The Silliman Brouhaha

Much has been made recently over Ron Silliman's decision to turn off the comments stream on his blog. He himself has posted numerous emails he has received on the matter, and there are a bunch of links to the reaction of others. What the hell, here's my shot.

I was pretty pissed at Silliman when I first read about this. I know, that is anger that is very misplaced, and it was a position not well thought through. He does the whole thing without pay and with a presumably large investment of time. He is under no obligation to provide a platform for anyone else, be they thoughtful commenter or yahoo dickhead. Nevertheless, whatever the cost to the rest of the virtual world, the decision distresses me greatly.

I may as well say up front that I have a problem with authority. Gee, what a ballsy badass that makes me. Not really. You see, my problem is that I submit to it too easily. I have always believed that there is someone out there who is smarter than me, that someone knows the answer to whatever question I might have. This made me an easy mark for Silliman's brand of grand pronouncements. His every word was so confident and self-assured that I felt like a complete moron, and was filled with self-doubt if I ever disagreed. I understand of course that this is my issue, not his. However, once I began reading the comment stream on a regular basis, this proved to be the corrective I needed. Suddenly, I no longer wondered what was wrong with me when I thought Ron was completely full of shit; a lot of other people felt so as well. These days, I think the vast majority of what Ron has to say is rather suspect. I still like the vast sweep of his interests, both in poetry and other things, as well as the (sometimes overly lengthy) lists of links. Again, related to my authority problem, I tend to look to my poetic elders for enjoyment and inspiration; Silliman is nothing if not on top of the contemporary. However, I will certainly go to his blog with much less enthusiasm, knowing that I will no longer be able to amuse myself by reading his more astute readers let some of the hot air out of his over the top generalizations.