Selective Amnesia

MSM v Bloggers

Today, in what has become my habit, I stumbled upon yet another great truth.
I discovered the reason why MSM (you don’t know what MSM means? You serious? Are you sure you blog?) is unable to come to grips with the phenomenon of blogging. I realised why there’s so much ink and newsprint spent to cover the “Cindrellas of Cyberspace” and “Pimply teenaged girl ranting about her boyfriend”.

Before I tell you that, a little flashback. (Much as I hate that cinematic device, it is very apt here – visualise those spirals folks)
My office is set in a very quiet residential area. Next door to my office building is an apartment complex, inhabited by middle to upper middle (who came up with that term anyway?) families. One of those families has this 20ish girl (I know not if she was a daughter/daughter inlaw/sister/aunt/female relative) who has this little habit of dancing on the terrace in the evenings.
She not only dances, she gambols. Heartily. What’s more, she strikes poses that are best left in 80s films starring Hema Malini. Every once in a while, this pretty little woman, I was unable to discern really how pretty she was, my eyes not being powerful enough, I shall give her the benefit of doubt, twirls about on her toe, gestures happily to passing birds, and…in short acts like a complete fool.

Us sweating mental labourers in the office grab a cup of coffee, pull up chairs and watch this little show, for our work leaves us sorely in need of comic relief, and we get it in adequate measure, watching the said girl do her number.

Super: 3 hours later.
Cut to Chandrachoodan in the parking lot of his house. A group of young boys are hard at a game of Badminton. And when I mean hard, I mean hard in a way that reading through my posts are.
The poor little shuttle (I shall not call it by its other name) is flying in all directions except the intended, the kids are falling over each other and construction material to get at the disappearing shuttle, and in short playing the lousiest game of Badminton I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing.

But they are having loads of fun. And so was our dancing girl. They, the kids and the dancing girl respectively, were so caught up in their playing and dancing, that they don’t realise that it looks, at best, silly to those watching.

And that folks, is the great truth I have stumbled upon. To us bloggers, so caught up with blogging, the medium, the comments and the trackbacks and the fisking and the flame war and the instalanches, we rarely do think of how silly we might seem to people outside, looking in.

The MSM, not having much of a clue about blogging, only sees the trivial and the silly. For that is most apparent. It sees the young girl’s diary. It sees the incestuous linking of posts. And brands us that way.

And the only way to wash that insult off, is to invite the MSM into the game. How ‘bout a friendly guys?