Slate: No Carping. We're Bloggers!
Allison is a peculiarly unappealing complainant, having attempted to build a career out of exposing her private life in public on the web. Now people shouldn’t be able to criticize her with the same vigor with which she promotes herself? … P.S.: Here’s a google cache for one of the sites tumblr deleted, Reblogging Julia. Seems pretty tame—at least by Atlantic standards! … P.P.S.: Doesn’t Allison understand that the only thing worse than having five sites devoted to trashing you is having four sites devoted to trashing you? [I think she does!-ed You’re not suggesting she’ll be happy to see this item too? This item is vicious! She’ll never recover from this item!]
I love that Mickey is down with the Tumblrs. But he nails it here: “Now people shouldn’t be able to criticize her with the same vigor with which she promotes herself?” Look, it sucks to be criticized and it sucks to be disliked. But an open forum for the free and robust exchange of ideas can’t exist without debate, and if you put yourself out there…well then. I absolutely agree that racist, sexist, homophobic, ad hominem and/or libelous material has no place on Tumblr or anywhere, really. But saying you don’t like TMI Weekly doesn’t qualify. And yes, I know that the blogs attacking Jules et al were quite a bit harsher than that. But - Mickey has a point. There IS a correlation between how much you put out there and how much you get back.
This isn’t about whether I like Julia or her rebloggers, it’s about fundamental freedom of expression. I still return to AntiKris for her succinct encapsulation of Voltaire’s Rule.
This, by the way, is one of the best reasons I can think of to pay for your social media.
