The last throes of a medium that is struggling to find relevance.

Anyone else watched Blogtv tonight? Aside from the extremely one-sided view that tried desparately to skew the audience's view that blogs were nothing more than flights of fancy by narcissists, did it really say anything else about blogging that we didn't already know?

No, it didn't.

They brought on the whole parade of bloggers and with very clever editing, made it seem that there really wasn't any real value in blogging, with the guest bloggers ending up looking like complete r*tards. It even had The mediacorp bitch Flying Dutchman as the borrowed voice of authority wagging his finger and admonishing blogs/bloggers by asking very shrewd (skewed) leading questions.

I especially liked when he prompted a prick guest to say that blogs were spaces for self indulgence and that they were perpetrators of misinformation. Word of advice to anyone working in the Singaporean media industry trying to preach about misinformation and the mishandling of facts: Pot, Kettle. Don't even think about it.

Perhaps it is because the Singaporean media industry really feels threatened by the advent of a new medium that forces its minions to start checking its facts before printing its items. Perhaps the industry has been losing revenue because people just aren't interested in their viewpoints anymore and wish to get their information from more credible sources. Maybe it's because the powers that be have seen the potential damage that blogs could cause to their propaganda machine and thus want to impress their stand on an audience that is slipping out of their fingers. Whatever it is, I would like to think that the pathetic attempt has failed.

After all, like the previous two (failed) attempts by Singapore to silence dissent*, blogtv has merely called more attention to the growing multivocality of our information today. No longer are we held captive by the mainstream media in its pro-PAP propaganda. No longer will the alternative voices be bullied into silence. Blogs are maturing (in Singapore, slower, but nonetheless still maturing...) and we are here to stay. We aren't quite articulate yet, but we're learning.

We are legion.

Hear us roar.

*Google the ban on FEER and Mr Brown getting his Today column taken away from him.