Shanghaiist: Shanghaiist Mailbag: 'I rue the day they invented blogs'

Cameron

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 19:12:24 +0800

If you dont like a blog, don't read it - simple as that, no further discussion necessary.

Stephen King

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 12:38:10 +0800

Ma, Sorry but you are wrong. Publishers alone are the sole judge of writing ability. If you are not published you are by definition without talent. Thanks to Simon for reminding us of that. Stephen

马耷

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 11:02:46 +0800

"In the old days, before the internet, if you were an inspiring writer, you sent your tome to a publisher and you learnt quick smart whether you had any talent as a writer by the time it took for the rejection letter to reach your mailbox." Reading the above paragraph, I have three questions for my iPOD (idiotic Pet Of the Day), Simon: - Do you really see no qualitative distinction between blog and paper publishing, as two separate mediums? I feel stupid just from pointing this out. - Where does this assumption come from, everything blogger is "an inspiring writer"? Speak for yourself. - Oh, the admirable judgment of editors in the good old days...... so sound and error-proof that the likes of a young Bronte or Conrad "learnt quick smart" that they had no talent, from those Titans of Genius, like Joe the Editorial Peon (a.k.a. the pallid-skinned sedentary pedophile). BTW: what's Joe's last name? Has the ungrateful public already forgot these blithe rejectors of great works we are still reading?

Michael

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:49:44 +0800

Maybe so, but there is a lot more to blogs than stories of jiaozi eating and traffic. Admittedly, there is a lot of blogs that are journals for someone trying to work out their issues and have opinion stated as fact. However, there are also a lot of blogs that are decent alternative news sources with good research and good writing. Its just a format, and as with everything else on the net, is a representation of the collective mind - with all its varying degrees of truth, insanity, news, and observation.. and as with everything else on net, there is crap and there are gems. Its up to the reader to find relevance.

Nick Withycombe

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 08:10:51 +0800

While the question remains of what Simon Testy does with his time apart from write that kind of thing, he has a small point. Not about blogs in my opinion, but possibly about writing about China. Everytime someone with zero writing ability says "the Middle Kingdom" instead of China (mostly in free magazines, this month's culprit was TV's Andrew Balleno in That's Shanghai), it grates, as it does if you type in Shanghai in Flickr and get bombarded with a million dull photographs of the Jin Mao, or of someone's wedding registration or what they had for tea. However I love blogs, the more mundane the better (in some way). I enjoy the voyeurism and banality of life. I only find blogs idiotic when the writers spend their time thinking "how can I wittily criticise anything Chinese today". Like 'you know what? Chinese people drive really badly! See how I can stretch that point out over 10 paragraphs!'.

Senatork

Fri, 31 Mar 2006 02:00:23 +0800

This Simon guy is one elitist pinhead. Sorry, Simon, if your life isn't interesting enough to blog about!