The blogging circuit – and rape

I never fail to be surprised by two anomalies in the blogging world.

Maybe anomalies is the wrong word, contradictions may be better.

On the one hand, there is the six degrees of separation theory, ie that people can connect to each other around the world through mutual contacts. I think that’s a bit far-fetched. But the world of blogging is extremely small, despite the millions of bloggers out there.

Go to a blog you visit regularly and you will invariably find a comment by someone else whose blog you regularly visit. That’s fairly obvious, so I’m not presenting it as some stunning original scientific fact.

We all read comments on other peoples’ blogs and if they pique our interest we travel over to read the new blog. Or we look at someone’s blogroll, if they have one. I have one on roughseas. I’ve always had one ever since I started blogging (nearly six years ago) so it’s hard to get out of the habit.

Back then, it was pretty courteous and de rigeur to include a blogroll of visitors, and blogs I visited. Less people seem to do it these days. It strikes me as vaguely arrogant that people don’t have one, says me merrily while out of my five blogs only two have a blogroll. Roughseas and the dogblog. But that’s because you can all link to roughseas from any of the others 🙂

So, here we all are in this small circle of blogs, often reading comments by people we ‘know’ on similar blogs. I can only think of a few bloggers who visit mine, and vice versa, who don’t seem to be in the same network.

At university I would never sit with the same people all the time in the refectory. I enjoyed mixing with different groups of people, different individuals and not hearing all the same conversation all the time from a limited circuit.

The only time I have ever stayed within a closed group was at an Open University course where our assigned group immediately gelled and we couldn’t get enough of each other. Even the tutors were surprised and said they had never seen a group of people mix together so well and so quickly. We ate, drank, and worked together after class hours. There were no arguments. In terms of forming, norming, storming, we jumped from forming straight to performing.

Pretty rare for me, as I am not a groupie person, but even I enjoyed the team mix. The only exception to that was on the last night, when we all just drifted apart. Maybe because it was the end of the course. So when my best pals had all disappeared I did my usual trick of mixing with total strangers who kindly all bought me drinks for some bizarre reason. This was an MBA course and there was one hell of a lot of men and not many women. I went to bed at 3am and rang my partner to tell him I was totally rat-arsed. He laughed.

Back to blogging and mixing in our small circles. If we drift over to someone’s blog, based on a comment they have made, or a listing on a blogroll, how often does that actually resonate with us?

I visit some great blogs, of vastly differing styles and subjects, and that’s part of the enjoyment of blogging. But when I visit the ones on their blogroll, or their regular commenters, I’m left, well, empty. I wonder why these blogs that I like so much, that I regularly check out, visit these other blogs – and promote them because they find them so interesting – while I find them dull, boring, or just lacking. (I’m sure the same could be said for my blogroll and my blog, although clearly I don’t think that).

In truth, I haven’t found any new blogs for a while. People (interesting ones) have found me, goodness knows from where. Well, I know where Pink found me from because he said so, after I shot my mouth off elsewhere and was accused of trolling, but that’s old hat now. But maybe it is relevant, because he’s not the only one who has found me because I have disagreed with a blog post or something on the Daily Post.

I don’t do it to be controversial or to get attention. I do it because I don’t agree with what someone has written. In fact, I didn’t comment on the last appalling Daily Post selection of ‘Why we Freshly Pressed this banal drivel about an ex-husband, god, cancer, alcoholism, and three kids standing around the bedside while daddy dies.’

Sure, I then wrote a blog post about god but there are only so many times I can tell the Daily Post that the blog posts they choose to FP are crap. I’ve even been asked to email the staff to say why I think X’s post is crap. I’ve done it once, but I have better things to do than to keep mailing them saying why their choices are sheer rubbish.

And if I was ever Freshly Pressed I would probably wonder what was wrong with my blog and not use the logo anyway, because I don’t need validation from someone else.

I read and comment on good, interesting, thought-provoking, personal, well-presented blogs. That can range from a student in India to an ex-pat in whatever continent to someone who lives where I used to live.

[Polite request, I would really like those of you who write in long paragraphs to shorten them. Thank you. Short paragraphs are much easier to read.]

But that still leaves me with the fact that I am fascinated that good/great bloggers read blogs which leave me cold. I can understand that we all have different points of view. Eg, I am not going to read a blog that does nothing apart from write about how great god is, rules our lives, and women shouldn’t have abortions. Nor am I going to waste my time reading a recipe blog that keeps telling me how to cook wonderful meat dishes (I can do that anyway, I just choose not to). Someone who writes about cooking microwaved meals from the supermarket and watches soap operas and tells me what they ate for breakfast doesn’t do it either.

I’m not giving examples of good blogs I read, who read blogs I consider to be poor, because I don’t think it is helpful. For once I don’t want to piss people off. However when I read a good blog, ie well-written, maybe some decent photos – preferably taken by them and not internettedly acquired – and thoughtful, I expect to find them reading the same.

Alas, that doesn’t work out. For at least 50% of the time.

Anyway, for those of you who want to read about more serious things, how about 20 rapes in five weeks in an Indian province?

http://marculyseas.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/haryana-india-20-rapes-in-five-weeks/

Thanks to marculyseas for writing serious posts while the rest of us (ie me) contemplate our blogging navels. I like wittering on about blogging but, but, I would really appreciate people being more interested in these issues.

If you click on the link and read the post, you will see that the solution to rape is to lower the age of marriage. Of course! The best way to stop 6-year-olds being raped by men is to lower the age of marriage. Possibly to marry 6-year-old girls, and commit rape and paedophilia all within the sanctity of the law.

The best way to stop men raping women is for men to stop doing it. Or is that too difficult?

From wiki: marriagable ages in India –

21 for males and 18 for females. If any partner(s) engages in marriage at a younger age, (s)he can ask for the marriage to be declared void / annulled. A recent recommendation by the Law Commission aims to equalize the marriage age for males and females to 18, Official policy automatically declares marriages under 16 as “null and void”, while marriages at the age of 16 or 17 are “voidable”. In 2012, high court has declared that Muslim women can marry at 15. Additionally, the report declares that “In spite of these legal provisions, child marriage is still widely practiced and a marriage solemnized in contravention of these provisions is not void even under the new PCMA, 1929, the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 and also under the Muslim Law.

And why can Muslim ‘women’ marry at 15 might I ask? Oh, so men can’t rape them?

Most countries specify the age of marriage at 18, and 16 with parental consent and sometimes court permission. What on earth is with Muslim girls, GIRLS, I might add, gaining exception to the law? Because this isn’t about Muslim girls at all, it is about Muslim men. Wanting under-age sex.

Should you find this rather too difficult to absorb, you can always comment on the blogging circuit issues I wrote about. Much easier than discussing rape and the legal age of marriage, and then going off to stick our heads in the sand. Because we really can’t do anything about it anyway, can we?