Me, gluttony, punishment

Hmm. I have written a piece in the Observer about this business. (Can't link to my column yet, as not live.)

I have used it to illustrate a point I've been itching to make for ages: that the idea of 'online community', especially as seized upon by politicians in search of legitimacy and new audiences, is a myth. There is nothing intrinsically democratic about networks. The web is not civil society. It is something else. Not sure what.

A bit tenuous really. The peg, I mean. I think the point is interesting. Anyway, I'm gonna get murdered on CiF.

But you guys - all 8 of you - know I loves the blogging.

Show me the way to the tar and feathers.

Morituri te salutant. And other cliches.

Update: Comments on this post are now closed. If you have come here from CiF and want to get your caps lock on about nepotism or media arrogance or bad writing (or anything else for that matter) please do it elsewhere. Regular readers - usual anodyne fluffy blog service resuming shortly.

Comments

[james h]

Sort it out, Rafo.

[JonnyB]

The unspeakable in pursuit of the unreadable.

[patroclus]

Poor hapless Max has ended up being a cipher for What's Wrong With This Country.

I'm not sure I agree with your assessment that people were jealous of Max getting a column, because they thought that they themselves would make better candidates. I think they were just annoyed that the piece itself was so poor, and then the perceived nepotism - at a time when the whole country is already seething about the Conway thing - just made it worse. You don't see people complaining about the 'Experience' page in the Guardian Weekend magazine, quite the opposite, because those are 'ordinary' people's experiences told movingly and well. If Max had had the wit to do the same, he might have escaped the flak.

Anyway, it's always nice to be reminded that technology is a neutral force which just serves to reveal what people are really like - i.e. sometimes angry, sometimes inarticulate, sometimes unthinking, sometimes intelligent, sometimes funny, sometimes even right.

[Nicholas]

Rafael,
Below are three what seem to me to be fairly representative replies to your article.

"It's incredible how the Guardian continues to make things worse for itself.
Rather than commission on the basis of merit, it approaches the son of an occasional employee to provide a travel blog.
Following complaints about its content and quality, the Travel Editor then claims that its low standards are deliberate (subtly suggesting what he feels the paper's readers deserve).
When that response (unsurprisingly) fails to calm the furore, we then get the paper's chief leader writer accusing its readers of being bullies!
There is no indication of any glimmer of awareness amongst Guardian staffers as to what they've stirred up and [they]continue to make it worse.

Next...

"Still waiting to find how exactly the original article came to be commissioned. No mention of it here and Bell and Pietrasik were evasive and contradictory on the matter. Isn't The Guardian supposed to be committed to transparency in public lfe and equality of opportunity, among other things? The suspicion remains that this egregiously poor piece of writing only saw the light of day as a result of a mediaworld equivalent of the old boys network"

And...

"wow - the guardian is really circling the wagons on this one"

Don't you feel that you and other Guardian writers responding to the original blog have failed to address the accusations that there was something tawdry about the commissioning process and that there has been a subsequent failure to explain that process?

[patroclus]

Blimey, it's not going away, is it? In the meantime, I'm quite enjoying some of the mixed metaphors lurking in the comments thread. The image of a thousand pitchforks being used to nip something in the bud is particularly vivid.

[rafael]

You are absolutely right Patroclus. My jibe hinting that people were masking envy as grievance was (mostly) unfair and needlessly provocative. I apologise to the internet for that one.

Nicholas - thank you (I think) for cutting and pasting some CiF comments. Just to clarify, I write for the Observer. Same group, different newspaper. I haven't the faintest idea what goes on in the commissioning process of the Guardian travel desk. I don't even know where the Guardian travel desk is.

I didn't address certain accusations because I didn't feel they were levelled at me. They weren't mine to address. I wasn't despatched by the GMG Death Star to shoot down the X-wings of the anti-corruption blogosphere.

As I said in the piece, I was cynically using the whole episode to make a quite different point about the mistaken (but strangely widespread) belief that web-based communication has some moral value intrinsically built into it. Tools are value free. They can be used for good or bad. Like pencils.

So there you have it. My real point: the internet is a pencil. Only bigger. Plus 793 words of padding.

[patroclus]

Aw, and I apologise for being needlessly pompous. Hope the tar and feathers come off OK in the wash.

[Martin]

It's an interesting point you've tried to make about online communities, Rafael, but I think you've recognised that this issue wasn't the right way to do it.

Hopefully you've also recognised that your article (along with Caroline Davis's) has in fact poured petrol on the flames. You don't need to know who Gerald Ratner is to know that criticising your customers is not a good move.

Let me be blunt - your article was a hand grenade of misinformation and false accusation, and standing shoulder to shoulder with Andy Pietrasik's (and his highly questionable professional judgement as Travel Editor) puts your professional integrity on the line.

Rather than writing about it here, I would suggest that the proper thing to do is return to Comment Is Free and interact with the respondents to your article there. Your continued absence makes your claim not to be GMG's shill rather frail.

[rafael]

Hi Martin. 'Hand grenade of misinformation and false accusation'. 'Professional integrity on the line.' Crikey.

Look, this is my blog - and it ain't a democracy (you see what I did there?)

If you want to say mean things about me, go do it on CiF with everyone else. I'll be there as soon as I can. Promise.

[rafael]

Oops. Turns out I've forgotten my own CiF password and can't comment until I re-register. That doesn't look too good, does it?

Anyway. I apologise unreservedly to anyone who was upset by anything I said about anything.

And I think nepotism is a bad thing.

[Max Bob]

I know that the idea that the medium is the message is kind of old fashioned, but there's still something about CiF as an institution that encourages a certain style of anonymous abuse. I avoid it (usually) for that reason, but followed your link today and lost half an hour or so to (by now moderator edited) vitriol.

Still, nobody made me click the link, so I won't blame you.

[Nosemonkey]

Doesn't anyone read Private Eye any more? I was more surprised that someone from the Observer wasn't laying the boot in to their dear sister paper...

(I've only recently been catching up with this whole business, but I do love the way that the moment people start leaving comments on the internet they seem to turn into Mohamed al Fayed in their propensity to believe conspiracy theories. Everybody in Farringdon's in on it!)

[Marie Phillips]

I read your piece too and for once I didn't agree with you. If the internet is just a pencil, then it is as good or bad for democracy as anything else. By adding in the Max Gogarty hook, you seemed to be implying that the internet was bad for democracy because of the risks of mob rule, but that undermines your point that it isn't intrinsically good or bad for anything. I don't agree with that anyway, because what the internet has done for the first time is to allow people to be exhibitionist and anonymous at the same time, which does have inherent implications - which is what I thought you were saying with the Max bit - and then contradicting with another bit. To be honest, I didn't really understand the article very well and I read it about six times, so I think it was one of those occasions where the argument and the hook were not good bedmates. You know that my regard for you remains undiminished though, right?

Anyway, what I did think reading your piece was not that Maxgate shows up how Westminster doesn't understand the net, it shows up how the Guardian doesn't understand its own forum. I read Max's piece just after it went up and my first thought was 'oh no - they are going to crucify this kid'. As I'm sure anyone who has ever spent half an hour browsing comment is free would have realised. What the Guardian did was like scattering bread around a pond and then complaining because ducks came and ate it.

[100 Words]

This is ridiculous.

So Max can't write. Who cares? I think Barbara Ellen, Jasper Gerrard, Lucy Mangan, Euan Ferguson and a whole host of other 'respected' journalists are pretty darn ordinary too. But frankly, I can't work myself into a frenzy about it - despite the fact, shock horror, they've most likely all been the beneficiary of nepotism too.

If the quality of Max's prose bothers you that much, steer clear his column or stop buying the Guardian.

Alternatively, continue to spend endless hours banging on about it - even though you ain't getting them hours back, and Max is in Timbuktu