Pseuds' corner

The last word about blogging vs old media, for the moment at least, I promise. I was looking for something Adorno said about ukeleles, for some completely different purpose, when I came upon this:

"Pseudo-activity is misguided spontaneity. Misguided, but not accidentally so; because people do have a dim suspicion of how hard it would be to throw off the yoke that weighs upon them. They prefer to be distracted by spurious and illusory activities, by institutionalized vicarious satisfactions, than to face up to the awareness of how little access they have to the possibility of change today. Pseudo-activities are fictions and parodies of the same productivity which society on the one hand incessantly calls for, but on the other holds in check and, as far as the individual is concerned, does not really desire at all."

Now old Theo was talking about DIY, of all things. But I think there's an interesting point to be made about blogging as well. Of course, plumbers and carpenters and electricians and other skilled tradesmen felt threatened by the post-war DIY boom (although they probably recouped any potential losses with the exorbitant rates they could charge for emergency repairs whenever some klutz stuck a rivet through the gas pipe). But I think the reaction of many journalists to blogging is slightly different. They may sneer at it, as a pseudo-activity, as a parody of what they are paid to do. But if they did a bit of soul-searching, and looked at the recycled press releases and witless lifestyle guff with which so many of them lag the cavities of the media (and I must clarify that I'm not casting aspersions on all hacks here), they suddenly realise that what they do is just as much a pseudo-activity as what I'm doing here. Exactly what value do the 3am Girls offer that, say, Billy doesn't?

At least when you pay someone to come round to repair the gas pipe, you get your cooker working again.