Two years ago today, sitting in my cramped, windowless office I posted my first blog – Confessions of a Former Dittohead. It has been a wild two years. You guys convinced me to write a book, and along the way I’ve made some great friends and got to visit some amazing places! I’ve kind of blogged endlessly about the book and the tour, and it’s time for me to put those stories to bed. It’s time I figured out what the Hell I’m supposed to do next. And that can only mean one thing—it’s time for a meta diary.
The Audacity of Meta
I’ve never written a Meta diary. Mostly that was because I didn’t know what Meta was until YearlyKos. I think Jeffrey Feldman explained it to me. But prior to that I literally had no idea what it was. I’d see diaries with Meta in the title, and I’d just kind of skip over them. Most folks still do, but they have the benefit of KNOWING what Meta diaries are.
Jeffrey’s explanation was simple – "Meta? It’s blogging about blogging." But I’ve kind of found the reality of Meta to be something else around here. In reality Meta is a lot more destructive. Case in point – the first two people to suggest to me that I write a book were consumed very publicly by Meta’s fires. Seriously, it hurts me that they are gone. The problem seems to be that Meta really isn’t about blogging, it’s about "Me," the diarist.
We all get flattered when one of our diaries makes the recommended list, or even if we just get more comments than usual on one that doesn’t. It’s nice to know that people think you’ve made a good point, or under certain circumstances to know when someone thinks you’re dead wrong and you hash it out in the comments. It’s gratifying to be listened to, understood, or otherwise acknowledged. But at some point a lot of folks make the leap from "I’ve got interesting things to say" to just "I’m interesting." And that’s where the deadly Meta is born.
I was going to write my first Meta diary about 8 months ago, and it was going to be about how I don’t like the Huffington Post’s blog engine (which, to me, sounded like 'blogging about blogging'). The comments take forever to show up, making it less a place for enlightened discussion and more a place for bathroom wall graffiti-style analysis. "You suck!" "No, you suck!" Lather, rinse, repeat.
But then it occurred to me that every radio or TV show I went on during the book tour mentioned that I was a Huffington Post blogger first and foremost. And I kind of resented that! I started here! From nothing! And then it occurred to me that Arianna was kind of a bitch to me at YearlyKos. Who does she think she is? Doesn’t she know who I am!?!?
...and then I pretty much deleted the diary. What was supposed to be a diary about my blog engine preference quickly turned into a blog on how big my head had gotten. We got where we are because of the strength of our numbers, and a lot of ‘Meta’ diaries seem to have as their focus why the diarist is different from "you people."
When asked the question "Who is the liberal Rush Limbaugh" my answer has always been "we don’t need one." Rush is a fog machine of fear and ignorance, meant to obscure the truth. That's not something we need to duplicate. Rush bludgeons his audience into submission – "believe as I do or the terrorists win!" We’re not driven to action by ‘top-down’ authoritarian policy drumheads. We Democrats just need a place to do a little soul searching, and that’s what Daily Kos is (and, incidentally, it’s what makes Daily Kos great). But Meta...that’s the liberal Rush Limbaugh.
Okay, there you go. My one and only Meta diary. I’m glad to have gotten this out of the way. I hope I don’t have to follow this up with another diary entitled "F**K YOU, I’M NOT A TROLL!!! YOU’RE A TROLL!!!!!" But if this is goodbye, at least it’s on my 2nd anniversary as a Kossak. I like the symmetry!