Friday, December 12, 2003

The Bear Inanities

A man pretending to be a bear is outraged that certain lefty bloggers are sexually molesting Google. Or something.

Calling a certain unelectable doofus a "miserable failure" is just ruining Google for our furry friend.

"There is something fundamentally wrong about weblogs being used to such a purpose: in a medium which allows anyone to express their own ideas and logic, this isn't an argument: it's just a rude noise. Using your weblog to hack Google like this is like using a master's paintbrush to scrawl obscene graphiti [sic] on the bathroom wall. Sure, you can do it, but aren't there better uses for the instrument?"
You see, Google is "mapping the territory of the internet," so if you, for example, link to a certain unelectable politician using the phrase miserable failure, you are "gaming" Google's "system" and "messing with other people's stuff."

But if Google's task is mapping the territory of the internet, then lefty bloggers are only giving Google some more territory to map. If Google is engaged in mapping or reporting or some other objective objective, then bloggers -- or anyone else who publishes anything anywhere -- aren't "messing with" or "defacing" anything. They are creating content. The fact that they are aware of (or intend) certain consequences doesn't ruin Google or interfere with its functioning.

I'm not sure that metaphor works either. If Google is the shithouse, what difference does it make what kind of brush is used to deface it? Does it hurt the brush? Is it okay to use a Made-in-Korea brush from the Home Depot to deface Google? How about a Sharpie?

The bear should have left this particular dump in the woods.

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