Blogging Boys

This article from Melissa Kite, via Tim complains about the behaviour of the blogging boys from the right of the British blogging world:

Every now and then it’s good to be reminded how far things haven’t come. A week ago, I dipped my toe into something called the Tory blogosphere.

The crux of Melissa’s complaint is that she was subjected to personal attacks on the Internet by a group of anonymous bullyboys.

This is a group of internet chatrooms where a certain kind of Conservative supporter, almost always male, hangs out in cyberspace under an amusing alias and holds forth on the issues of the day, unbound by libel or slander laws or indeed any of the conventions of everyday courtesy.

I suppose my initial reaction was “where have you been all this time?” I recall my first experience of this behaviour a decade or so ago on a motorcycle forum (now defunct). I was, frankly, astounded at the sheer level of rudeness and discourtesy exhibited. Anyone who dared to put forward a contrary viewpoint was immediately rounded upon by the home crowd in a manner that I have never seen in the real world. So here it is; the difference between the real and the virtual worlds. The virtual is one where not having to face each other means that saying anything goes – and frequently does. I’m mildly surprised that Melissa has only just discovered the phenomenon.

I would also add here something that has been pointed out repeatedly regarding anonymity. Bloggers are not professional journalists (on the whole). Therefore, as amateurs, we have to consider whether our online activities might have an adverse affect on our real life employment. Some employers don’t like – or don’t understand – the phenomenon and will dismiss employees who do it; despite it not necessarily having anything to do with work per se. Consequently a veneer of anonymity separates the real from the virtual. If you really, really, want to know who I am, it won’t take Hercule Poirot to find out.

Iain Dale of iaindale.blogspot.com critiqued my piece line by line. Then conservativehome.com announced that it had been “authorised” by Alan Duncan, shadow trade secretary, to publish a statement by him denouncing my predictions. Comments duly poured forth from people called TomTom and Umbrella Man attacking me professionally.

Ah, the old “fisk”. While bloggers have become used to the line by line evisceration of an argument, newspaper journalists have been largely shielded from it – the most they could usually expect is a letter to the editor that itself is likely to be edited. If an article is badly written or poorly researched, is low on fact or just plan wrong, then someone, somewhere will fisk it. This is no bad thing and as Melissa points out, blogs are “brilliant debating forums”. Unfortunately, it can sometimes represent a bar room brawl in the subsequent comments. How this is handled depends on the individual blogger. Some have a policy of not removing or editing any comments no matter how vicious they are.

In commenting on the no-holds-barred, brawling nature of the debate, Melissa refers to misogyny. She has a point here, but I’m not so sure that it is as simple as that. If you say the wrong thing (no matter how right you may be) gender is irrelevant, you will get torn to pieces by the pirana swimming round the comments section.

So I wrote a piece defending myself on The Spectator’s blogsite “Coffeehouse” in which I mentioned the words misogyny and Right-wingers in the same sentence. Uh-oh, I hear you sigh, nisht gut. Well, maybe.

Yeah, see, that’s poking the pirana in the eye. I wouldn’t stop you doing it – they probably deserved it – but just don’t be too surprised when they strip your fingers to the bone, is all I’m saying.

I would like to claim that I designed my post to wind up the boys a bit, expose the unpleasant underbelly of certain Right-wing circles.

Fair enough, but it isn’t just the right wing that behave badly. Try dropping into a left wing blog and talk about free markets, privatised railways or some other antithesis of left wing group think and see what happens. As I mentioned earlier in the post, the phenomenon has its roots in the Internet forum and they remain as vigorous in their bad behaviour as ever. Administrators and moderators do their best to keep things civil, but lurking beneath the surface is a layer of pure vitriol. Dip your toe in at your peril. Or, dip your toe in fully aware of what you are doing and stir the whole thing up, stand back and watch the frenzy that follows. Well done, you just joined the ranks of the Internet troll.

Another site popular with Tory surfers, Guido Fawkes’s Blog, Order-order.com, run by “Right-wing libertarian” Paul Staines..

Here’s a little request; please stop holding up Staines and Dale as somehow typical or representative of British bloggers. They are neither. While Ian’s is better written than Staines’ frankly puerile garbage, neither are truly representative of the range of blogs available. If you take the time to look, you will find a wealth of well written, informed and informative articles out there that are far more typical. Staines may be well known – for all the wrong reasons – but he is none of these things.

All I want to say is that a week ago I speculated about the shadow cabinet. Tory blogger-boys responded by speculating about whether they would like to sleep with me. The same people are online right now demanding that David Cameron change his policies. I now speculate that the Tory leader knows exactly what he is dealing with and will completely ignore them.

Actually, changing polices isn’t the problem with Cameron; it’s that he doesn’t appear to have any…