This blogosphere can be a strange place.
If someone has an argument with someone in real life, it can lead to verbal or even physical altercations. One argues, but at some point one breaks up because the argument cannot last forever. If one is in an intimate relationship, one separates and goes their way as far as no conflict resolution is accepted. If one quarrels with strangers, there is no such relationship and one does not really care.
If there is a dispute about a business matter and one cannot avoid it, for example, the exchange of verbalities is also over at some point and one goes the legal way or leaves it. Depending on what chances one fancies.
This blogosphere, because of its otherness, is like another dimension
in which neither intimate nor business relationships take sharp and clear place, it lacks commitment in the same way it is demanding it and does not integrate itself into the personal local background life of the blogger. The absence of intimate relationships, just like the indeterminacy of the business relationship between blogger and blogger (who can also be crypto-speculators), creates a gap that does not exist outside this sphere.
When I accept or place an order, I do so either with a handshake or a contract.
If I buy something, there are general terms and conditions or a contract of sale, if I have an intimate relationship, then there are certain accepted rules between the parties involved and if they are violated, one suffers immediate personal consequences. Here it is different.
My view of things is that if I am subjected to insults, for example, I can ask myself whether they are damaging my business, if I am running one. However, if I do not run a real business (with a legal form, registration in the commercial register, general terms and conditions, running costs and income, walk-in customers and loyal customers, etc.) I can ask myself what it is that I am actually running.
I personally find this question difficult to answer and have not arrived at a firm one.
But one thing I can say is that I am not running a business with my blog, it is rather undefined, on the one hand a pastime (for the most part), on the other hand a kind of training ground in written argumentation. If I decide to take a blogging break, I don't have to find a replacement for myself, nor pay attention to running costs, nor inform anyone. There are no consequences, so apparently it's not a business. On the other hand, it's not an intimate space either, because this requires physical presence.
The most appropriate analogy for me is that of a casino.
I gamble with little or a lot of chips, I wander through the halls and see other players.
Probably the strongest selling point/marketing of this sphere is the subjunctive.
I "could make a buck" or it "could become my daily business one day", it "could fulfill my desires", etc. For few this is true, even if the advertising says otherwise. Thats the nature of advertisement.
If I made my entire living from blogging, I'd probably wish others saw it that way too. But the thing is that this sphere is a matter of definition for the individual and the other individual can be on a completely different level than myself. It can be a hobby or less than or very much more than that.
One could also look at the sphere here with an anarchist eye,
because the rules are unclear and still want to be found, it seems. In my view, what speaks against this is that anarchism exists without written rules, only with the most universal principles known by everyone (therefore do not need to be debated).
For me, anarchism is confused with "everyone can do, leave and say what they want". But where this takes place, it is not anarchism, but rather something like pressure of opinion and action-taking. Opinions create separate camps and whoever does not want to be assigned to one most likely faces disloyalty, because without belonging to a group/opinion/action one seems unavailable to the respective opposite poles.
The indifferent human (here blogger) is therefore uninteresting for opposing groups because there is no clear pro or contra interest that can be used for the groups purposes.
Depending on mood, I can observe the other players, post, interject my comments, put a dispute on hold like in a freezer and when I feel like it, I open the lid and throw myself back in. I can do it with a grudge, a laughing eye, a philosophical or psychological approach. It's my decision. The blogosphere and other media bulletin boards are chatty spheres because there is no closing time or sign on the shop indicating "closed".
When in real life I want to go back to a dispute and I find the place/person closed, there is a good chance that I might cool off and finally shrug shoulders.
To find people and places unavailable is a good thing in my eyes. It forces me without active force to go along and get along. I could look at myself and decide to just close off and let the grudges of others bounce off. If I am determined to get compensation for either an insult or loss of profit, I can expect being ridiculed in the open as far as I stick to verbal insults from my side as a reaction to verbal insults from others.
In my view, people hang around for lack of real, intimate or business relationships.
Online encounters are mistaken for friendship or enmity that has not been adequately lived out or expressed elsewhere. I think that this digital illusion of being a place of community or discord is a strong effort to compensate loneliness. It can be instructive if you want it to be, but it can also be a never-ending ordeal. The pitcher of water goes to the well until it breaks is not something that applies in the digital space.
Here, everything can be illusion and is therefore the most accurate realization one can have of another.
Indeed, it is often and fiercely voiced, but it applies to oneself as much as to the others one accuses of it.
For that very reason, I have some difficulties to take the open fights too seriously.
I actually do think that the fighters don't take the battles very seriously themselves. If they did, the effort to get along and to come to terms with each other would be clearer to see and the tone would change from aggressive and insulting to a more polite or relaxed one. When people realize that they depend on each other and alternatives are rare or difficult to reach, they tend to become reasonable at some point and make an agreement.
When it does not happen this way, my impression is that this place is just taken as a dumpster for all the shitty thoughts and miserable emotions one holds for whatever reason and it's easy to do so.
"Not expressing an opinion" would probably be an aspect to emphasise.
From my point of view, more valuable than having to have an opinion. I see the inflationary use of freedom of expression as being turned on its head and twisted into something where it seems inappropriate not to have an opinion but to remain indifferent.
Funnily enough, this seems to me to require more of a defence than the freedom to say what I want. Because I can do that here in this sphere and it is difficult to want to prevent me from doing so. Though not impossible.
Indifference, on the other hand, seems to be a bad thing? An affront? It offers little security to the other, doesn't it?
One wants to know where to place you, how to classify you. But if you don't do justice to this, instead of creating trust, it seems to have the opposite effect. Personally, I find this disconcerting, because I tend to trust people who hold back opinions, thereby offering little drama and room for attack, rather than those who take a hard line.
I may think of my thoughts as noble and reasonable.
But I could be wrong. Most likely I am neither the good person I think I am but also not the loser I also think I am. Probably I don't know myself so well as I would like to. HaHa!!
Have a friendly day.
Title: made by me.