April 25th, 2007
F**k China
Seems like the F-word is more popular than China on the blogosphere. According to a Scansafe's Monthly Global Threat Report for March 2007:
"Up to 80 percent of blogs contain potentially offensive content, which can range from adult language to pornographic images, and about 6 percent of blogs host malware."
It gets worse. According to Scansafe's Dan Nadir, the appropriately named VP of Product Marketing:
There were as many blogs with the F-word as the word "China"
Oh dear. We do seem to have reached a cultural nadir here. So bloggers — those supposedly heroic citizen journalists — are more interested in insult than in discussing economic or political reforms in China. What's gone wrong here? Who the f**k is to blame for the foul language on the blogosphere?
The trouble with the F-word is in its inanity rather than vulgarity. It has become a completely meaningless word used by amateur writers and thinkers who are too lazy or ill-educated to think of a more appropriate word. The F-word is actually less than a word — its linguistic prevalence on the blogosphere represents a collective species retreat into primitive grunting. The F-word has become the collective "opinion" of today's 70 million opinionated bloggers. Thus its ubiquity.
Don't like China's growing military, economic and cultural power? Then f**k China.
Scansafe's finding should be considered while digesting Howard Jacobson's latest thoughts about the opinion of the common man:
Our mistake is to conceive the common reader, like the common man, materially instead of philosophically. There never really was such a thing. Just an illusion of an illusion. But now he's out there snarling, his teeth sharp, every bite his God-given right to an opinion. And short of turning off the power or blowing up the system, there's nothing you can do to silence him.
Jacobson is right. It's a nadir alright — the democratized illusion of an democratic illusion. We've given the common man his own digital printing press to express himself to the world. And all he can say is f**k.
Andrew Keen is author of Cult of the Amateur. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
