unraveling the day’s events may still be of some value in this confusing world. Certainly, it will never be the same as it was in the early days, nor should it be. But I think perhaps amid all the din of twitter bot craziness, Facebook arguments coming from who-knows-where and propaganda that looks like activism across all social media, a blog like this one may be a safe haven for some of you.

I’m not employed by any corporation and I don’t work for any politician. I am certainly not knowingly passing on propaganda and if it happens by accident I will correct it immediately. I am skeptical of all government and media and try to keep a clear head when analyzing the events of the day to the best of my ability. I’m also a dyed-in-the-wool feminist, progressive Democrat with all that that implies, so you know what perspective I bring to all of that.

This blog may be ugly and archaic, but you can be sure that nothing about it is fake.

If any of that is something you find valuable in all this online craziness, I hope you’ll consider putting some change in the Hullabaloo holiday stocking. Your support buys me the time to spend my days wading through the muck of the day’s political stories to bring you highlights and analysis I hope you will enjoy and find informative.

If you have already donated, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you haven’t and would like to help support this blog for another year, the paypal buttons are on the sidebar and below as is the snail mail address.

And I wish all of you Very Happy Hollandaise!

cheers — digby

Digby’s Hullabaloo
2801 Ocean Park Blvd.
Box 157
Santa Monica, Ca 90405

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