I Thought We Were Friends!
link AOL and Huffington Post sued by unpaid bloggers | Reuters.
You knew this was coming, it was just a matter of time. A few months back, America Online decided that the best way to spend their cash horde was to buy the far left wing graffiti, er I mean blog site, The Huffington Post for $315 million dollars.
Kudos to Arianna Huffington for being shrewd enough to create and promote her website as the repository for deranged ideologues. The Post became the place to be seen for written opinions of the lefty persuasion and included scribblings from noted entertainment personalities which served to even more embellish the Post’s reputation. For many bloggers who contributed to the opinions, having Huffington Post credentials conferred, to them at least, legitimacy, as if it were some kind of literary achievement. In reality, most of the content could be found spray painted on the side of buildings as nonsensical diatribe. The Post however gave voice and a stage to the raving ideologues.
Now that Arianna has gone mainstream, those same bloggers are clamoring for their share of the loot from AOL. Good luck. If their logic held any water, Hugh Hefner would have to share his profits with all the girls who had ever graced the pages of Playboy, since it can be argued it was their contributions that really drove the magazine. These prototypical geeks writing pieces in their mother’s basement in their underwear may feel betrayed by Arianna, since they were supposed to be united against ‘the man’, ie the ‘establishment’. Now it turns out, she is one of them. So much for ideology and comrades in arms.
Bloggers write and pontificate on all sorts of things. In general, nobody really cares unless you happen to have some previous notoriety from real life. Then, you can spit out all kinds of flotsam and people will drink in your every word. Think Charlie Sheen. In America, it’s what sells, not what’s neccessarily good. So the bottom line is, these shut out bloggers had better start writing something legitimate because their graffiti wall is gone. Maybe it’s back to the spray can for most of them.