How seriously can we take anonymous bloggers?
Over the weekend, while skimming the blogs, I took a visit to SiPM, the blog of the cyber virtual political party (maya) of Malaysia. I thought that their 20th Jan entry, written by mamak Mydeen was particularly good. And therein lies the problem. It was the sort of post that makes reading blogs worthwhile, because you reckon you actually learn a thing or two, and yet, I had this hang up because I have absolutely no idea who these cyber virtual people are.
I mean, see Malik Imtiaz’s entry on his blog today. He explained rather well his point of view regarding defamation suits and “the crucial role that blogging plays in socio-political Malaysia and in nation building efforts”. Take Marina Mahathir’s 19th January post, Bloggers Fight Back! and the comments therein (which included mamak Mydeen’s). Good discussions, well thought out (to the extent that off-the-cuff comments can be). The common thing about those blogs and their bloggers are that we know exactly who they are. It brings a greater level of trust and credibility … no, it doesn’t actually. Not exactly trust and credibility. I think respect is a better word because we can appreciate that they’re sticking their necks out. With that respect, we have a tendency to accord more credibility to their posts, unless it’s that crazy nutter, Amir Hafizi who can and do write some side splittingly funny posts.
So, back to SiPM. I like their entries (not that that means much) but I just bloody wish that they’re not anonymous. This is because we need to have more intelligent commentary by people that we can identify with. The whole “healthy blogosphere” bollocks would be much healthier that way. So that, within the Internet there are also checks and balances. So that, for example, when the likes of Jeff Ooi occasionally behave like a pompous, preening, self-promoting prick, there’d be others to bring him back down to earth to continue whatever good work he’d been doing. Or when the Machai flers (who seem to have anonymously given up) talk out of their bottoms more than usual, they can get the crap shoved up again.
I get the fact that SiPM can be satire, parody, ekcetera. However, satire and parody don’t necessarily have to be anonymous. Btw, I suspect that the degrees of separation between me and the SiPM lords and ladies is less than six.