Time to move on - I think

The gender debate has been raging back and forward in the blogosphere for a while.

I made two statements about my position in this debate. In the first one I explained my rather pragmatic survival tactics in a stereotyped world. In the second, I called to arms and challenged women in WoW to start aiming higher, conquering everything from the number 1 spot on the charts to the top positions at Blizzard.

I commented a bit here and there on the blogs that were most involved in the debate. But then I turned pretty much silent. Not because I don’t care about those issues. Not because I’m afraid to scare any readers away. But because the entire debate started to make me feel uneasy and uncomfortable.

On one hand I wanted to stand up and defend values and views that matters a lot to me. On the other hand I hated to see the blogosphere, which mostly is a rather peaceful, Shire-like place to hang around, into a hardcore, merciless PvP battleground where people took sides and were standing around, doing thumbs up and thumbs down as they saw another argument or insult landing as a blowing strike. While I sympathized with one side, it was quite painful for me to see the other side getting crushed and tore into pieces. Because I’m motherly like that. Yeah, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Adam, regardless of he deserved my pity or not.

Putting an end to it
In the best of the worlds I probably would have been more active. In the best of worlds I would have come up with a splendid solution that everyone could agree on and we would get out of it a little bit wiser than we were before we started the debate. Because that’s how I deal with such things.

But I couldn’t. The entire thing wore me down, so I tried to get rid of it, writing about other things that crossed my mind, stuff that wasn’t about gender and about what right we have or don’t have to want to ask for changes in WoW. I dodged. And I dodged again. It didn’t help much. There was something lingering in the air, keeping me from letting it go. I needed someone to make a summary, putting together the pieces into a puzzle. What was it that happened, what in all this made me so upset, and what can we learn?

Tamarind, has hold a pretty low profile in the debate, but has spoken up now in a sort of summary post where he tries to knit it all together and put it into perspective. As always he’s far more thoughtful and elegant than I’m capable of, and after reading it I thought: “Yes! Here it is. The end. I’m done and I can put back that book on the shelf, for now being.” Time to move on.

I think it will be a while before I throw myself into another discussion about gender perspective on WoW. Not because everything has been said. There’s surely more and I respect those who blog about those things all-year-round and not just when it’s up as a hot topic. But personally I’ve got nothing more on my mind for the time being. For once, I’ve run out of words. And Tam helped me to come at peace. Finally.

About my blogroll
Oh, and there was one last thing. There has been a spin-off off topic coming from this debate, about blogrolls, where I got some attention too as I removed a couple of links from it recently.

The strong reactions surprised me a little – is it really such a big deal? My blogroll isn’t a manifestation of anything. I disagree a lot with some of the blogs on my list, like for instance Gevlon, who I’ve argued with a lot over the years. But I read him anyway, because I think many of his posts are interesting reads. I like to get a look into a goblin perspective of the world.

If you look at my blogroll, it consists of a very strange mix of all sorts of blogs, reflecting my broad approach to blog reading. I link to very small blogs, which barely no one but me reads, judging from the commentary. And I link to some of the most wellknown and profiled blogs as well, because they’re awesome reads.

Spinks made an overview of the different purposes a blogroll can serve. In my case, the blogroll is mostly for my own use, since I don’t have any feedreader. I read the blogs as they are, visiting them. Thanks to Blogger’s system I can see if they’ve been updated recently, which is why I prefer the Blogger blogrolls to the ones generated from for instance Wordpress, where you have no idea if the last post was from yesterday or a year ago. The “last update” system is very handy.

But the blogroll of the PPI is also a part of the content. I don’t think it’s important, since most readers don’t see it as they’re reading through a feed. But still. It’s not neglected, I keep an eye on it, and because of this, it’s constantly changing. I add new blogs and remove others as often as a couple of times a week.

There are several reasons why I remove a blog. The most obvious one is that it isn’t updated anymore. My thumb rule is that I remove them after two months of inactivity. I also remove blogs if they stop being mainly about WoW or MMO related things. I might keep reading your real life blog if I love you as a writer, but I won’t link to it. Sometimes I remove blogs because I don’t read them anymore, it’s been months since any post really spoke to me and I’ve forgotten why I added the link in the first place. It's not because they're bad or I'm angry about something, it's just not my piece of cake anymore and there are just too many WoW blogs out there to link to everyone. “Sometimes you grow apart”, to use Tam’s words.

There’s nothing fair about a blogroll. It’s a deeply personal thing and I don’t think you should have to explain yourself to anyone why you link or don’t link to a certain blog. I don’t link back to every blogger that links to me and don’t expect linklove from blogs on my roll. It just doesn’t work that way.

Many times my decision to add one blog and not the other is quite random and more based on a gut feeling than on a thorough evaluation. I just wish it didn’t become such a Big Thing. I want to be able to play around with my blogroll without having to consider all the possibly hurt feelings that may follow.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a subtitle to The Pink Pigtail Inn, namely “Larísa’s Corner”. Yeah, the blog used to be called that for a very short period, before I moved it and name changed. But there’s still some truth in this name. Sure, I invite everyone to come here and have a pint and discuss almost anything connected to WoW and gaming and MMOs and life and the universe or whatever. But in the end it’s my corner of the world, and I’d rather not like to go into arguments about the looks of my blogroll.

And that’s about it I think. I got all the stuff I’ve been carrying around off my chest. Time to move on.

On an additional note I wouldn’t rule out that the blogosphere might explode in some other argumentation soon again. What else is there to do when Cataclysm still is months away and there isn’t much going on either in the game or the blogosphere?

There’s a good reason why this happened right now.