Lost and alone in the blogosphere wilderness

CURMUDGEON - KARL DU FRESNE

BREAKING NEWS: Police hold grave fears for the safety of a man reported missing in the Internet blogosphere.

The man told family members he was taking a short afternoon excursion to explore Poneke's Weblog, a blog by Wellington journalist David McLoughlin. He hasn't been seen since.

"Poneke's is a relatively gentle blog that shouldn't have exposed him to any serious risk," a police spokesman said. "But there are lots of links leading off it to other blogs, some of which are a good deal more hazardous. He may have strayed off the beaten track.

"We've seen this sort of thing before. Someone sets out to have a look at a blog like Poneke's, then they get diverted on to Russell Brown's Public Address weblog or David Farrar's Kiwiblog, and with just a couple of innocent clicks they wander off into the wilderness. They lose track of the passage of time and before they know it they're hopelessly bushed.

"It's a maze out there and he may have ended up a long way from where he started. There are links to political blogs, media blogs, sports blogs, wine blogs, heavy metal blogs, climate change blogs, hard-left blogs, extreme-right blogs, greenie blogs, sado-masochism blogs . . . you name it.

"Some of these are quite rough and hostile. They are extremely remote and attract a lot of undesirables.

"We can only hope that if he finds himself in a hard-left blog after dark he keeps a cool head, waits for daylight and calmly retraces his steps. Frankly we're reluctant to put searchers at risk by sending them in there."

The police spokesman said concerns were heightened by the fact that the man was inexperienced and poorly equipped.

"He's not had much previous exposure to infantile abuse and personal invective of the type that he's likely to find in the blogosphere. Also, his family advises us he has a history of severe allergic reactions to bad grammar, misspellings and missing apostrophes. We're encouraging them to keep their hopes up, but it's not looking good."

***

It must have come as a shock to Hawke's Bay tagger Ford Randell when Judge Tony Adeane sent him to prison for 28 days. Harsh? Yes. But it's time the courts made an example of graffiti vandals, and Randell's prison sentence may send a long-overdue message to others like him. Judge Adeane, incidentally, was a Man of the Year nominee in this column last November for jailing another tagger, though only for two nights. His patience is obviously wearing thin.

We now eagerly wait for the courts to start putting away boy racers. Though quite distinct from taggers, the two groups share certain vital characteristics.

Both are essentially exhibitionist. Taggers demand to be noticed by leaving their infantile scrawls everywhere, an act as primitive as dogs marking their territory with urine. Boy racers insist on getting our attention by aurally invading our space with noisy exhausts and car stereos that jangle nerves, disturb sleep and frustrate attempts at conversation in the street. These are not merely incidental consequences of their behaviour, but a primary purpose.

The other thing the two groups have in common is contempt for the rights of others. Taggers demonstrate this by defacing other people's property, boy racers by denying us our right to peace and quiet. A fundamental requirement of a civil society is that we respect the rights of our fellow citizens. When all else fails, taggers and boy racers should be made to learn this lesson the hard way.

***

Every so often there's an eruption of outrage at the perceived hijacking of some supposedly iconic emblem of Maori culture. The most recent example was a set of Chinese-made dolls, modelled on traditional Russian nesting dolls that fit inside each other, which purportedly depicted a Maori family in traditional attire.

A Maori academic described it as "insulting". There have been similar fusses in the past over non-Maori performing the haka or wearing Maori-inspired tattoos. Isn't this a bit precious? All cultures borrow from others. We don't hear howls of outrage from the Caribbean about Maori bands playing Jamaican- inspired reggae. Maori kids ape the clothes, patois and mannerisms of black American street culture, but no angry letters arrive from the gangstas of South- Central LA demanding that we respect their cultural uniqueness.

I could go on. Middle-class white British rock stars have become as rich as Croesus by ripping off black American blues musicians, but there have been no lawsuits. New Zealanders eat pasta without fear of Italy threatening to sever diplomatic ties. Bizarrely, no New Zealand political rally seems complete without a set of bagpipes, but the Scots don't seem to mind. And the Irish don't object to non-Irish people using St Patrick's Day as an excuse to get drunk and make fools of themselves singing Danny Boy.

What's so different, then, about Maori culture? Shouldn't Maori be proud that others want to emulate them? In any case, if anyone's entitled to grizzle about being ripped off in the above case, isn't it the Russians?

- © Fairfax NZ News