I ask the question, for
Sterling Newberry of BOP, recently removed from the Blogroll, thinks so:
It has been a great run, and I have nothing but gratitude for the community and its support. However, the reality is that the moment of swarm collapse has happened, where the community is talking only to itself. Kos is now what DFA became in the late days of the Dean campaign - a bubble. It was waiting to be organized from the top, while it keeps itself in the dark and feeds on shit. A few people will have the ability to cut through the noise - I'n not going to be one of them.
I write this because the irony is that I had an argument with my mother the other day about this same thing that Newberry is talking about. Has DKos and its community become the very thing that we have decried the right-wing of doing? Hopelessly talking to ourselves? Sterling continues:
The left blogsphere has a big problem - it is getting dummer. Alito was definitely the point of conversion - nothing but all screaming all the time. Now here is the kicker, the kossacks could have had a place at the fillibuster table - but they wouldn't take it. They had a chance for a meeting early, but they didn't take it. In short, they aren't marginalized because they are being kept out, they are marginalized because they are too busy screaming at each other to get anything done.
...This moment means that the community is about to go down hill in terms of its thinking - because as people with something to say leave, so too will others who have something to say leave.
Could this be fixed? Is it terminal? It can't be fixed, because for the people who are screaming - the swarm - nirvana has been reached. There is now a screamsphere - where on any given day, any given screaming can win the screaming contest.
I hope that Markos can at least address this, as it is his community and also because I value Sterling's contributions. One thing I have noticed, along with myself, is a growing anger and shrillness on this blog and elsewhere. The most likely reason I assume is because of what we fear is now being taken away from us, our basic fundamental rights under the Constitution and Bill of Rights for example. I have done my fair share of lashing out too, but yet I feel that my argument last night and this article from Newberry are more than a mere coincidence.
A current, classic, but not primary, description of a bubble is talking only to oneself or other like-minded folks and refusing to even hear the other side. I'm as guilty of this as anybody, and some of you may think it's not that bad. I don't know what the cause of this community really truly is: to be a cacaphony of arguing amongst ourselves, a movement to change the Democratic Party, a force of change for this nation, a freight train of campaigning for fighting Democrats, I don't know. But one thing we always chide about the other side, and especially the Bush Administration, is their inability to see beyond their own personal bubble of self-assurance and knowledge.
Has the Daily Kos Community fallen into the same trap as the Bush Adminstration?
Maybe it is time for this community to really do a great deal of soul searching and see if indeed, as Sterling suggests, we too have fallen into a bubble, a non-ending screamosphere of rants rather than a blogosphere of ideas. Maybe a renewed definition of what this community is and does needs to be addressed. I'll leave the rest of this article open for discussion.
Update [2006-2-1 16:38:58 by gfactor]: One criticism I have received is that I omitted the first part of Sterling's post. Hat tip to BarbinMD to providing it in comments for you all to read.