Posted on 08/04/2006 1:12:45 PM PDT by AmericanMade1776
The more time I spend in the blogopshere, the more it seems to me that many blogs are merely online cults.
It's an easy comparison to make. Notice, for example, that blog audiences simply do not cross over. Most people who read and contribute to Free Republic stay away from DailyKos, and vice-versa. Once in a while, some brave soul wanders over to a rival blog, as it were, and is invariably banned by the owners of that blog; more rarely, there is a full-fledged flame war in which members of rival boards virtually invade each other's territory with the goal not of exchanging viewpoints but of causing maximum damage.
Notice how this behavior is perfectly typical of what, in the real world, we call cults.
*Cult members do not leave their own cognitive and/or physical environments. Online, this means spending most, if not all, of your time in the echo chamber of blogs aligned with your point of view. This has the benefit of inoculating you from even the possibility that your position might be wrong or at least in need of more nuance.
*Cult members have no empathy for rival views or the practitioners of those views. Opponents are devils; sympathizers are angels. Orthodoxy is all-important; dissent is unthinkable.
*A cult represents organized commitment to small-picture idiocy; a gang of what Berlin called philosophical hedgehogs (those who know only one big thing about the world). Overlay this with tribal ingroup-outgroup biology and you get the inescapable conclusion that a blog, far from being a progressive community of seekers, is more often a kind of prehistoric hunting expedition determined to go after big game.
(Excerpt) Read more at line56.com ...
An open letter to Demir Barlas:
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/04/an_open_letter.php
"If you come over here stoned and spouting Bush sucks"
... you'll get lumped with the anti-WOD anarchists and left alone... :-)
Well, Mr. Carr is wrong too. Free Republic is a conservative news discussion forum. It is more of a community than anything else. Am I exhibiting cult-like behavior when I subscribe only to conservative magazines such as Human Events or World? If one has learned through a lifetime of experience that liberalism is a mental illness, does that make them members of a cult? The cult label might fit better on the liberals. Conservatives are practical and some of them do think.
I think he got ZOTTed more than once and is still feeling the wrath of the Viking-Kittens
We all make typos. Yours was just a lot more funny!
To be called a member of a cult implies that one has been brainwashed. It's the Blogosphere, not the Democratic Party.
Don't you mean Jaynestown?
Vast Right Wing Cult????
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Just another left wing attempt to discredit the conservatives. Obviously the author has never actually been to FR or they would know about "barf alerts" and articles postes as "know thine enemy".
the author has only discredited his own blog.
If they were educated they would never have called this a blog.
but Kos actually SELLS his support via "consulting services"
If this is one, there must be a cliche in the whole concept of echo chambers.
No, but I did hear something about post #something by some guy calling himself "Buckhead".....
*Cult members have no empathy for rival views or the practitioners of those views. Opponents are devils; sympathizers are angels. Orthodoxy is all-important; dissent is unthinkable.
*A cult represents organized commitment to small-picture idiocy; a gang of what Berlin called philosophical hedgehogs (those who know only one big thing about the world). Overlay this with tribal ingroup-outgroup biology and you get the inescapable conclusion that a blog, far from being a progressive community of seekers, is more often a kind of prehistoric hunting expedition determined to go after big game.
He just described the NYT and most of the nations MSM.
bttt
Yoo hoo... this idiot apparently hasn't been on the site long enough to figure out that
A. FreeRepublic is not a blog
and
B. That what's being discussed here are, for the most part, news articles written by people and published by organizations with views that are strongly opposed to our own
and
C. No one is more isolated from criticism than the current news media cult.
Banned at "Free" Republic Justin Ptak
I posted the following perhaps intelligent, somewhat educational comment in response to a plethora of posts denouncing Chuck Hagel's stand on the Israeli-Lebanese conflict and his call for a withdrawal of US troops in Iraq within 6 months:
I then directed them to the Wikipedia page on the subject.
My posting privileges were revoked two seconds thereafter. I guess if you are going to get banned for your first post, you better make it a good one. To maintain your posting privileges it seems argumentum ad hominem, libel, and slander work best.
August 4, 2006 6:32 PM | comment | Digg | contact Justin Ptak | other posts
" I posted the following perhaps intelligent, somewhat educational comment in response to a plethora of posts denouncing Chuck Hagel's stand on the Israeli-Lebanese conflict and his call for a withdrawal of US troops in Iraq within 6 months: Hagel is a real hero. Many of you seem to be lacking an education of what conservatism really is and have no knowledge of the old right. You might do well to read a history book. Funny how Bill Buckley and George Will are closer to Hagel's point of view than your own. Read up on Albert Jay Nock, Henry Hazlitt, HL Mencken, Garet Garrett, Isabel Paterson, John T. Flynn, Rose Wilder Lane, and Frank Chodorov. I then directed them to the Wikipedia page on the subject. My posting privileges were revoked two seconds thereafter. I guess if you are going to get banned for your first post, you better make it a good one. To maintain your posting privileges it seems argumentum ad hominem, libel, and slander work best. August 4, 2006 6:32 PM | comment | Digg | contact Justin Ptak | other posts
Seems Justin Ptak is posting his complaints on a site called "Ludwig von Mises Institute " , and by the sites own admission they profess to be a BLOG, and followers of a sort of cult.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute is the research and educational center of classical liberalism, libertarian political theory, and the Austrian School of economics. Working in the intellectual tradition of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), with a vast array of publications, programs, and fellowships, the Mises Institute, with offices in Auburn, Alabama, seeks a radical shift in the intellectual climate as the foundation for a renewal of the free and prosperous Hagel is a real hero. Many of you seem to be lacking an education of what conservatism really is and have no knowledge of the old right. You might do well to read a history book. Funny how Bill Buckley and George Will are closer to Hagel's point of view than your own. Read up on Albert Jay Nock, Henry Hazlitt, HL Mencken, Garet Garrett, Isabel Paterson, John T. Flynn, Rose Wilder Lane, and Frank Chodorov.,p>
The Link to this Liberal Blog Cult The Ludwig von Mises Institute
http://www.mises.org/content/about.asp
That being said...I just want Demir to note I got out of my Echo Chamber
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