Whedonesque.com was named ‘Blog of the week’ at The Times today and in the comments on the post announcing it, a number of our users ask why Whedonesque is a blog. Before I can answer, Joss Whedon himself pipes in and declares Whedonesque not a blog.

I try to explain that perhaps people’s interpretation of the world blog has changed somewhat over the last five years and that Whedonesque has all the characteristics of a weblog. Joss seems to call me pedantic, dismissing my reasoning and telling me language evolves, ergo, my blog no longer a blog. He seems to think I’m ‘nerd girl’ who needs to be taught a lesson in language.

Welcome to bizarro world.

He’d already left when I finally came up with the ‘let’s say in 10 years time, a tv series is something that has a jury and televoting, so sorry, your work is now called ‘fanfic” analogy. I am a crappy debater.

It seems most of our users have no idea the site is a weblog. I guess they’ve never gone near our About page.

I’m quite baffled.

4 comments

Caroline, you were the first person to link to my first weblog back in 1999, so I’ll always have your back. But even if I didn’t, I’d still think that you know what you’re talking about. You make great points all around.

I think maybe Joss is partially right, in that words do evolve and “blog” is being used in ways it wasn’t being used five years ago. But I wouldn’t call the word “evolving” so much as “being beaten around so much people don’t even know what it means anymore.” The linguistic examples he gave didn’t have to undergo the machinations of mass media. “Blog” seems to have a certain magic that marketers and product people latch on to and slap on their product to give it some extra oomph. There’s a radio station here in SF that has a woman reading entertainment gossip on their morning show, and they call that her “entertainment blog.” What the hell?

But then again, I’ve been around this scene almost as long as you, so I’m going to have a similar viewpoint and amount of emotional investment.

The one question I didn’t see anyone ask Joss was, “Okay, so if Whedonesque is not a blog, what is it?”
Jason (link) – 04 March 2006 – 23:13

‘I think maybe Joss is partially right, in that words do evolve and “blog” is being used in ways it wasn’t being used five years ago.’

I agree with that, but that doesn’t mean that what it meant before is no longer valid. How about this one: ‘Your child is no longer a child, but an adult. You should stop calling it your child.’ It makes no sense at all.
Caroline (link) – 04 March 2006 – 23:27

Indeed, agreed.
Jason (link) – 05 March 2006 – 03:06

This is crying out for a good pun but I can’t think of one.

When is a blog, not a blog? When it’s ajar… nope… rubbish.

Anyway, there are two thoughts on this – 1. aside from the award do you care whether it’s seen as a blog, or not? 2. As Jason asks “If it’s not a blog, what is it?! A content-rich, frequently updated website?

Spade and all that.
Gordon (link) – 06 March 2006 – 18:34

Ooooh, scary…

My uncle R. passed away on Saturday.
I hope he found peace.

I wrote ‘cousin’ when I first published this post, but I guess it’s ‘uncle’. He was my grandfather’s sister’s son. I always thought of him as a cousin because he was only 10 years older than I am.

I only ever saw R. a couple of times growing up — some kind of family fued, I think — but he was there at a decisive point in my life when I was 12 years old. That’s a story for another day to tell.

R. got in touch with me through e-mail not long after I moved to Amsterdam. I don’t know if he found me or I found him. He needed some web advice, which I gave him.

In return I got stories about my family. My mother, my grandparents. And a lot of that bragging and boasting my family’s so good at. It’s as annoying as it is, well, ‘familiar’.

I did a bit of work for him online but at some point the project faltered and the contact stopped. I never bothered to ask what went wrong and I never got in touch again, because… well, because I never think about such things. It’s not exactly laziness — it’s something else.

The last time I saw him was in May 2000:

“Today around half past 3 my uncles R. and C. came and rescued me from behind the computer. It’s 26 to 27 degrees, so they were very welcome. Work can wait. So we had a few drinks at a café on Oosterpark and then drove down to IJmuiden harbour to have dinner at ‘Henk Schoorl’, fish exporters and restaurant owners… had sushi, oysters, sea wolf and a nice bottle of Sancerre. That’s what family’s for.”

Tomorrow we’ll bury him. That too, is what family is for.