Fuck The Code Up The Ass With My Throbbing Blog

Okay, now I've got a few moments to respond to Billiam.  I love him.  So much that I shot him and his wife at their wedding last year.  Someday I might even give them the pictures.  Simmon is also a smart guy, but sometimes he breaks into his crack ho's stash and misses some obvious fucking points.  This...

...is one of those times.  Dumbass.

There's a reason parody sites like Online Blogintegrity exist.  It's because more often than my cats shit in the litterbox, some numbskull gets it into their head that we should convene a panel to discuss blogger ethics, invent some online meta issues that can only be overcome by pledging fidelity to Cadbury eggs and mystical principles involving transmutation, and come up with a cure for acne through judicious use of trackbacks.  And really, I mean 'invent' and 'meta'.  I suppose I could throw in a gratuitous 'totally fucking unnecessary, redundant and annoying' just to emphasize my point.

Look, civility is great and shit, and nice people are nice and assholes like me are assholes.  First off, saying things nicely doesn't make your point any more righter if, say...you're advocating genocide.  The Final Solution didn't really solve the Jewish Problem because, well, there wasn't one 'cept that invented by some whacked people.  And remember, Godwin's Law is suspended, so I can engage in such hyperbole.

Flip side is that I can say "give motherfucking peace a motherfucking chance, motherfuckers" and my point is still pretty goddamned compelling.  Could I say it without swearing?  Sure.  So?

Now I get that civility is more than knowing which fork to use and not saying 'fuck' all the time.  Stalking, threats of violence and other not-entirely-nice things are not civil, and I wouldn't do that shit.  Well, 'cept maybe for stalking Atrios, but that's only because he won't put me back on his goddamned blogroll (speaking of invented meta stupid crap).

Here's the rub: what would a "code" of "civility" do to prevent such things?  Nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  Zilch.  ничего.  Fucking squat.

But like the now-defunct Online Integritudiness Project or whatever the hell it is we parodied at OBI, these codes are really pushed for two reasons as I see it:

1. To foster the perception that blogging somehow is way different than, say...the mainstream media or the days when Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton for being pretty fucking nasty in the New York papers.
2. To provide a cudgel for people who are actually on the wrong side of history, politics, morality, reality, or whatever.

So these codes actually do a disservice to the very communities that they purport to protect.  And they're just about as effective as campaign finance pledges or chastity pledges or the Pledge of Allegiance.

You want to be civil?  Great.  Be fucking civil.  You want a civil blog?  Moderate your goddamned comments, post rules about conduct in the threads, whatever.  What the hell, give yourself a gold star while you're at it.  Congratulations, you deserve it.  Just don't tell me there's some problem with the lack of civility around these here parts and that--SWOON!--we must do something about it before people say nasty things again.

And whenever you have to remind people that such things aren't a threat to free speech, you've already lost, fuckers.  No, it ain't censorship, but the point is that the code solves no problem and then only becomes something to lord over those who don't have the Good Blogkeeping Seal of Approval, allowing people to ignore legitimate arguments because they don't conform to a particular, civil form.

We're not talking about e-commerce here where we'd like a Verified by Verisign or other such thing giving us confidence that the site won't lose our personal data and such.  We're talking about folks, uh...talking.  If you don't like the tone, switch the channel.  If you run a blog, set your rules.  Don't get smug about it, though, you assholes.

And why is this being driven by such luminaries as Tim O'Reilly?  If it were a real problem, the self-organizing blogosphere would do it from the ground up without A Great Man to show us the way to Blogtopia (y!sctp).  It's simply more of the Wise, Consulting/Pundit Class trying to assert itself because Shiva knows that the unwashed masses simply cannot conduct themselves properly.  Hell, if we let the groundlings into the rarified air of Holy Discourse and Cocktail Weenies, they might end up beating up each other with canes or something.

So I'm going to remain above the metafray by refusing to be civil.  Thus, I am superior and win the argument.

QED

ntodd