I'm not a big fan of the change-over to having a recommended diaries section at the top of the page....
the timing of it, what the results have been, or what it seems to have meant...
and while I am perfectly content to accept it as a done deal. Maybe I can voice something that some other folks are feeling / thinking....
I'm gonna be frank so that I am completely clear: I come to dKos for its elixir of community, the latest news, brash opinion and funny-as-hell humor. Let's call that Sugar Smacks. I don't come to dKos to read thirty five pedantic, well meaning, informative essays aspiring to be
recommended. Let's call that Oatmeal.
I want my Sugar Smacks.
I want to click on this blog....and see, RIGHT AWAY, what my people (Kossacks) think about the latest news...however unformed or ill-considered or triple-posted their views...in fact, if it's news...I want to learn about it here first. (and for the last year I have.) I want immediacy, opinion...and, yes, all the fruity and nutty goodness that comes from folks blasting off opinions about stuff before all the facts are in.
I'm not getting that lately. And since we're headed into the biggest news thrill cycle I can imagine...I don't think the timing is auspicious. This election season, I want to stand Thoreau on his head:
"I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things . . . . Read not the Times, read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities" -H.D. Thoreau
This election year, I want to read the times not the eternities. I want the conventionalities and the impurities. But I believe, however, with Throreau, that "Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven..." And for me those flashes of light can be little bursts of inspiration on the dKos board.
The site has grown by leaps and bounds...and the only way you learn about how to do things here is by diving in and trying it yourself. Well, when you promote oatmeal at the top of diary side, folks who are new or aspiring writers give you oatmeal down below. When I set my diaries to 50, I get 50 essays. That's great....
but I want my fucking SUGAR SMACKS.
I want FUNNY open threads, worried discussions in the diaries, diatribes and inter-necine battles that are an affront to my views but expand my thinking....eventually. I want the hurried, frenzied history-written-with-lightning words of folks who are too mad, too possessed, too opinionated to write a considered thought-out piece that aspires to Emerson, Thoreau, or DHinMI.
I want my Margaret Cho, Lenny Bruce and Abbie Hoffman wannabes.
I want the Jon Stewart fluff pieces.
I want the the "thirll" of Breaking News diaries that fizzle and fade.
And, as someone who would like to think that I've written one or two diaries that were alright here...someone who was, at the end of the day...a solid Kossack diarist...I must confess that I want to write for MOJO not for 'recommended'. How lame is recommended...how straight...how boring...how stultifying...???
But mojo. That's cool. Fuck, you can be downrated on your precious little diary...and I have been. That's thrilling and nervewracking.
All in all. It is Kos' site. So, he can and should do what he wants. But....
My two cents is:
- put the regular diaries physically on top, and put the recommended diaries below. News smack trumps oatmeal.
- folks should keep putting up mojo-receptacles in their diaries if they want to. I will.
- and, in the spirit of Sugar Smacks, nuttiness, humor, instant reaction, and community, by all means, keep posting in the spirit of your own Kossack selves, my friends. We're not all Josh Marshall....thank god.
Finally, and this is a little known secret....for some old-school Kos flavor..come play with us between 8PM and 12AM West Coast time. Some pretty beautiful things have happened here at that time that wouldn't have been possible at other times when 'news' and the rapid flow of diaries makes this site a waterfall...not a rolling rural stream.
On that note, take a look at this diary from one month ago, I'd like to think we could do something like that again....please.
Ed note: Ok, so the ironic other shoe did drop....hmmm...since this diary is up here, for the moment, maybe you could follow Blue's lead and link to a diary that really floats (floated) your boat...be it Oatmealesque or Cocoa pebbles sweet. My dirty little secret, I actually like Cheerios. So where does that leave me?