Anger, Anonymity, and Anomie
The blogs LANL: The ... Story have run for years.
This morning I wondered what their effect on the community has been.
Except for being a good news clipping service and a place for people to be anonymously angry, they do not seem to have accomplished anything.
This lack of effect was surprisingly to me and probably telling.
For instance, there has been no effective campaign in the real world to slow down the decline of the Lab. There has been no outrage in the real world. The anonymous commenters do not, apparently, even know each other or whether other commenters work at the Lab, work at a competing lab or are still in middle school.
This lack of effect got me thinking about kids who are good at video games but who, in real life, do not interact with anyone else and who do not effect change because they will not interact with others in the real world and will not form effective organizations.
Do the above comments make sense to anyone else?
posted by Eric at
9:53 AM
1 Comments:
Eric -
"do these comments make any sense to anybody?" is a bit of a non-sequitor.
Even me, they make some sense to...
But that is not to say that I agree with you across the board.
As it happens, I know *all* of the bloggers and several of the anonymous commentors.
Most of the bloggers (now) know all of eachother and some of the named and anonymous commentors.
Yes, lots of folks need and use a place to register their frustrations. Yet others seem to enjoy baiting and attacking them and yet others generally enjoy baiting and hecking LANL and Los Alamos in general.
Does that mean it hasn't been useful and important? I don't think so.
Have you provided a useful service? If we believe your numbers you have been helpful to 150 people give or take (are you claiming to have helped everyone who has talked to you, or are those your true success stories?). Has your "clipping service" been of much aid? I don't find it of much use... but maybe there are those who do. Certainly what you are doing "in principle" is a good thing... don't let dead silence or (my?) heckling stop you... if you are doing the right thing it will work out...
If LANL-....-Story blogs are biased toward articles of Sturm and Drang, yours would be biased toward PollyAnna. Added together, they are more valuable than the sum of their parts methinks.
- Darko
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