I was reading my undergraduate thesis last night, when it suddenly occurred to me that I should have something more to say about this whole debate about “blogging ethics.”  (My thesis, by the way, is a 366-page tome on Friendster.com: check Original TMX for details.)  A lot of bloggers are PO’ed over critical (?) statements made by the likes of Luis Teodoro, Malu Fernandez, Tim Yap, and Korina Sanchez regarding blogging.  Their statements can be conveniently summarized in two bullet-points:

• That some bloggers are “irresponsible” and the blogging community is in need of a “code of ethics,” and;
• That the lot of bloggers who blog anonymously reduce, if not destroy, credibility in opinion-sharing in New Media.

Then I figured that I didn’t make a 366-page thesis on the “sociology” of virtual environments for nothing.  Rather than posture as an “academic expert” on this matter, let me try to make some sense of it using my own background as a “social anthropologist.”

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Let me begin by asking a rather inane question: what is blogging?

Hmmm… it isn’t all that inane after all.  Every blogger has a definition of what blogging is.  If you asked me, blogging is the act of writing extended to the medium of cyberspace.  I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record every time I refer to Marshall McLuhan’s quote, “The medium is the message.”  Most critics of blogging grapple with the content of blogs, but fail to recognize that the “message” of blogging is not what’s written in the blog, but the blog itself.  Blogging is like every medium of communication: it is an extension of ourselves.   Hence the term “mediation.”

As a “social anthropologist” (always note the quotation marks when I use that term), I don’t necessarily subscribe to a setting where the medium is “in between” elements in the communication process.  There is always delay.  Whatever means we employ to communicate, there will always be a spatial and temporal distance that alters the messages and actions we convey.  At the same time, there is always production.  We constantly produce stuff, which includes communicative messages; at the same time, we are constantly produced by stuff.  Both delay and production lead to that all-important term that characterizes the communication process: interpretation.

So what do we analyze when it comes to blogs: the content of the blogs, or the blog itself?

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Now that Mainstream Media has conveniently wasted time making these human-interest stories about Brian Gorrell, I personally think that they have conveniently missed the point.  We should “beware” the blog not because people like Brian Gorrell use it to air their grievances, but because we are coming to a point in history where delay and production - and subsequently, interpretation - take whole new meanings when applied to a situation like cyberspace.  Note:

• Delay is present - and at the same time absent - in blogging;
• Information is constantly produced in blogging.

Anyone familiar with Jacques Derrida or Roland Barthes would be familiar with delay.  For Derrida, delay is a paradox: something is “first” because of a “second” that follows it, and because of this, the “first” is always a repetition, a copy.  Because I have problems understanding Derrida, I would use Barthes.  Blogging is writing: every text is committed in the here-and-now.  No matter how many times I will tell you that I wrote this sentence on May 10, 2008 at 1:40 PM, this sentence will outlive that point in time.  In the case of both journalists and bloggers, they commit themselves into the text.  The text will outlive them, and therefore no text is “owned.”  It is there, and that’s all that matters.  It is there because it is the medium.  What I say afterwards won’t matter to this particular instance of text.

More importantly, information is constantly produced and reproduced.  There is no “source” of information, nor is there a “gatekeeper” of it.  Information, like text, is there.  A blogger, a journalist, and even the neighborhood chismosa is not the infallible”source” of a collection of information.  Anyone who uses media is in effect a scriptor, an aggregator, an interpreter, a person engaged in a commitment and a practice.  So a Mainstream Media reporter covers a police report on an exploding banana that killed an errant pedicab driver pedaling through EDSA at the wrong lane, is he/she the source of the information?  No.  He/she produced the information that came from an information that preceded it, that came with it, so the information is merely a copy.

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So here’s the thing: whatever a Mainstream Media practitioner swipes at a blogger is technically a swipe a blogger could make against a Mainstream Media practitioner.  Blogging is consequential of information, just like Gutenberg’s printing press.  Deal with it.

Yesterday, I attended the 4th Philippine Blogging Summit - iBlog 4 - even with a bout of rage-induced depression.  One of the highlights of iBlog, on a more personal note, was exchanging small-talk with Mr. Manuel Quezon III, who was rather surprised to meet me in person for the first time.

(If you were in iBlog 4, I was the guy in the t-shirt with a fiery skull design who doesn’t talk to anybody.  I have issues with crowds.  No, I’m not emo.  And yes, I sound like Satan whenever I talk through a microphone.)

An important insight I learned from iBlog 4 is the growing importance of blogging as a means towards genuine social change.  As Luz Rimban, Manolo Quezon, and Jeanette Toral pointed out in their talks at iBlog 4, there are few political bloggers in the Philippines.  The few political bloggers that we have, given the number of blogs - or “blogs” - that there are in the Philippines would mean that the “growing importance” of blogging is still on the embryonic stage.

Please disagree with me on this one: I think - and this is a completely subjective and personal observation - that most bloggers do not utilize their blogs enough as a vehicle to (at the very least) exact a political influence among their peers.  It’s not that people don’t see the importance of political blogging, it’s just that people do not exercise their political views and commit them to a blog entry.

I’m not saying that this practice is wrong, it’s just that blogging can mean so much more than a healthy dose of emo or psychological prostitution.  We, as bloggers, need to speak out more on issues.  Not personal ones, but social ones.  Or maybe social ones that we find personal affinities and empathies with.

I can personally vouch for the dangers and consequences of having a disagreeable view or an opinion.  I’m not talking about people who disagree with me online, but people who disagree with me offline.  I don’t have time to check spam messages or Google my own name to look for people who want to kill me.  Yet realities sink in all too often when you have to delete a threatening comment or an e-mail (thankfully, they are few-and-far-between), or hear about real-world slander.

Yet in effect, this is what resistance is all about.  Blogging is not about resistance, it is resistance.  Even in the embryonic stage of political and social blogging, The Media look upon us as, well, threats.  I myself am quite dissatisfied with the way The Media treats blogging, focusing more on the irrelevant non-issue that is Brian Gorrell vs. DJ Montano, instead of the growing social and political resistance in the blogosphere…

But that’s for another entry.

This is for FilipinoVoices.com’s blog carnival.  I’d like to dwell in the more human aspect a bit… I find myself really, really depressed.  Sorry, Nick, this is unusually half-assed.  - Marck

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I literally eat my words.

My job as a writer for a company in Ortigas Center means that the phrase “eat my words” takes a whole different meaning for me. Writing pays for my rent, for my food, for my transportation needs, for my weekly laundry, for my cigarettes, and for just about everything else. I am not a writer by virtue of a pretentious self-ascription on the “Occupation” field in a Friendster account: I write for a living.

Do I consider myself part of the “working class?” Hell no. I have been writing for as long as I can remember that I don’t even look at what I do as “work.” Work - in a physical sense - is all about locomotion. If my bosses are physicists, they would pay me only for bathroom breaks, cigarette breaks, and lunch breaks where I actually move out of my cubicle to go somewhere.

This Labor Day, I would not even dare take my place among workers who were once exhorted by Karl Marx to unite and lose their chains. I am not a laborer. If there’s anything I learned, “employment” and “labor” are two very different things. “Employee” is not synonymous with “laborer.” If you work from a cubicle in an air conditioned office for eight hours a day breaking a creative sweat, you are nowhere in the same league as a street sweeper who works for eight hours a day breaking real sweat.

I could bore you with unemployment statistics, the rates of wages, the injustices of the capitalist system, and so on. Pardon the archaic Latin: you don’t shit in your own yard. Capitalism - the juggernaut in the funeral procession of global economics that it is - puts food on tables. It would border on hypocrisy if I spoke out against “imperialist capitalism” if I am employed because of capitalism. Conversely, it would be defeated principle if I spoke for capitalism just like Ayn Rand referred to it as “the virtue of selfishness.”

I guess that I’m defeated on this one. You don’t shit in your own yard.

On blogging news: you can catch me every weekend at FilipinoVoices.com, a collaborative blog about Philippine politics, news, and social commentary.  I am joined by Nick Tingog, Lester Cavestany, The Jester-In-Exile, Manuel Buencamino, Rom Sedona, and many other bloggers.  Please link to the site, and please visit the site frequently.   It’s a labor of love of country.

The Big Question for friends and family: am I risking the possibility of actually getting shot for having strong words to say about The Government?

Hmmm… it is tempting to say “I don’t,” but I am kind of getting a bit paranoid with the “accidental exposure” from Thursday’s incident.  I have not gotten into trouble - yet - but I must be very quick to point out than in a 13-year writing odyssey, I have gotten into a lot of trouble.  My still-standing feud with a few people in the college paper is the stuff that they’ll probably exchange during bull sessions in the future.  I won’t be a teary-eyed Jun Lozada, but I will say that it’s often worth taking a risk for your country… sans the sponsored Masses and the tours and the speaking engagements.

So if ever I get shot or arrested, you now know why.

Before anything else, I would like to thank Mr. Manuel Quezon III for quoting my blog entry, “Resistance, Now,” in his column in today’s issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.  I am both honored and humbled that my little call for resistance has been picked up by one of the eminent critics, historians, and bloggers of our time.  Thank you, MLQ3.

More of MLQ3’s thoughts in his latest entry.

All this talk of “resistance” and “justice” has also been picked up back home, and suffice to say, I have been getting mixed reactions.  My family, friends, and loved ones are expressing concern that I may have gotten myself in a little bit of trouble.  I console myself in thinking that I am not worth the plastic twist-ties The Government will handcuff me with if ever they think I’m worthy of time in jail.  After all, I’m not exactly a Jonas Burgos, a Sherilyn Cadapan, or a Karen Empeño.

Prudence and tact are not my strongest suits.  I know that any other blogger out there could put whatever I think of The Government in a nicer, more diplomatic way.  In three years, I have had nothing nice to say about This Government, and come 2010, I probably will still be at a loss for words.  I’m sure that if The President is reading today’s paper, or as luck would have it she may be reading what I have to write right now, she probably would feel the same way.  I don’t know The President, The President does not know me, and let’s leave it at that; it’s not like we’ll meet each other one day and drink some Quickly shakes at a bench in SM Megamall talking about life.

The term “hinanakit” - grudge - lends itself well.  Over the years, many people have asked me: “What exactly do you have against The Government that you’re trying to bring It down?”  I could rant about it again: questions of legitimacy, a moral and political ascendancy to govern, the prevalence of hunger, systemic corruption, widespread poverty, and so on.  These are legitimate reasons why I have every hinanakit against This Government.  The expected retort: “Let the rule of law take its course.”

And you’re telling me that I’m liable to get shot for what I’m doing?

Rule of law, huh?  To be honest, there are some things about the rule of law that I myself cannot understand, but there are definitely things about the rule of law that I cannot stand for.  Take Sec. Romulo Neri: the rule of law has upheld executive privilege, so all investigations on the NBN-ZTE deal has stopped.  The rule of law, in this case, has taken its course.  The rule of law has forgiven Erap, and the rule of law has forgotten the “Hello Garci” scandal.  The rule of law is also responsible for allowing public funds to be used for the completely lawful practice of Congressman So-and-So to rename a school building Don Such-and-Such Memorial High School, all the while forgetting that there’s a village out there whose only road needs a paving.

The rule of law, to echo a thought by Mr. Quezon, does not automatically make things right.  We are surrounded by every kind of wrong that there is courtesy of The Government’s inactions and inadequacies.  All of these things - including the rule of law - should contribute to the growing hinanakit that we (I hope) have against The Government.  Hinanakit is sufficient reason to engage in resistance.  The biggest hinanakit of them all is right on our dinner tables, or to be more accurate, what is not on our dinner tables.  We’ve all been denied the rule of law before, and now we have been denied the rule of rice?

The other day, I overheard a couple talk about how bad times are that they’d rather be shot than queue up on the NFA delivery trucks for nothing for another day.  Now that’s a hinanakit: yet another perfectly good reason for resistance.