you're damned fucking right

[rone]

"Blog" and "moblog" are not transparent words. "Televisor" was not as good a term as "television" or "television set", and so it went away. I expect the same to happen to "moblog", if not "blog", in ten years. Because they're geek words. They're codemonkey words. (I can hear Cory Doctorow yelling, "l337, damnit!") They are crap, artificial, ugly kludges of words.

        - Warren Ellis

Comments

[zadcat.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what a transparent word is. Fact is, "blog" has evolved because it describes a discrete phenomenon that needs a name. As for ugly words, it's probably fortunate that we have a rough and ready word like "blog" and not, you know, "web journalette" or something like that. After all, who says "television set"? The thing is a TV. The thing is a blog.

"crap, artificial, ugly kludges of words"

[(Anonymous)]

Not sure why Ellis finds "blog" unacceptable but uses "kludge" as if it's not also a codemonkey word. Unless he's being ironic and my ironimeter is less sensitive than usual this morning.

-Michele G.

[lots42.livejournal.com]

Where did Ellis say this? Is there a page out there of Ellis' rants that -wasn't- HTML coded by a bunch of horribly angry five year olds on illegal prescription drugs?

[wordweaverlynn.livejournal.com]

"Blog" is an ugly word, no question. I do think it serves a purpose, however.

What's a "moblog"? Is ti short for homoblog? Or mob-blog? Or something else entirely?

[wisn.livejournal.com]

"Blog" has the right specificity, even if the term postdates what it names by a good five years (there were blogs long before there was 'blog' - for pete's sake, YAHOO was a blog, per one axis of the genre, and there've been others dating back to the nascent days of the web - once folks put content up that wasn't research-related, they were inevitably updates of links to likeminded material). On the other hand, it lacks the euphony that a lived-in word needs. "Moblog" and other iterations ('mobile blog' - eg, writing on the road, in cafes and camped in front of apartment buildings with open wireless stations) are, on the other hand, overspecific since they neither refine per technical or taxonomic needs nor identify a specific genus that merits its uniqueness. It's shades of "B2B", "B2C", and all other sorts of terminology that the non-technical overlayed with supposed technical meaning for no good reason than the desire to contrive a genre and make money or fame thereby.

Or, in other words, since this form is exclusive to the web and unique because of it, why is a single term for it suddenly popular some ten years later? The hypemongers have something to rally around, that's why.

Since I'm old and crusty I consider 'blog' to be a weak alternative to 'web journal', 'journal', or what it portmanteaus: 'web log'. On the other hand, my other blog is called 'blog', because that seems to be what the kids are calling it these days. Deriding the form because of the word is wrong, and I have no intention of doing so, particularly since I've kept blogs in one form or another since 1994. And the inevitable backlash is whipping up just as quickly as the overlaying of ridiculous submedia (mobile blogging, photo blogging, audio blogging).