blogosphere, sri lankan?

sri lankan blogosphere was in a bit of a flutter last week because of some nutter, who after distorting and embellishing few scraps of information found some relief from his own frustrations by publishing the same as rather entertaining blog posts about fair number of sri lankan bloggers, myself included. lots of people (again including myself) commentated, bloged, threatened, and speculated. this week everybody including the nutter seem to have got bored.

it may be pertinent to ask why sri lankan blogosphere got so excited about what in the end was nothing more than silly gossip about fellow bloggers. are we really so limited? maybe we had a clue in the fact that almost all the male bloggers and half the females ones resident in sri lanka were at the royal thomian few weeks back and most had posts about it, in some cases old recycled ones. how removed from sri lankan reality can the average blogger be?

a similarly narrow range is evident in those who blog about films, plays, or books. they deal almost exclusively about western films, sri lankan productions of western plays, and novels written in english by sri lankans. we had several posts about american idol and hardly any about the sri lankan version. i have yet to see a post about any sinhala teledrama. most likely nobody in blogosphere watches them, i definitely do not, but these teledramas are the most popular cultural product here.

now let us consider all those who write about current issues. take moju, an excellent blog for 'members of sri lankan civil society', but does anybody who post or comment there have any understanding about how sri lankans actually live? have they ever dealt with corruption on a day to day basis? have they ever gone canvasing from house to house on behalf of a real politician? how many of them have gone to a police station and tried to enter a complaint through the constable on duty? isn't their knowledge of sri lankan experience filtered through other sources such as newspapers and ngo reports? i don't know. i myself have no claim to be an average sri lankan in tune with ordinary people and most sri lankan politicians will laugh at me if i were to expound libertarianism to them. grassroots politicians will laugh louder no doubt. its rather ironic that i hardly ever blog about things about which i can actually claim some first hand experience such as how i make my living. then again nobody currently in blogosphere will understand if i blogged about those things.

then there are the tech bloggers. as far as i can tell most of those who blog on such subjects ranging from .net to linux are recycling material taken from other industry sites several hours or even months late. i know that some people in sri lanka are engaged in really innovative software projects but most of those who blog seem to get even their jargon confused. i am just a hobbyist and don't make a living from such work myself so i may be wrong but i doubt it.

of course most of the posts concern purely personal matters and at least in the context of an audience similarly limited in scope they seem to resonate with others when honestly expressed. which is why it is rather sad that authors lives are not broader.

another blogger wrote 'if you are a blogger, you owe absolutely no one, no one, an explanation or justification of your blog or its existence.' quite true. this post is in no way a criticism of blogs that make up the sri lankan blogesphere. they are for the most part highly original and enjoyable to read, imo. bloggers themselves (again for the most part) seem to be decent, intelligent, talented, and articulate. very fact that the nutter was accommodated in kottu shows how tolerant and gracious it is. in fact if rest of sri lanka acts and thinks like the blogosphere it may even be a much 'better' place. however it isn't and it won't be, ever.

sri lankan reality is very different. should that matter? should we even ponder that last question?

(this post was not intended to offend anyone. anyway my apologies if anyone was offended by it.)