I used to be a regular commentator at Eschaton Blog, having gone through two pseudonyms there, EPT and, then, olvlzl, before posting under my name. I never hid that all were one and the same . I got to Eschaton not long after it started from the legendary Media Whores Online . MWO is still my idea of what a lefty political blog should be, Atrios, the owner of Eschaton, was also a regular at MWO and was rumored to have been something of a protegee of the mysterious owner, "The Horse".
Atrios often wrote quite cogently on economic topics - his professional training is in economics - and infrastructure as well as politics. I certainly didn't agree with everything he said, Atrios' orientation is more what I've come to think of as liberalish-libertarian than genuinely liberal or leftist but I think his heart is mostly in the right place. The comment threads have always been notorious as an off-topic free for all. Which is often too bad as Atrios is competent in his area of expertise and those posts are worth reading Sadly, he seldom writes them anymore.
The place being the chaotic bar room it was in those years was far from all bad. I learned a lot from the links, the citations, the discussions and the fights. It was extremely stimulating and productive as well as entertaining. I remember talking with another former regular about how we'd used the discussion at Eschaton to test arguments.
Anyway, from the golden age of Eschaton when clunky Haloscan treads used to regularly go into the high hundreds of comments, often going over a thousand, things have gradually dwindled down to a small, hard core of regulars who form a sort of in-crowd. Most of the former regulars have left over the years, some of them once mainstays of the commenting community. Many of the drop outs were people who provided the most interesting content on the blog. They weren't often replaced by new regulars. I saw only one name that wasn't familiar to me on my last fortnight of giving it another try. Some of those who remain are rather nice people who have something interesting to say. But, increasingly, the comments are dominated by a core intent on imposing their eternal high school level clique domination and speech code on it and people who seem to be willing to tolerate that. Last week there was one relatively recent addition who was rather brutally attacked by the dominant clique on a minor lapse of their imposed decorum. I haven't seen him there in the several lurkings that I've done as research for this post the last few days. No idea if he's gone for good but it was ugly.
You might guess from two of my recent posts, I've clashed with the dominant clique. More and more, in the past years to the point where I'd several times taken a voluntary leave of it, once for most of a year. On the Eschaton comment threads it is practically de rigueur to be anti-religious, especially anti-Catholic, irrationally absolutist in a number of issues and to maintain the attitude of a, frankly, assholish 12-year-old boy about most areas capable of being considered "transgressive". You are not to critisize icons of pop culture, especially those considered very naughty. At the same time there is a very distinct form of class snobbery that is part of the mix. Ivy League schools and many other, hardly progressive, entities are also not to be dissed. Anything that carries the name of "science", even the most obviously bogus and anti-liberal ideas of ideology posing as science, is held as far more sacrosanct than most practicing Catholics I know require their religion to be held in. What was interesting about my stepping over a line last week that has gotten me banned for the second time this year - I'd earlier the same day said that I was going to drop out again - was, apparently, my transgressing against the mandatory respect for the Rolling Stones and Penn Jillette's boring one-dirty-joke movie, The Aristocrats. I admit that I tried to kick up something like the old excitement in those and it's just not there anymore. It's gone.
I suspect that there is something like a natural life span for human institutions and ten years for any blog is probably as long as you should expect it to last. I'd lasted longer at Eschaton than I have at other blogs out of affection for a number of the regulars. But anyone who will stand up to the kewl kids who sit on the school house steps seems to have already left. This last time wasn't interesting or entertaining, despite a few occasions to have some minor fun. It's over. It's done. There's not even any reason to lurk. It's gone from being a rowdy adult forum for free thought to exactly that, the clique domination of high school. Maybe that's what happens when a popular blog gets old. Can it be avoided? I don't know, apparently Atrios is OK with things as they've developed and it's his blog. There are lots of others out there.
Perhaps The Horse was wise to go out on top. One thing I learned at Eschaton a long time ago was the phrase "jumped the shark".
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