And more on why BlogHer is not passe...


It's more than speaker rosters, or conference descriptions

Every now and then something just rubs me the wrong way. Today was one of those times, and I felt I needed to continue the "Why BlogHer is Not Passe" meme.

Today it's a small, subtle thing.

An article on BusinessWeek.com with the following introductory paragraph:

"How excited is Peter Hirshberg, Technorati's executive vice-president, about his site's new toy? We're at a birthday party -- music playing, cocktails flowing, women in slinky dresses -- and he drags me over to a laptop to show off a beta version of Technorati's new searchable blog directory."

What is the message here? This product is so good that Hirshberg is willing to delay the certain orgiastic fucking ahead implied by the very presence of "women in slinky dresses"? Jeez, I hope, first of all, that Hirshberg isn't married.

All I'm asking you to do is imagine the article if Hirshberg was a woman. Seriously, imagine what the first paragraph of an article would be if Mena Trott was showing this writer the new version of Movable Type at her birthday party. Would there ever, under any circumstances, be descriptions of how she was showing him the demo despite the presence of men with (hmmm, what's the equivalent of slinky dresses? Oh. That's true. There probably isn't one! "Slinky" is a word like "perky" or "histrionic" or "sassy" reserved for describing women) rock-hard abs wandering about?

Look, dude, geek culture is so hot right now, so in...you don't have to add literary arm candy to make your point.

Am I just cranky?

Oh, don't answer that. I am, but that's not the point!

Posted: Sun - September 11, 2005 at 05:33 PM       EmailFeedback

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