Blogistan

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Blogistan?

Wot’s that?

Blogistan is a magical, mythical place in the Blogosphere where everyone is allowed to say what they want, when they want, how they want, from the comfort of their personal productivity place. Since most residents of Blogistan (the Bloggerati) “work from home,” this place is, most often, their kitchen table.

But it might be the beach, or the garage, or occasionally, a dedicated office otherwise known as the “guest bedroom.”

Most bloggers in Blogistan play nice. If you help them a little, they might help you a lot.

Most bloggers in Blogistan just help people anyway, without worrying about getting helped back.

It’s a nice place to be.

But… Blogistan has its Dark Corners…

Beware the Echo Chamber!

The most dangerous place in Blogistan is the Echo Chamber.

The Echo Chamber is an insidiously subtle and devious beast, which creeps around luring unsuspecting bloggers into mindlessly parroting what somebody else wrote, without stepping back and putting a little thought into the matter. Before long, everyone is nodding away in agreement.

We all love the sound of our own words, especially when someone else is speaking them.

All bloggers are subject to the influence of the Echo Chamber.

Even you.

Even me.

The key is hearing the echoes when they come back…

Received opinion

When the Echo Chamber has done crept, it leaves a trail of received opinion in it’s wake. Like a slime trail. Bloggers get stuck in it.

You will recognize received opinion when confronted with statements of “Everybody knows that…” for some value of “that.” But this statement of “that” is rarely supported by facts. Facts being something independently verifiable, or measurable. Facts are persnickety that way.

Received opinion can be subtle, implicit. Bloggers write and act on assumptions based on received opinion without subjecting such assumptions on data collected by, say Google Analytics.

But it’s still good to have an in-depth understanding of received opinion. It’s always good to master the rules before breaking them.