Thursday 29 December 2011

Too Many (Duff) Bloggers?

(with thanks to Tandleman for the idea)

When we welcomed the explosion of beer writers brought about by Blogger, did we imagine we’d end up with so many of them? Did we imagine them all to be good? Is it as though just Blogger has caused this, or is it that ratebeer (RB) has lead to an increasing (or decreasing) number of opinions on a beer? Do some bloggers exist solely in order that their opinions reach a wider audience than the RB faithful? Are some of these opinions rather desperate in the extreme, harsh and cruel towards their subject matter simply in order to get noticed in the crowd? I talk to quite a few of them, and they all pretty much agree – it’s a desperate cycle of tasting ever more beers to keep their RB numbers ahead of the game, so much so that valid opinion is heavily discounted along the way, along with any literary quality.

Of course, the other side of the coin is that there are some beer writers out there making excellent judgement calls, writing really well and getting read widely. These bloggers have no need to write harshly about this beer or that, such is their reputation. Here we are talking about the Dredge’s & the Chunk’s of this world, but for many it is a relentless slog, attempting to string a decent sentence or two together, to get noticed amongst the throng of fellow bloggers.

Are there half arsed bloggers about? Of course there are. Why don’t they shut up? Well, does anyone listen to them anyway? Anyone?

I have a list of bloggers I avoid. It is small.

8 comments:

Gareth said...

I applaud you for having the sense to avoid them if you don't agree, it's so much more dignified than some of the abuse I read in comments or, for that matter, blog posts!

Bailey said...

What Leigh said here is relevant to this conversation -- blogs are easy to ignore if they're annoying, and Twitter feeds are easily unfollowed. The good blogs -- those with real content -- make themselves known.

(You do realise by being cryptic about your avoid list, btw, you've made everyone who blogs assume you mean them...)

Steve said...

A wise man once said opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. This does not mean we want to listen to to it.

StringersBeer said...

Well you know, you can't blame the bloggers entirely, somebody's buying and reading their stuff. Oh no, hang on.

Martyn Cornell said...

Sturgeon's law.

Saga Of Nails said...

Steve, I prefer the similar but more refined version of that quote.
'Opinions are like buttocks, Everybody has them, but not everybody chooses to air them in public.

But the internet is nothing if not democratic. Everybody has the right to a voice, public opinion will decided which voices get heard above the rest.
What does get my goat is some professional writers, deliberately misrepresenting people who have opposing views, and not allowing comments that point this out or try to correct this. A professional writer with not a scrap of integrity ? Who would ever have thought it ?

Tani said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tani said...

Its true that there are always 2 sides of coin , you will find some very good writers and some not good (am not using bad for them). As everyone has got his/her opinion towards everything.

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