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What's Wrong With Blogs (Free Republic mentioned)
Line 56 ^ | August 03, 2006 | Demir Barlas

Posted on 08/04/2006 1:12:45 PM PDT by AmericanMade1776

The more time I spend in the blogopshere, the more it seems to me that many blogs are merely online cults.

It's an easy comparison to make. Notice, for example, that blog audiences simply do not cross over. Most people who read and contribute to Free Republic stay away from DailyKos, and vice-versa. Once in a while, some brave soul wanders over to a rival blog, as it were, and is invariably banned by the owners of that blog; more rarely, there is a full-fledged flame war in which members of rival boards virtually invade each other's territory with the goal not of exchanging viewpoints but of causing maximum damage.

Notice how this behavior is perfectly typical of what, in the real world, we call cults.

*Cult members do not leave their own cognitive and/or physical environments. Online, this means spending most, if not all, of your time in the echo chamber of blogs aligned with your point of view. This has the benefit of inoculating you from even the possibility that your position might be wrong or at least in need of more nuance.

*Cult members have no empathy for rival views or the practitioners of those views. Opponents are devils; sympathizers are angels. Orthodoxy is all-important; dissent is unthinkable.

*A cult represents organized commitment to small-picture idiocy; a gang of what Berlin called philosophical hedgehogs (those who know only one big thing about the world). Overlay this with tribal ingroup-outgroup biology and you get the inescapable conclusion that a blog, far from being a progressive community of seekers, is more often a kind of prehistoric hunting expedition determined to go after big game.

(Excerpt) Read more at line56.com ...


TOPICS: Extended News; Free Republic; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: cults; internet; newmedia; weblogs; whatdidyouexpect
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To: AmericanMade1776

We know where the Kool aid drinkers really are.


41 posted on 08/04/2006 1:32:16 PM PDT by TASMANIANRED (The Internet is the samizdat of liberty..)
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To: AmericanMade1776

Hilarious artcile written from the leftist point of view, no doubt.


42 posted on 08/04/2006 1:32:26 PM PDT by subterfuge (Call me a Jingoist, I don't care...)
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To: AmericanMade1776

Leftists are a cult


43 posted on 08/04/2006 1:33:20 PM PDT by GeronL (http://www.mises.org/story/1975 <--no such thing as a fairtax)
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To: AmericanMade1776

There is almost as much dissent amoung FR members as there are people on FR. You don't see that on DUthey are all lock step for the most part.

Here we have the big schisms between the Creationists and the Conservative Elvolutionists. We have battles between pro immigration and anti-immigration. Libertarian, Republican, and Randians. There are no such divisions on the other side. They view politics as their religion most of us view it as our natinal duty.


44 posted on 08/04/2006 1:34:03 PM PDT by Sentis
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To: AmericanMade1776

When I think of cults, I think of the Episcopal Church.


45 posted on 08/04/2006 1:34:46 PM PDT by kaehurowing
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To: AmericanMade1776

Did he post this in a blog? It must be crap.


46 posted on 08/04/2006 1:35:22 PM PDT by siunevada (If we learn nothing from history, what's the point of having one? - Peggy Hill)
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To: AmericanMade1776


Good idea....

My comment: It would help if people who write about blogs knew what a blog is. Free Republic is a message board.


Blog is to message board as soliloquy is to town hall meeting.


47 posted on 08/04/2006 1:37:19 PM PDT by gondramB (Named must your fear be before banish it you can.)
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To: AmericanMade1776

I think if you talk with many on FR in a discussion, you get educated well thought out positions of which the poster could go and get you links to sources if need be that are actual.

I think many other places are filled with people of various opinion who are NOT able to equally express a position from a factual point or to factually source it.

I think people off of FR are mostly more emotional and tell you more their feelings rather than compile a bunch of reasoning to give you any form of thinking whatsoever.

That is how I see it.


48 posted on 08/04/2006 1:39:18 PM PDT by A CA Guy (God Bless America, God bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
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To: pabianice
Aww, come on, we'd all fall apart without JimRob!!

Ok, back to reality - I liked his line about dissent being unthinkable. Maybe he should check out the crevo threads sometime... :)

49 posted on 08/04/2006 1:39:22 PM PDT by Kaylee Frye
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To: AmericanMade1776

Geeze, (mostly) lurking at FR I get politics, news, opinion, religion, military, science, art, and humor.

This writer either doesn't know what the word cult means or hasn't spent much time here. I suspect both.


50 posted on 08/04/2006 1:39:26 PM PDT by Snake65 (Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun!)
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Line56's Core Audience (0r Demir Barlas's cult)

Line56 targets end users of e-business technology who are interested in business value first, technological details second. While we talk about technology all the time, we always relate it to our business audience of C-level executives, managers, department heads, and ordinary end users who want to know more about the ability of e-business to change their business. The depth and breadth of our coverage, which encompasses thousands of articles going back to 1999, also attracts analysts, researchers (for example, in business schools), and vendors looking for perspective on the changing e-business marketplace.
http://www.line56.com/about/


51 posted on 08/04/2006 1:41:09 PM PDT by AmericanMade1776 (D)
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To: AmericanMade1776

"I think of Jamestown cult"

The passengers of the Godspeed were no cult, lol. I think you mean Jonestown.


52 posted on 08/04/2006 1:42:36 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: Kaylee Frye
Kaylee Frye wrote: Aww, come on, we'd all fall apart without JimRob!!

Jim Rob may be our leader here, but he is not our Cult Leader...I resent Demir's remarks.

53 posted on 08/04/2006 1:43:46 PM PDT by AmericanMade1776 (D)
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To: Sentis

We have some great food fights here. Bushbots, Buchananites, Rino's, Libertarians, Pro Censorship, Anti Censorship...I am continually amazed at how Freepers disagree on so much and so vehemently.

This clown wouldn't know a cult if it bit him. And he probably writes a blog nobody reads. Just another elitist wanting us all to get along, on the lefts terms, with no dissent.


54 posted on 08/04/2006 1:44:39 PM PDT by Luke21
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To: RegulatorCountry

I did mean jonestown..I somehow got the word scrambled in my brain.. I knew it was jim jones.


55 posted on 08/04/2006 1:44:40 PM PDT by AmericanMade1776 (D)
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To: Sentis

"Libertarian, Republican, and Randians"

Libertarian and Randian are virtually indistinguishable, most of the time.


56 posted on 08/04/2006 1:45:06 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: AmericanMade1776

Went to the site.

It's a business blog.


57 posted on 08/04/2006 1:45:49 PM PDT by Mr. Brightside
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To: Mr. Brightside
Yes...and I found Demir's pic


58 posted on 08/04/2006 1:48:55 PM PDT by AmericanMade1776 (D)
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To: AmericanMade1776
*Cult members do not leave their own cognitive and/or physical environments.

What a pantload of crap.

I live in a liberal neighborhood, I worship mostly with liberals, I read and hear the liberal media every day, I read liberal op/eds in the newspapers, most of my local politicians spout liberalism, I hear the liberal talking heads on TV and some of my conservative spots like Hugh Hewitt regularly interview liberals.

Fact is, FR is a refuge from the liberalism I'm immersed in. In substance, this guy is upset the old media monopoly is broken. I imagine the reason he's really upset at DailyKos is that the moonbat liberals make his mainstream liberals look like kooks.

59 posted on 08/04/2006 1:50:01 PM PDT by colorado tanker
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To: AmericanMade1776

If it's true of blogs it's also true of Wall Street. And Madison Avenue, for that matter.
And not a few universities, too!
Echo chambers---hives---are everywhere.


60 posted on 08/04/2006 1:50:04 PM PDT by Graymatter (Don't like the PC, the lies, of the MSM? Don't watch TV.)
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