As much as I enjoyed Simon's riff on the similarities between blogs and grime--and I sincerely enjoyed it, don't get me wrong--I don't think it really described the two with any specificity. The characteristics he lists (roughly, nicheness, discourse, ego, cliques, battles, sceneism, slang, locality v. globalism, amateurism) could describe almost any masculiney subculture or "scene," from horror movie fans to metalheads to punkers to comic book fans to coders to SCAers. Take away the amateurism requirement and you bring in things like historians, school boards, chuch choirs (some fucking intense battles there, man), fashion designers, medical ethics...well, you know, most human endeavors, really. I appreciate the thought, but it's a bit broad, isn't it? Of course, Simon realizes this and is clearly having a bit of fun, so I guess I'm mainly looking to point out how his definition can be usefully broadened to all sorts of other things we want to talk about.

Speaking of which, I've been meaning to comment on the Wiley review that started all of this off, so hopefully I will. But for now, I need to go cook some chicken.
posted by Mike B. at 6:53 PM 0 comments