Piaras suggests on his blog:
It isn’t hard to think why some people hold blogs in such disdain given the fact that there’s all this chatter about the phrase ‘Web 2.0′, but in terms of some of the biggest stories which have been in the news recently such as the Afghan hunger strikers in St. Patricks Cathedral, Irish bloggers have been relatively silent.
My view on why Irish bloggers got in to this is because Tom is family. He’s part of the community. If Suzy was threatened, or Piaras, or Richard or EWI we’d do the same. Don’t mess with family. I should think that most of the Irish bloggers couldn’t give a toss about web 2.0 but they would give a toss if one of us was sued for some stupid reason. There’s a reason we get together at blog awards and other events and have a laugh and a natter. It is the same way many of us gave out shit when El Paso acted the bollox.
If we are constricted to talking about what newspapers and the radio covers then we’d be a very very boring community and dictated by business interests and the interests of demographics. The “big” stories are what “they” tell us they are. This sounds all hippie and conspiratorial about “the man” but hopefully you get me. The conference Suzy was at today got some coverage but mostly about McDowell getting harassed. It was Suzy that covered the more important aspects of the event. It was Auds that spoke up for those against gay marriage who think the protestors today were just troublemakers. If she was threatened over what she said I’d create as much as a fuss as I did over Tom’s issue.
It was the Irish Blogging Community giving out that Mystery Train was canceled and sharing memories and fondness for it. The “mainstream” told us it was ‘gone, nothing more to see here, move on please’. I’m sure it could be them that start a campaign to find it a new home.
It was Digital Rights Ireland who covered the fact that Gardai might be leaking mobile phone data of the Afghanis in the Cathedral. Where’s that in the “mainstream” media?
The blogosphere is what we want to talk about and not what is dictated by editors under influence from their owners and the bottom line. We are all our editors and we choose what we want to read and what we want to discuss. If people have disdain for bloggers because we are free then I feel sorry for them. We won’t be homogenized. Screw the disdain.
Going back to Tom, it’s not about Web 2.0, it’s about a guy we know organising a conference and some over-zealous lawyers trying to suck the fun out of it and us saying. “Oi, lawyery types Noooooo.”
