by E. A. Barbour
The “digital culture” world that reached a peak during the dotcom boom of the late 1990s was an atrocity. The unhinged propagandizing and glorification of “being digital” became an embarrassment. It also resulted in the creation of endless reams of stupid jargon, not least of which was the ugly portmanteau word “digerati”, supposed to refer to people who “live their lives digitally”, meaning basically those who flop around on the Internet, smearing their massive egos into every nook and cranny in the online landscape. Usage of this word has declined in recent years, but the people it was applied to continue to spew comical “transhumanist” and “Singularity” propaganda everywhere today.
Not surprisingly, the “digerati” quickly discovered that Wikipedia was amenable to ego-smearing, if one used a few simple tricks — tag-teaming with friends, sockpuppetry, and lying about it later. The Jimbo Way of manipulation became the SOP of Wikipedia by 2005, thanks partly to BLP [Biographies of Living Persons in Wikipedia jargon — ed. ] abuse of this type. (Don’t forget that Jimbo repeatedly tried to make himself the Sole Flounder of Wikipedia…)
To begin, consider the case of Metafilter. It is a moderately-popular group blog, which has existed since 1999. I say “moderately”, because despite being one of the earliest group blogs on the Net, it never achieved the massive popularity of competitors such as Reddit, Digg, and Fark. For the first few years of its existence, Metafilter was a quiet little nerdy corner of the web, run by its founder. In 2004, responding to increasing traffic and interest, the founder started to hire co-moderators and give them administrative powers.
Jessamyn West, librarian/blogger and believed to be the first
…continue reading The definition of a “Digerati”