Dynamic Subspace

Okay, I couldn’t resist adding my two cents to the Boing Boing – Violet Blue shindig, so I posted a comment.  I think I’m #730.  I’ve pasted my comment here for your reading edification, or you can click here to read it along with the many hundreds of other comments.

I’m amazed at how this one post and what preceded it has generated such vicious and impassioned discussion (or arguing past one another, depending on one’s perspective).  As the smoke begins to clear this evening, it seems like there was a shattering of some kind of BoingBoing ideology for some folks.  That ideology is somewhat amorphous and slippery, but the gist is that there existed an unacknowledged contract of archival integrity between BoingBoing and its readers.  For those readers most hurt by the removal of posts related to Violet Blue, as well as the handling of that removal, their BoingBoing ideology of open source transparency, which was never officially acknowledged–yes, I think official is the right word when you’re talking about online businesses, even of Directories of Wonderful Things, was broken by the revelation that BoingBoing isn’t necessarily a blog of, for, and by the people (read:  netizens with an emotional stake in the blog that embodies their ideology).  BoingBoing is part of a business model that encompasses an editorial board embodied in Mark, Jeni, Cory, David, John, and Joel.  That board makes decisions about the way BoingBoing is run, and there’s no reason personal views, feelings, and emotions can’t figure into their decisions (if they did at all in what’s become a fiasco in as far as it’s exploded into one in the comments and within the blogosphere–perhaps the explosion is contained).  Anyways, it’s time for BoingBoing readers to reflect on any kind of ideological investment that they have in this site or others.  This is not to say that BoingBoing doesn’t reflect or represent a certain “good” or “bad” ideology, but we all should, as reflective and critical thinkers, examine our investment in the work of others ad infinitum or we run the risk of complacency and childlike horror when reality doesn’t measure up to our expectations.

-Dynamicsubspace