More Slagging Off Mister Sia!

…alah, not really lah. Kesian the poor bugger.

Actually, the whole brouhaha started from this one snippet:

We talked about the Singaporean blog culture, the upcoming Blogger's convention, the commercial aspect of blogging, among other things. One thing I realised from our conversation is how much more mature and serious the blog culture is in Singapore compared to the rest of Asia. Its evident from the facts. Mr brown, Miyagi are writing for Today; Wendy is writing for The New Paper, Maxim, endorsing LocalBrand; and most interestingly, commercial entities are APPROACHING the Bloggercon organizers for sponsorship, instead of the other way round.

All these are happening while Malaysian bloggers are still gloating over how they got their first cheques from Google Adsense.

Aduh, zing! And then suddenly all these people hentam him for being traitor to Malaysian bloggokind. Oh noes! What to do?

Actually, Kenny has a point.

He's got a point when he says that Singaporean bloggers and Malaysian bloggers are different. Of course they are — there's a slew of differences between Malaysian and Singaporean culture that are remarkably evident, especially if you cross the Straits. There's nothing mysterious about that.

What Kenny flubs in his explanation is in his use of the word “mature”. You know, for a Big Name Blogger he sure made a poor choice in using that word.

Malaysian blogging aren't less mature than Singapore blogging — what Singapore blogging is that Malaysian blogging isn't is mainstream.

A medium's maturity isn't defined by how easily mainstream culture absorbs it. Examples that come to mind, at least for me, include comics (when don't they, when it comes to me talking about media?).

Comics enjoyed this remarkable spike in popularity in the popular conscience, way back in the early 20th century, with the works of Winsor McCay actually gracing the pages of newspapers, not in the strangled comic-strip syndication deals we get nowadays, but as full-blown works of art, as a feature.

Look at McCay's works, and compare it to Singapore bloggers writing appearing in print publications, and the wooing of bloggers by Singapore mainstream media. There are a few differences (McCay engaged with the news media as as himself, and not in their own terms), but the similarities are there, and can be made into pretty good comparisons.

But were comics in the early 20th century considered “mature” media? Hardly. That period showed an incredible proliferation of two kinds of work — experimental works ala Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland, and imitatory works, ala Batman, Superman, and other early superhero works.

Seriously. Early Batman comics, for example, were straight (somewhat) translations of traditional detective fiction — the only difference being that the detective in this case wore spandex. Superman was modeled after mythical heroes, and its tales were straightforward morality plays that appealed to pulp fiction fans, who more often than made up the new audience for comic readers.

It's the same kind of tale for other kinds of media as well — early stories were more often than not transcribings of oral tales, early prose fiction were essentially epic poems forced into sequential text, early computer game efforts resembled board games and serious literature.

And ‘early blogs’ resemble… what? Diaries, made online? Editorials, made online? Journalistic pieces, made online? Academic dissertations, simplified and made online? Ranting, made online?

Dude, blogs and blog culture are nowhere near mature. I suspect, at any rate, that blogs and blog culture anywhere won't start becoming mature until years from now, when people finally know what to do with blogs and what blogs are best at, the way people know what to do with comics and what comics are good at.

Until then, wait with bated breath.

Addendum: Hmm. Pinging both Kenny's and Paul's blog nets me with a big fat zero. Pages won't update.

…hmm. Oh well. Their loss. I've got better things to do with my life. And besides, Hani wants my attention now.