Nick Denton has discovered a blogger so vain and pedantic he makes Anil Dash look like a free-speech hero:
Tom Coates, a rather pedantic British blogger whom I met in person this week, is appalled by those he considers warbloggers. So, does he try to persuade them, and their readers? Nope. Coates’s latest contribution to web culture: he proposes blocking undesirable visitors to his site. I mean, if they got through, he might actually win them over. On second thoughts, no.
Coates moans about the role he fantasizes playing in enabling warbloggers:
I don’t know how to say it in any other way except to say that as an episode in web history, I personally believe that Warblogging has been shameful, horrific and a stain on us all. The escalation of warblogs is a disaster for development of personal publishing, and a crippling blow to the individual integrity and worth of weblogs and weblogging. This whole media – a media which was supposed to be about freedom of expression, allowing everyone to have a voice and a space to talk openly and honestly – has turned increasingly into the worst kind of soapbox punditry, witch-hunting and as a platform for violent warmongers and nationalists. And I’m afraid I feel partly responsible…
I don’t know what’s more hilarious, Coates’ attempt to smear everyone who’s not a simpering appeaser with the label of “violent warmonger and nationalist” or his fanciful belief that he had anything at all to do with creating any of the technology that’s made free speech on the web possible. Either way, the man’s directly responsible for the funniest excuse for soul-searching I’ve ever read.