Legal Commentary

A Relatively Innocent Activity

Father Richard John Neuhaus begins "The Public Square" section of this month's print issue of First Things with some reflections on the limitations of the Internet and, more specifically, blogs.

The beginnings of this reflection appeared on the FIRST THINGS website. Permit me a word on that. A recent survey of our readers indicates that relatively few also check the website on a regular basis. I cannot say that I?m surprised. We?re probably still in the opening chapter of what the digital revolution will produce in the next decade or so, but it already seems evident that, as a general rule, the Internet appeals to a different kind of reader. On the basis of what numerous subscribers to the magazine have told me, I envision reads receiving the new issue, sitting back in their favorite easy chair, adjusting the light, and spending several hours devouring that month?s offerings. We know that our subscribers are voracious readers of books and serious magazines.

It has to be very different with people who spend their time trolling the blogosphere. I usually check out a few sites each day, trying to keep it to no more than half an hour, although there are items of interest that sometimes take longer. (Time is saved by cutting back on attention to our parish newspaper.) One gets the impression that those who spend many hours on the Internet are different. They want to know the latest thing, who is saying what about what and whom. I don?t say this censoriously. Avoid the flood of pornography and YouTube narcissism and surfing the Web can be a relatively innocent activity. But it does seem there are so much better things to do with one?s time, as, for instance, in reading good books and serious magazines.

I've been a reader of First Things for several years, and I've also read one of Father Neuhaus's books Catholic Matters, which I found both insightful and entertaining. From my reading of some liberal Catholic blogs, he appears to be dismissed in certain Catholic quarters as a "reactionary." I think that sentiment is also held about Pope Benedict XVI and his immediate predecessor. Therefore, he's my kind of conservative Catholic intellectual, and I tend to take his musings seriously.

A year or so ago, I don't think that I would have agreed with his contention that those who "troll the blogosphere" are a "different kind of reader" than the average subscriber to the print edition of First Things. Generalizations about people are always tricky. I read First Things cover-to-cover, yet also have its web site in my Google reader, so I read every new post to its blog. I read books voraciously, but I also spend time reading blogs and, obviously, I also write posts to this blog and another blog. I don't believe that I "want to know the latest thing, who is saying what about what and whom." However, I think that my experiences with my professional blog, and with the business aspects of blogging generally, which I've come to understand over the past year, have made me more sympathetic to Father Neuhaus' sense of skepticism about the blogosphere (at least, I sense that he's implying that he's skeptical about the attention span and intellectual depth of the average person who spends hours per day on the internet, notwithstanding his assertion that he's not making "censorious" observations).

I haven't sorted out all of my positions on the blogosphere yet, but I'm no longer the fan of it that I was over four years ago when I first started blogging. My goal with this blog was to see if I could touch a few people who were simpatico with me, and while I seem to have succeeded (the operative words being "a few"), I'm not sure the effort is worth the result. Increasingly, I'm questioning my priorities and wondering how much of my time should be devoted to blogging or even reading other blogs. My professional blog generates much more traffic than this one, and it also generates sufficient ad revenue to more than sustain it (and this blog). Nevertheless, while it has afforded me an eye-opening exploration of how bloggers make money, the feedback that I've received, as well as my own investigations into other blogs that address related topics, have hammered home to me how much cluelessness, unjustified self-importance, venality and outright crookedness, and "white noise" exists in cyberspace. It's great to reach out and touch someone, but the downside is that people with incompatible "agendas" can reach out and touch you, too. I've met some good people blogging, but I've encountered many people who are slime balls (made in the image of God, of course, though well disguised).

As I said, this uneasiness is either caused by or part of a process I'm going through, and I haven't reached any definite conclusions. I think that I may, in fact, post more frequently here for a short while to burn through some topics in my "stack" and see how I feel once I've devoted more time to it than I have been recently.

I know that I have a few readers left who are also bloggers. Are any of you going through this same process, or is it just me?

Full post as published by Counseling Kevin on May 23, 2008 (boomark / email).