Slashdot Mirror
Are Blogging and Unemployment Related?
Roland Piquepaille writes "The Washington Post is really nice with bloggers. Yesterday, it carried an article named "Free Speech -- Virtually," or "Legal Constraints on Web Journals Surprise Many 'Bloggers'". Today, Cynthia L. Webb focuses on an hypothesis from Chris Gulker, which he exposed in a column published by The Independent, "The View from Silicon Valley: Bloggers come in from the cold." As said Chris Gulker, "Many of us are Webloggers 'bloggers' for short. It would be interesting to see if there's a correlation between the meteoric rise of blogging, the practice of keeping a frequently-updated online journal, and the rise of unemployment in Silicon Valley and other tech corridors. Check this column for a summary or the original article for more details."
It'd also be interesting to see if there's a correlation between having a SHITTY ECONOMY and the rise of unemployment in fields who have MORE WORKERS THAN THERE IS DEMAND. But surely that's not possible. Blogging must be the cause.
"Blogging", besides being an extremely annoying term has way too much attention paid to it nowadays. It's just not that interesting a phenomenon.
... the rise of blogging is much more tied to the introduction of tools such as Blogger and Movable Type that make the process completely painless and coding-free. Almost none of the major bloggers are unemployed tech-types. I have no doubt that some bloggers are, but none of the bloggers who get the most traffic and other attention are.
...
Off the top of my head, the bloggers I can think of are (and you can probably figure out who some of them are): law professor, free-lance journalist (lots of these for obvious reasons), retired software engineer, university professor, graduate student, medical resident, military technician, political cartoonist
Bloggers come from all walks of life; some have certainly come from the tech field, but the explosion of blogging has come from people who are talented writers and have something interesting to say, but who haven't been part of the mainstream media.
Just because there's correlation doesn't mean its cause and effect. In recent years the number of teenage smokers has dropped, and cpu processor speeds continues to increase, the two must be related...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
How much of the population with weblogs/web journals do they really think comes from Silicon Valley?
/am/ a freshman at a public university, and so my 3.936 GPA is of more importance than employment.
I'm in Ohio. I have a web journal. (No, you may not have the address.) I am not employed; I
None of which has anything to do with why I journal. I write there to avoid ranting to my friends, to talk about local news and personal happenings and all that junk. A few people I know read it periodically. I mostly just use it to vent.
I do not live or work in Silicon Valley. I never have. I hope to god I never will. (I'm *not* a coder or sysem administrator or any of that. Not by any stretch of the imagination.) I'm not alone in this. The first people I knew with LiveJournals were high-school aged girls. (Actually, most of them started out at Diaryland. LJ is marginally better.)
Among 'serious' bloggers, the ones I read are the ones who comment on politics and current events. Most of them, I suspect, are also not former tech-field workers.
So unless we're correlating these things like the correlation between sunspot activity and skirt length--thank you, Mr. Heinlein--I don't see how they're getting this information. There's certainly no *causation* involved, that I can see.
>One woman, a Web designer who asked that her name not be used, said she lost her job because of what she wrote on her Web log.
Emphasis on what she wrote, not Web log.
The Web is one way to publish information, be it through a homepage, an article, a comment in a discussion, or a blog. Books are another, flyers are another etc. If this woman displayed sensitive information (thereby breaching a contract), she has to pay the price regardless of whether it was in a blog or anything else.
There is nothing special or untouchable about a blog, and there is no reason to write an article explaining that although some people think that their blogs are anonymous, they can be tracked down. This is the same with a dozen other mediums.
Despite the unwarranted focus on web logs, this article does deal with some issues of freedom of speech, perhaps that's what this /. discussion should mostly be about.
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I can just feel the -1's already...
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
A possible result of unemployment is having time on your hands to record your thoughts...
I guess there is a correlation, because to run a blog successfully, you have to have something to whine about. Most of the people reading your blog are also whiners who run their own blog, and they'll pick up on your whining and link to it. Blogs are just big P2P networks for whiners.
Seriously, most blogs are just a place to vent in public, and being unemployed is something to complain about.
I wish these bloggers would focus their energies on something more productive tho.
This doesn't surprise me one bit....
What's the best way to discredit somebody? With slander/libel/rumors.
While it's true that there are a lot of bloggers out of work, there isn't really a lot of alternatives for us pasty ass geeks that just wanna make boxes do neat things.
A buddy of mine just got an 18k enlistment bonus, he's 35, tow truck driver. He's gonna drive gasonline tankers for the army. He had a skill they wanted. Nevermind the fact that he's 6'2" 260lbs.
I went down to the recruitment office and told the recruiting officer "Hey I got 7 years experience as a sysadmin, I can build networks, I can set up servers, i'm really good at fixing things! I'm only 29 to boot!"
He just sort of looked at me like I was in the wrong place. After finding out the army could only use me as either cannon fodder, latrine digger, or a cook, without a bonus, I figured I didn't really have a future there.
Going on to John Ashcrofts Homeland Security Guard courses, I just looked at those people in their silly "I wanna be a cop" costumes and snickered.
Sorry washington post, but it seems all the USA wants right now is cops, security officers and army personal. You say that bloggers are jobless, well fuck, what other options are we cut out for then???
Most of the people I know in my field are not bullies, and do not enjoy placing control on other people. We're just not cut out for that kind of work mentally or physically, and WP want's to talk trash about us?
Whats next? Are you going to say those people in the special olympics are slow?
Heh.
The white house is filled with the idiot son of an idiot. Why do I have this mental picture of GWB looking for the "any key"
... I started blogging when I was employed, but had nothing to do at work 9/10 of the time. My boss basically told me to play, and when they needed me, they'd give me something to do. Since I could SSH to my webhost, I blogged. I was the closest you could get to unemployed while still receiving a full payroll check.
When I became unemployed (not ever getting stuff to QA because Sales won't let Engineering finish anything tends to do this), I blogged even more. When I became employed again, I still blogged (and do to this day), but I didn't blog as much as I used to, since I 1) don't have time, 2) don't have as much wandering in my mind because I'm focused, and 3) don't have as much anger to rant off in a blog. Thus, I don't blog as much as I used to.
I still do occasionally, though, and it is a good way to collect one's thoughts, and straighten one's self out a bit if one is a bit confused.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
The article displays one of the primary attributes of blogging that I dislike, the fact that its strongly a mutual admiration society. The description of the bloggers meeting in meatspace clearly displays this, they are sitting around brimming with self importance. Quote Gulker "Instead of barricades and demonstrations, we have Weblogs and P2P ... we're the same people who did the actual work that resulted in the greatest legal creation of wealth in history. And we have our eye on next year...
/., k5, metafilter are not up to the task.
If blogging is to live up to the hype its being built up to be it will need to get over itself and create institutions for critical peer review. Its pretty clear that the current ones like
It'd also be interesting to see if there's a correlation between having a SHITTY ECONOMY and the rise of unemployment in fields who have MORE WORKERS THAN THERE IS DEMAND. But surely that's not possible. Blogging must be the cause. Read: Correlation Not: Causal relationship Correlations are useful outside of determining whether or not one trend directly results in another because it is an underlying cause. An example: there is a strong correlation between shoe size and height, so shoe size might be a decent predictor of height. It doesn't mean that because someone has big feet, they're also tall. They have big feet and are tall because of their genes, environment, childhood diet, lack of osteoperosis, whatever. In the world of economics, correlations are used as what are called "leading" and "lagging" indicators. Leading indicators are especially useful because, whether or not there's a causal relationship or not, you can often use them to predict what might happen with the economy next. There are some questions which really don't deserve any attention, though. I really don't see much, if any, scientific value in this. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go drop a blog in the toilet.
the web looked much more interessting and much less boring 2 to 5 years ago
Do you really remember the web 5 years ago?
Let me refresh your memory:
"This site designed for Netscape" links
Animated mailto link gifs of a letter going into an envelope
"Under Construction"
"Do you like my new high contrast background image??? It is the same color as my text!!"
"Here is the current weather"
Javascript popup: What is your name? Hi $name!
Frames.... need I say more?
Here are all the meaningless awards this site has gotten. (Slashdot is still guilty of this one!)
500K index.html with anchors instead of using multiple pages
More animated gifs than characters of text
No google
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The list goes on... my point is, the web is better today than it has ever been in history. There is more information than ever, the pages are designed much more cleanly and usably, etc.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I used to write in mine a lot. And I was unemployed. And then back in June I started working for SBC, and now I write in it once every couple weeks, if that. So in my case, there's a direct relation.
BytesTemplar.com
Keep in mind this was written by someone with 1207 *non-anonymous* comments on Slashdot. . .
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Some random possibilities:
1. Blog excessively at work, get fired.
2. Work is slow, blog in spare time, both excuse for layoff.
3. Offensive or anti-employer blog, excuse for firing.
4. Already unemployed, bored, bogged down, blog.
5. Blog, post email address, receive spam, become unproductive from said spam, get fired.
6. Good technology worker, keeps up to date with slashdot blogs, has karma envy, must blog or feel inadequate, affects his performance at work, gets fired.
7. Blogging coder uses his own product, gets hooked, no time to create or deliver future merchandise, loses job
8. Bloggers criticize entrenched powers, who give them a bad name through big media, leading to negative view of bloggers, leading to layoffs for blogging.
9. The typical 50% random correlation between completely unrelated concepts such as unemployment and blogging, which many interpret falsely as a trend.
10. The above is a typical blog rant. BLOGGING GUARANTEES UNEMPLOYMENT! Anyone want to hire me? Prove me wrong, please.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A number of people who weblog are introverts in person, and that's the real issue. In a lot of work environments, getting ahead (or keeping your job) actually has a lot to do with how well you socialize with others at work, and not just how well you do the stated tasks of the job.
Seriously. It's not something to complain about, it's the unwritten rule: you have to play well with others. Most people, if they have to choose between promoting (or keeping) one of two equally qualified people, will keep the person they feel most comfortable and at ease with.
This is also true when people are asked to recommend others. You don't think about the guy in the cubicle next to you who only talks to you when he wants to show off something he downloaded or wrote, you think about the girl across from you who always asks how you're doing, shows you the new piercing she just got, and hopefully invites you to her next party. Sure, he may actually be a better coder or better at fixing customer issues, but that girl's pretty friendly...
There are books on "Networking Essentials." But the ones in the career section of the bookstore are as useful as the ones in the computer section, know what I mean?
Get off my launchpad!
Obviously Andrew Sullivan is the exception, no the rule. But how likely is it that a community of unemployed could muster $80,000 in donations during Mr. Sullivan's recent pledge week?
What about blogs run by authors of books, or people running little companies, churches, and other entities using the blog format to get their information out w/out having to <html> and FTP their brains out?
I want to see some hard numbers before I believe there is a correlation.
--- have you healed your church website?
..While reading the paper. There's nothing like blogging the first thing in the morning, reading over the Business section while you have a steaming cup of hot coffee sitting on the sink.
That said, I've noticed people who weblog usually do so in four distinct categories:
1. Manic depressives
2. The unemployed
3. Certain technical people
4. Normal people
In the case of #1, well, I hate to disappoint these people, especially since they're obviously suffering from mental disease, but.. No one gives a damn about you, your cat, or how you think the world hates you. The rest of us know the world hates us. Deal with it.
In the case of #2, many of these people simply have far too much time on their hands since they've been laid off. Some of them actually do something useful during that time - IE, forgoing whinejournal and creating their own weblogging software, thereby aiding them in retooling their skillset. Some of them tend to bitch a little too much about the economy, but hey, can you blame them?
#3 is an interesting group. These people might as well be writing changelogs as opposed to weblogs. Their ramblings are filled with tales of cool new features and damnable bugs that have taken far too long to track down. I don't know why, but I enjoy reading these sort of logs.
The big #4 - the largest source of weblogging. These tend to be people who simply don't have any interest in paying for possibly expensive or ad-ridden webhosting. They don't have the time for hacking away through the black morass of conflicting standards known as HTML. Yet, they want to keep their friends updated as to what's going on in their lives without constant e-mailing. Solution? They sign up at one of the many weblogging sites and go nuts. (These people tend not to go on an "Look at me! Hear about my cat!" kick. They write to let their friends know what's going on with them, and if someone else stumbles across it, good for them.
Now, does unemployment cause weblogging? No, it doesn't. Since the inception of HTML, people have had pointless webpages where they spew crap that no one cares about. I've had one in my day, and I suspect that many of you have, too. About the only real effect that unemployment has in this domain is that it gives more people more time to write about trivial things. These people could be out looking for jobs, playing with their Playstation 2's, fragging people in Quake, but instead, they've chosen to utter their words upon the world wide web, perhaps hoping that someone will read them and care.