The fashion world is notoriously cliquey; when you’re in it, you’re in it but if you fall from grace you can just as easily be out of it. Since the rise of the internet and blogs, however, much of the fashion industry’s allure has been eroded – that is to say, fashion has been democratised. As Susy Menkes says in the video below:
“Fashion is no longer a monologue, it’s a conversation…and that’s never going to stop.”
Fashion is not alone though; blogs of all genres have democratised the entire Net and transformed how we consume information. Now everyone can have a say and a chance to be heard and seen – whether it be in the niche of fashion or politics or music or food. (This has its problems for sure; cue media theorist Geert Lovink and his idea that bloggers are “good for nothing”…)
It also brings me to the idea of commenting on blogs and the relationship between a blog author and their readers (or in some cases lack of readers). In the niche of fashion blogging, there is a very specific target audience and range of topics covered – indeed, it’s a community of “like-minded people.” My blog seems to fall under the fashion-news type blogs and, being an avid reader of these sorts of sites as well as others in the broader fashion blog niche, I’ve been able to observe the nature of the comments.
Of course, fashion is not a matter of life or death and it is rarely the intent of fashion bloggers (or as Lovink argues bloggers in general) to foster heavy-hitting “public debate.” Most of the comments, especially amongst the community of not-so-famous bloggers tend to be solely for the purpose of networking amongst the niche and getting hits to somehow validate your own ideas.
However, on more popular fashion blogs, like Fashionista, I’ve observed an interesting pattern in the comments from readers. Firstly, there are the “resident” commenters – a.k.a those who post often and are recognised by both the blog authors and the other readers. Often these people will post witty, thought-provoking though sometimes snide 
responses on most of the posts. Then there are the sporadic commenters and the “anonymous” commenters. More interestingly though is when the author’s post something that is controversial, topical, extremely newsworthy or written in an (unintentionally) offensive way – many more readers come out of the wood-work to comment when normally they would not. This can be seen in Fashionista’s (sorry to dwell on this particular blog – but I think they have some of the best examples of this!) coverage of Mexico Fashion Week and the Terry Richardson (pictured) scandal – both attracting vocal attention from a huge amount of readers for various reasons.
So, do you moderate and delete the offensive comments and risk being accused of constricting freedom of speech or do you let them, in all their vitriolic glory, be posted?
I don’t know the answer to this question and I think that it depends very much so on the individual blog and the niche that it’s in, for example, gossip websites such as Perez Hilton seem to thrive off anonymous, snide comments and political columnists intentionally post opinion pieces inviting debate. Certainly, if I created an inflammatory post on my blog (which would be extremely unlikely given this blog’s subject matter…) I would welcome intelligent discussion and disagreement. But to get this, I would need to be established in the blogging network and have a slew of readers who could be bothered to respond. But the process of gaining such readers involves the long and arduous task of online networking in your niche. And even with established networks, your bunch of readers may or may not respond well to provocative commentary. There in lies Lovink’s “limit” and indeed a paradox of the blogosphere.
Now my blog is just a baby – it’s only about two months old – and the only people who have commented have been friends. There has been no malice and no interesting debate to speak of so I’ve had no need to moderate any comments. Though if I did receive an onslaught of personal attacks which didn’t adhere to my understanding of netiquette and ethics I would think very carefully about whether or not I would approve them.
I’m not a very active commenter by nature; I tend to trawl blogs without really participating, but having this blog has certainly made me think twice. I now pay more attention to the types of comments accompanying fashion blogs in my niche (and even the comments on sites such as YouTube) and the way they reflect the content and style of the original post.
For This Is Not Vogue we’ll see how this all unfolds when (read: if) I ever get some real comments!
This Is Not Vogue.
“Hello, Is There Anybody In There?”
Posted on May 30, 2010
0
The fashion world is notoriously cliquey; when you’re in it, you’re in it but if you fall from grace you can just as easily be out of it. Since the rise of the internet and blogs, however, much of the fashion industry’s allure has been eroded – that is to say, fashion has been democratised. As Susy Menkes says in the video below:
“Fashion is no longer a monologue, it’s a conversation…and that’s never going to stop.”
Fashion is not alone though; blogs of all genres have democratised the entire Net and transformed how we consume information. Now everyone can have a say and a chance to be heard and seen – whether it be in the niche of fashion or politics or music or food. (This has its problems for sure; cue media theorist Geert Lovink and his idea that bloggers are “good for nothing”…)
It also brings me to the idea of commenting on blogs and the relationship between a blog author and their readers (or in some cases lack of readers). In the niche of fashion blogging, there is a very specific target audience and range of topics covered – indeed, it’s a community of “like-minded people.” My blog seems to fall under the fashion-news type blogs and, being an avid reader of these sorts of sites as well as others in the broader fashion blog niche, I’ve been able to observe the nature of the comments.
Of course, fashion is not a matter of life or death and it is rarely the intent of fashion bloggers (or as Lovink argues bloggers in general) to foster heavy-hitting “public debate.” Most of the comments, especially amongst the community of not-so-famous bloggers tend to be solely for the purpose of networking amongst the niche and getting hits to somehow validate your own ideas.
However, on more popular fashion blogs, like Fashionista, I’ve observed an interesting pattern in the comments from readers. Firstly, there are the “resident” commenters – a.k.a those who post often and are recognised by both the blog authors and the other readers. Often these people will post witty, thought-provoking though sometimes snide
responses on most of the posts. Then there are the sporadic commenters and the “anonymous” commenters. More interestingly though is when the author’s post something that is controversial, topical, extremely newsworthy or written in an (unintentionally) offensive way – many more readers come out of the wood-work to comment when normally they would not. This can be seen in Fashionista’s (sorry to dwell on this particular blog – but I think they have some of the best examples of this!) coverage of Mexico Fashion Week and the Terry Richardson (pictured) scandal – both attracting vocal attention from a huge amount of readers for various reasons.
So, do you moderate and delete the offensive comments and risk being accused of constricting freedom of speech or do you let them, in all their vitriolic glory, be posted?
I don’t know the answer to this question and I think that it depends very much so on the individual blog and the niche that it’s in, for example, gossip websites such as Perez Hilton seem to thrive off anonymous, snide comments and political columnists intentionally post opinion pieces inviting debate. Certainly, if I created an inflammatory post on my blog (which would be extremely unlikely given this blog’s subject matter…) I would welcome intelligent discussion and disagreement. But to get this, I would need to be established in the blogging network and have a slew of readers who could be bothered to respond. But the process of gaining such readers involves the long and arduous task of online networking in your niche. And even with established networks, your bunch of readers may or may not respond well to provocative commentary. There in lies Lovink’s “limit” and indeed a paradox of the blogosphere.
Now my blog is just a baby – it’s only about two months old – and the only people who have commented have been friends. There has been no malice and no interesting debate to speak of so I’ve had no need to moderate any comments. Though if I did receive an onslaught of personal attacks which didn’t adhere to my understanding of netiquette and ethics I would think very carefully about whether or not I would approve them.
I’m not a very active commenter by nature; I tend to trawl blogs without really participating, but having this blog has certainly made me think twice. I now pay more attention to the types of comments accompanying fashion blogs in my niche (and even the comments on sites such as YouTube) and the way they reflect the content and style of the original post.
For This Is Not Vogue we’ll see how this all unfolds when (read: if) I ever get some real comments!
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