Blogging = High School

Excellent riff from Kirsten in her comments about the wretched conversation we've endured ...

"yep - this entire riff makes my point. blogging = high school. and i don't just mean it's petty - its about top dogs and popular people (Top N Lists and A-list bloggers), sucking up (link love), bullies (riffs, spam, and dinkheads), exchange students (like "smurfette") reinventing themselves, and pedagogue teachers (kawasawki) who make too many rules and lists." -- Kirsten Osolind.

Comments

[Michael Wagner]

Been thinking about "wretched conversations" since I read your original post. I really like Kirsten's riff.

This afternoon I read how Mel Brooks argued with Gene Wilder about adding the "Putting On the Ritz" scene in Young Frankenstein - Wilder wanted it in, Brooks wasn't buying it. After 25 minutes Brooks said, "OK, it's in." Wilder wanted to know how Brooks could argue for such a long time and then just agree. Brooks said something like, "I just wanted you to know why you wanted the scene."

Wretched conversations can be clarifying. And I am not always concerned about civility in the moment as long as we can find some civility in the end.

[kirsten]

LOL. As the two former National Marketing Directors of Whole Foods Market - with different viewpoints on life and marketing -- we really should connect points A and B and pitch presentations or write a book together.

- Brand Autopsy helps small companies get big by thinking small.
- re:invention helps big companies connect with and understand small companies.

Wonder if we would have liked each other in high school?

Thanks for the link love. We appeared in Crain's Chicago Business today too in a little article about corporate blogging. Have a good week!

kindly,
kirsten

[Todd Baker]

This high school analogy goes pretty far - apart from being hilarious. To take it a but further: it will be interesting to see if blogging graduates from said high school and if so, what does the next stage look like? Will our captain of the football team and prom queen continually look back on this as the best time of their lives while the left-behinds go on to college and become the "next big things"?

[Andy Havens]

I don't buy it.

This is testiness in a teacup. Mainstream media types go at it hammer-and-tongs and we don't call them "high school." Well, maybe we do. But if that's the case, then maybe we're all in high school all the time. I think that those of us in marketing, especially those of us in online marketing, and hyper-especially those of us engaged in blogging-as-marketing-tool ourselves, tend to hold these situations up in front of fun-house mirrors.

This was an example of "blog as conversation." Isn't that what all the original hard-core blogvangelists told us was the root-good of blogging? That we could see past the corporate sheen-wall and into the hearts of actual people? Isn't this more like "word-of-mouth" than "word-of-flack?" What's the problem here? That Scoble, et al were using some "tone?" Ain't blog got tone? That they were getting a little stanky wid it? Ain't blog got stank? That they got up into it and made their real feelings known?

Wait a sec... Is the problem here that they were making their thoughts and feelings known so clearly and honestly... and maybe a bit brutally... or that they were doing it about *blogging itself?* If this was a retail company issue, and these were customers and/or employees who were blogging or commenting or wiki-ing or Web2.0ing or word-of-mouthing about their issues, feelings, thoughts, fears, etc., in full-on, honest dialogue mode and I (as a professional marketing dude) came out and said:

"These customers and employees should not blog thus! They are acting like high-schoolers! They are sullying the space, muddying the water and erroding the general climate of the blogoshpere!"

You'd have my guts for garters!

Why shouldn't the VP's, etc. have the same license to vent and "get real" that blogs offer "the little guy?" Isn't that the point? Levelling isn't just about giving "power to the people," but getting the powerful out among the people. Bottom up and top down. Meet in the middle. As a little person myself, I thought the whole thing was damn fun to watch. And interesting to hear.

And, btw, outside of our navel-gazing, marketing-zone... lots of people are using blogs in very useful, interesting ways that have nothing to do with "high-school crap." People (you know... folks who aren't trying to sell stuff in the gutters of their blogs and, therefore, don't give a rat's ass about link-love, SEO and pagerank) are blogging journals, original research, sermons, notes from conferences, poetry, pictures, family trees... all kinds of neat stuff. They don't snark, they don't care who lists them and who doesn't, they don't bully, they aren't bullied. How do I know? I run five little blogs for folks just like that. Fun, private, interesting, spaces. And I know of and read dozens more.

Whether it's just for themselves or their family, students, peers, an audience of ten or forty or 100. There are millions of bloggers out there. Some are well behaved. Some are not. Some do it as a business thing. Most do not. To paint the whole scene with this broad brush of, "blogging = high school" is absurd.

Again -- if I called customers in a particular industry "high schoolers" you'd cut me out of the pack and leave me for the voles.

One row between a couple of VPs and all of a sudden a whole medium's taste and maturity is called into question. Yikes.

[kirsten]

Hey just becuz it's like high school doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. I got a hell of a lot out of high school. I was "elections commissioner" - so I learned politics. I learned how to develop a thick skin. I learned how to convince boys to carry my books. I learned how to befriend both teachers and popular people. And I learned how to skip class and not get caught every once in a while. And I learned the importance of being kind to underdogs who have since gone on to build empires.

Blogging - like life - is like high school.

kindly,
kirsten

[Andy Havens]

Well... the content of the original comment:

...not just petty - its about top dogs and popular people...sucking up...bullies...and pedagogue teachers...who make too many rules and lists...

was entirely negative. Hence, my response to what you'd actually said.

If blogging is just like life which is just like high school... then why bother making the metaphor?

[Sofacolchon]

Think Guy is kind of full of himself and he believes his opinions matter more than they really do.

http://blogdeldescanso.blogspot.com/