Wang Xiaofeng on Blogging, Idiots, Cursing and Meta

We've had so much meta focused on our own little constellation of online communities out here in left blogtopia (and yes! skippy coined that term!), I figure we might all profit from a new vantage point to the issue.

From the guys over at Danwei TV, an online independent TV station based in Beijing and an interesting place to find video clips about contemporary Chinese culture, comes this interview with Chinese blogger, Sanlian Life Week journalist and general troublemaker Wang Xiaofeng. The interview ranges all over the place, and through his rants about the Chinese blogging scene, Wang provides a fascinating - and characteristically profane - Beijinger's perspective on the sorts of heated discussions that boil up on blogs everywhere. As you can see, there are aspects to these sorts of flamewars, pretensions, power dynamics and standards of respectabilty that we've been consumed with of late that are inherent to the very medium:

(As an aside, Beijngers are notoriously creative cursers. The authorities have actually shut down soccer matches because the crowd chants are so profane that Chinese TV won't dare air them, and the Central Government is quite anxious about the image this might present during the '08 Olympics).

What we are to make of this thing called blogging, what sorts of standards - if any - should we have for propriety or languge, how might a structurally edgy medium change when celebrities or Very Important People start to dabble in it, how do big websites with market share tend to treat little ones, all of these issues are being sorted out online all over the world. While our own discussions might seem a world of their own, they are in fact but a drop in the proverbial bucket, globally. And rest assured that we are certainly not the most profane bloggers out there.

Check it out.

(note: I did a previous diary on Wang at surf putah back in October, entitled "The Paradox of Registering Blogs" - A Chinese Blogger's Argument for Anonymity," for those who are interested.)