Blogosphere Is Fast Becoming A Cesspool

In a time when there were no blogs, people would pass the time participating in online message boards and mailing lists. But these efforts quickly deteriorated into a cesspool of flame wars and name-calling. Now we have blogs, and thanks to the comments feature that comes with most blogs, we see that cesspool of name-calling and utter nonsense come up again.

A blog should be as dignified as a column or op-ed piece written for a newspaper. Despite being personal in nature - after all, a blogger blogs to express his or her personal opinion and thoughts - the content of any blog should be based in fact, not fiction (unless you write a “blog novel”).

Take Eugene Plawiuk, for example, the “author” of Le Revue Gauche [sic] (he can’t spell in English or French, but then again, neither English nor French is his first language). He is a high-school janitor in Edmonton who uses his experience cleaning toilets for a living to fill his blog with the very stuff he pulls out of those pipes. Compared to his blog, even such rags as The National Enquirer or The Globe appear to be serious broadsheets. In fact, both of these rags contain more facts and truths than Mr. Plawiuk’s blog ever will.

Plawiuk is an extreme left-winger - and he’s entitled to his political views. However, instead of spending his time carefully developing political thought in the hope of winning over readers to his side of the political spectrum, he writes the most dreadful drivel framed by spam ads and other gory graphics on his blog - and he does so using school property, typing away merrily on school computers during working hours. One leading Canadian newspaper columnist thinks that Plawiuk is nothing but a “kook”.

Fortunately, not all blogs are like his, but the number of “shock bloggers” is growing rapidly, which is a shame, because blogging could be very useful and it could do a lot of good if used by the right people properly. For one thing, bloggers should close down the comments section of their blogs to prevent flame wars and idle chit-chat often between the blog author and one or two commenters (take the conversation to a mailing list or private e-mail, because the rest of us don’t have to see that). At least, they should set all comments to requiring approval and moderation before getting published.

In an ideal world, of course, any blog that has a 99% content of schlock would be deleted automatically within 24 hours, such as Eugene Plawiuk’s blog. One can dream, right?

If you care to waste a few minutes of your time, visit Eugene Plawiuk’s blog. But be warned: your pop-up ad killers and other safety features on your computer will go haywire.