No doubt, some did. But my readership stats remain largely unaffected -- in fact, I'm doing slightly better than last year.
Of course, I run a small-scale joint here -- a roadside eatery if you will. Personal service, eccentric regulars and lots of character. If you don't like the grub, the proprietor's glower tells you: "Don't bitch -- just git."
By comparison, the large lefty blog sites -- the progressive equivalent of the huge restaurant chains -- have lost a lot of customers since they switched to an all-venom menu: 40% down on Americablog, 30% down on Kos. The pro-Clinton and even-steven sites have experienced either static or modestly increased readership.
As Richard Blair puts it:
As a relatively non-aligned member of the DKos community, I no longer felt welcomed on the site. The evening of March 4th was pretty much the kicker for me. Venom was spewing, stupid declarations were being made, and it was clear that an online civil war had been joined.The numbers given here do not tell the full story. Political blogs usually see massive readership increases during election season. I suspect that Moulitsas halved his customer base when he went sailing down swiftboat canal. "Halved" may be an underestimation.
I noticed the same basic trend on a few other sites that are (or were) on my daily reading list. If comments were made that could be perceived as pro-Clinton or anti-Obama, the swarm descended. Rationality seems to have taken a back seat to ad hominem attacks - and not just at the hands of the community members - but the actual proprietors of the blogs. It’s clear that certain blogmasters have taken up sides in the candidate wars. But probably more than just taking up sides, many of these blogs have actively gone super negative, rather than simply favoring one candidate over the other.
See why the Republicans have an 11th commandment?
13 comments:
Joe, this is an interesting post to place just above the one discussing sexism vs racism. Count me as one of the defectors from both sites you mentioned.
Even before we became Party of Clinton vs Obama, the misogynistic venom on these sites was palpable. It is intolerable now.
I'm not a big Hillary supporter, however, I distrust her less than I distrust Obama, partly because of who his supporters are. How very, very short-sighted of them.
Kos turned me off awhile ago - he is more about himself than the party. The posts are consistently witless, misleading and in furtherance of an unrealistic agenda.
Daily Kos became the MSNBC of the blogosphere (at least when I last visited...I don't want to add my click to its bottom line). I had expected better--fairness and a discussion of issues. It seems that some of these sites have been hijacked by high school boys with a limited vocabulary. The Clinton followers are incredibly more impressive.
Don't watch MSNBC or visit the hate blogs.
I like Kos, Huffington Post, Firedoglake and Raw Story.
I see as much if not more venom from Joe than I do elsewhere. He insults his guests and calls them names.
And he is very dismissive of anybody who disagrees with him.
I treat as I am treated, Scott.
Anyways, you haven't addressed the fact that Kos and co. have alienated quite a few people -- not just from Obama, not just from the party, but from politics. THAT'S what the dip in his stats really signifies.
Even if I never existed, the fact remains: You don't run a smear campaign in a primary, for reasons which should now be obvious.
What are you running Joe?
Just some barely-formed thoughts and a totally unchecked vague hypothesis...
I wonder if a place like, say, facebook could be used to run an op against, say, DKos.
I wonder if comments or groups at facebook/myspace are searchable -- aside from "site administrators," who, I'm sure have a hell of a database which could be used for social engineering, possibly even beyond the boundary of the site itself.
Another thing, if I wanted to find out if there was a "Destroy DailyKos" group, how would I go about checking -- would I have to register and play spy games, or is there a search function somewhere?
I mean if companies and politicians pay good money for marketing data or services because it's been shown to be effective, couldn't the same database(s) be used effectively for other social engineering projects of various kinds? Couldn't the same marketing principles be used?
Just a jumble of questions, based on having read LaRouche Youth Movement's "Is the Devil in Your Laptop?" and spicing it with my overactive imagination and before morning coffee "thinking."
Gary McGowan
For one scenario,
"You don't run a smear campaign in a primary, for reasons which should now be obvious."
Could one set up a group of enthusiasts out of the five million or so subscribers to those sites who would be virtually "on-call" probably 24/7 to jump to almost any site and interject comments--which could be further refined/engineered to direct the trajectory of online events toward some nefarious end? To which a poll-watching candidate's crew--especially infiltrated with anyone not really trying to help that particular candidate--would react in an unwise manner?
Gary McGowan
Is there ways to know if Obama is paying these blogs like Kos, Americablog ? It seems all have taken to attack Hillary after IA. Kos took money from Dean w/o telling his readers. Other bloggers also took money from Dean if I recall correctly.
I suspect the pro-obama blogs are being paid by Obama.
I see no reason to suspect a pay-off. Even if money did exchange hands, Kos has surely lost more money due to the readership drop-off.
No, this results from 25 years of Republican smear politics. GOP success taught us all to do as they do.
I think that attributing campaign tactics to "Republicans" or "Democrats" or a specific candidate may be overlooking a very important factor: the agencies they hire and whats up with those agencies.
Here's a two-day old briefing on the topic.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5x6epe
Gary McGowan
I still find it, dare I post it, hillarious that people accuse you of being paid by the Clinton campaign. One of the things Obama supporters are criticizing her for right now is allegedly not being able to pay off debts to various folks who've hosted her or President Clinton at their venues.
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