Screenwriter Paul Guyot, who recently launched his own blog, talks about the dangers of becoming, or getting too close to, the self-annointed blog royalty in the mystery community.
There are some people out there who have become such a dominant part of the blogosphere, especially within the mystery community, that they are literally defined by their blogs. Their blog presence is who they are. Without their blog they would be just another nameless, faceless part of the horde. And this kills them. Because deep down, nobody wants to be just a blogger. So, to compensate for this secret frustration, they immerse themselves in their blogs – becoming as well-known and prominent as they can be. And for the ones that attain this recognition they begin to believe they actually are special.
The mystery all those bloggers will be blogging about this week is which bloggers he’s talking about…
I’m the one. I’m really Robin Masters.
HDC
Don’t you people have books, scripts, and screen plays to write?
From Ed Gorman, who encountered some trouble trying to post his comment:
Paul made his case very well. I said much the same thing about blogs on my own blog back in April, that cliques have already formed hard and fast and that this reminds me of my days back in science fiction fandom (during my tenure Marion Zimmer Bradley and Roger Ebert were among the better known fans). There were always these small groups of brash, arrogant, exclusionary people who proclaimed anything they admired to be wonderful and everything else to be crap, and usually “juvenile” crap at that. I hope this doesn’t happen with mystery blogs. But I see it creeping in. And this is hardly just a danger to mystery blogs. Try political, film and certain science fiction blogs if you want to see real snobbery. I used to spend between 60 and 90 minutes daily on blogs of all kinds. I now spend about 20 minutes. Fandoms, and that’s what we’re talking about here no matter what the subject matter is, just aren’t all that enlightening. –Ed Gorman