Blog Wars postscript

I came late to the blog wars that erupted in the Irish blogosphere recently, largely because I was doing other things, like getting drunk down under.

For those of you who don't give a shit about such things, which is basically everyone reading this who doesn't have an Irish blog themselves, plus a majority of those who do, one blogger suggested that the happy-clappy community atmosphere of Irish blogging was somewhat incestuous and stultifying.

They named a couple of names, and claimed that the best blogs didn't necessarily win at the Irish blog awards.

Then some of those named, plus some of their pals, took umbrage and lots of people typed angrily on their keyboards for a bit until the letters C, U, N and T were worn down by the efforts.

I can now hear you yawning, so I'll get to the point quickly.

Blogging is what you make of it, and ultimately it only functions as a modern day speaker's corner, expressing the individual opinions of those of us without syndicated newspaper opinion columns.

As such, it is a democratising factor in new media. You can find out what a postman thinks of the Lisbon Treaty, what gig a secretary enjoyed last night, or what small businesses are trying to do for their customers. You can also hear perhaps too much about some people's sex lives or their cats. And in the darkest corners, perhaps some people's sex lives with their cats.

Ahem.

Some people blog for affirmation that their jobs or lives don't provide for them. And that's fine. Often, for me as a reader, those confessional type blogs are quite fascinating. And generally well written too.

Others provide more of a general entertainment purpose. Sometimes more successfully than other times. But again it seems churlish to cavil, especially when it's free to read them and no one is making you do so.

Some people seem to be cynically emulating popular blogs from abroad. Some people use it as an outlet for their writing talent. Some just rant, like me. All of that is fine, to my mind. The weakness of the blogosphere is also its strength - the fact that it permits anyone an audience worldwide.

But I do also feel that the Irish blogosphere has a few teething troubles as it enters its toddlerhood.

I read quite a few Irish blogs, when I get the chance, and have even met one or two of those behind them. I'm pals with the odd blogger too. And of course, I blog too. That probably puts me in the middle of what I'm criticising here.

There is a lot of backslapping, and there are people who are repeatedly credited and applauded among Irish bloggers without necessarily earning it, I feel. I concur that to my mind the best blogs didn't necessarily win in the blog awards. But that's simply my opinion and other people's opinions clearly differ.

I think it is healthy for people to criticise other blogs. Apart from holding people to account for what they write, it also encourages debate, which is never a bad thing.

Good blogs have lived and died in Ireland for want of a readership. It would be nice to see more blogs reaching a wider readership than the same handful that are repeatedly cited in the lazy mainstream media. (Especially when some of those cited are by people working in the mainstream media.)

The music industry model seems to me a viable one for the Irish blogosphere to emulate. U2 will always pack out Croke Park and sell out in 30 seconds. And that's grand. But there needs to be the equivalent of Whelans or Belfast's Rotterdam, or those regional music pubs where a local band can get a break and an audience.

I'm not sure how that can be achieved, but it does seem to me that Mulley's Post of the Month initiative serves that purpose a whole lot better than his calling people cunts.

But I'm glad the row broke out, and well done to the lassie whose post kicked it all off, even if I wouldn't agree with all she said. Because it had to be said by someone, and now it has been we're all better off for it.

It's unfortunate that the resulting debate more resembled schoolyard cliques handbagging each other than a proper adult discussion, but I'd put that down to the size of the Irish blogosphere and the novelty of the medium.

What's important now is that people take away from this the ability to open up to new blogs regularly, and criticise anything they disagree with, and foment debate as often as possible.

Finally, I'd just like to say that the most depressing thing resulting from this storm in a teacup was the desperate efforts of some people to put the genie back in the bottle. (Sorry for mixing metaphors like cocktail ingredients, but you know what I mean.)

The schoolmarm tones of those who basically said: 'I don't care who started it or who called who what. Just stop crying, kiss and make up and let's all get back to class, okay?'

Sorry, but it's better if we retain the right to disagree and criticise each other. I love nothing more than when someone calls me on one of my rants. It's brilliant, because when they shout back, I'm forced to challenge my own opinions, my own preconceptions, and the result is generally that we all learn a little bit.

Here endeth the sermon.

Twenty Major doesn't smoke!

These revelations just in from the Irish Blog Awards which were held last night:

Sinead Gleeson travels with a permanent retinue of other female arts correspondents.

Bock the Robber is a lightweight who can't handle his ale. He went home before nine o'clock last night. Which was a pity as I was hoping to meet him and call him a wanker for liking not only Munster but Scunthorpe.

Irish Flirty Something has dyed her hair. I know this must be the case because I asked every redhead in the place if they were flirty or not. Yes, I did indeed get some funny looks for that.

Sarah Carey and Richard Delevan couldn't get babysitters.

And Twenty Major, who is a very nice, well spoken lad in real life, is off the fags. Who's smoking in Dublin bars now, eh? Well?

Congrats to everyone who won, and to all those who got nominated, or just got drunk. And an especial well done to Mulley for putting it all together and Rick O'Shea for compering the event.

See y'all next year.

Roaming the blogosphere

As a prelude to sitting down and properly looking over the many excellent Irish blogs to be found on the long lists for the Irish Blog Awards, I thought I'd share with you some of the more unusual, but interesting non-Irish blogs I've come across recently.

For Girls Who Can't Do Football - A bit of untruth in advertising here. The splendidly monikered Georgina Best strides that fine, previously unknown, line between gurly life rambling blog (second biggest blog category in the whole 'sphere apart from cat blogs) and footie fanatic blog. Quality result! The girl done well.

Chatsoccer - Not strictly a blog, though it has group blog-like qualities. I mentioned them a little while ago, when they were still all new and pink with that lovely baby smell. Now they're already toasting the mainstream media on all things Irish footie-related. Spare yourself the euro and ignore what you read on the red-tops' backpage. Chances are, if it's true they probably nicked it from Chatsoccer.

What Does John Know? - Everything, actually, if what you want to know about is whiskey. John publishes a glossy expensive magazine purely about whiskey - the sort of mag you find in the rack in suites of five star hotels. But go to his blog, and for the price of the internet connection, you get the full inside track on whiskey, whisky, bourbon, rye and that muck that Japanese, New Zealanders and for all I know Martians also claim to be the water of life.

Tattooblog - Does exactly what it says on the skin, sorry, tin. It's not the usual insider 'body adornment' mong banging on about how 'tribal' his studio in some San Diego basement is. Though there is a serious appreciation of skin art expressed herein.
Nope, this blog strikes the tone of a celeb mag, with plenty of pics of new celeb tats and fresh pics of what's hot in tatworld (and not in the half-dressed biker chick kind of way). Wanna see tattoos of Darth Vader crossed with Hello Kitty, or read about braille tattoos for blind people? Or just find out what Amy Winehouse or Jordan's new tattoos are? This is where to go.

Weird Meat - Michael from Weird Meat is the inevitable result of the fetishisation of food and cuisine in modern culture. But writes it all up so well, you have to forgive him his penchant for chowing down on worm fungus, live shrimp and lizard soup in various unsignposted backstreet eateries in Asia.
This is what happens when you cross the food pornography of a Nigella or a Jamie with the backpacker spirit of eating local from a dodgy street stall even when your brain and tummy tell you not to. The lad has balls (sheep's balls, and he ate them in Shanghai).
For proper dodgy meat, however, he really needs to get out of Asia and over to Iceland, where rotten shark, whalemeat and singed sheep heads are traditional fare (I've had one of them and it was fantastic - not saying which one, though!)

There are more, but those are my current faves out there. And yes, I need to get out more, so I'm going to try doing that next week.

And the nominations are ...

According to one informed net source, this little blog has made it to the Irish Blog Awards longlist as Best Political Blog for the second year running.

Once again, it's up against some very stiff opposition, in the shape of major group efforts like Irish Election and Slugger O'Toole, and the blogs of professional politicians, such as Eric Byrne and Ciaran Cuffe.

From my perspective, it's great to see some of Ireland's longest running political bloggers on the list too, like Richard Delevan and El Blogador. Nice to see the less serious commentators, like Bock, rubbing shoulders with the occasionally too serious, like the Cedar Lounge boys too.

It's an eclectic list, well worth delving into by anyone with any sort of political interest in this country.

If there's a surprise omission, for me it would have to be the always excellent and provocative Public Inquiry. But I suppose you can't have everything.

I'm frankly delighted to have made the cut, especially considering that three-month period last Autumn when lack of net access meant I could barely blog at all. And I would urge y'all to consider Skin Flicks when you get around to voting in the Blog Awards.

More than anything, though, congratulations are due to Damien Mulley for organising the event.

The best thing about the Irish blog awards is the fact that it brings, in the shape of the long lists, a sampling of the very best of the Irish blogosphere to a wider reading audience.

So take some time out, peruse the various nominees in all the different categories, from food blogs to photoblogs, politicos to humourists, and discover for yourself some of the excellent Irish blogs out there. That's what I intend to do over the next few weeks.

Well done to all taking part, and of course, vote Skin Flicks if you're so inclined!

Search Engine Optimisation

Since I started this blog, one thing has truly baffled me, which is the routes people take to get here. I don't mean physically - a quick look at the Clustermap to the right indicates that you all come from all over the place, from Hawaii to Reykjavik, from Tromso to Cape Town.

And you're all very welcome!

No, what I mean is the search engine terms people use that result in them finding this little blog about Ireland, politics and my anger issues.

Among the more - ahem - startling routes taken to Skinflicks has to be the lad (I suspect it's a lad) who daily searches Google for 'Posh Spice upskirt' and keeps ending up here. Now, I don't know about you, but I'll leave whatever's up Posh Spice's skirt to David Beckham, thank you very much.

The fella from Birmingham looking for 'Jade Goody big black cocks' this evening must have been a bit disappointed too. People, let me tell you now - I have the ability to see your IP addresses!

So clearly it's time to do a little search engine optimisation, or SEO as the nerds call it. (Don't they love their TLAs?)

Thankfully, the saintly Richard over at Red Cardinal has offered to assist ALL the nominees for the Irish Blog Awards with his expert help in doing the aforementioned SEO. What a legend!

He's asked me to put a little info here to assist him in optimising the search engine terminology so as to hopefully help the right people to find this blog and help the strange people who want to know too much about Jade Goody and Posh Spice to go elsewhere.

So that's what the stuff below is about. No need to comment. And don't forget, lash across to the Irish Blog Awards website and give us an oul vote before Friday, why doncha?



Skinflicks is nominated for best blog, best political blog, best news/current affairs blog, best newcomer, best blog post and most humorous blog post.
It's niche is current affairs and politics.
Target audience is the island of Ireland, politics buffs everywhere, and news junkies.
It's been in existence since October.
And so has the domain, which is a blogger sub-domain really.
Other similar blogs include El Blogador, Slugger O'Toole, Irish Election, Dossing Times and pretty much anything listed here.
We'd like to achieve world domination. Or failing that, at least let more of the Irish political class know we're out there watching their every move.

Vote early, vote often!

It seems that the popularity contest that is the Irish Blog Awards is now well and truly underway.

If this pans out like most Irish elections, we can expect plenty of back-stabbing and pavement-pounding between now and February 16th, not to mention large posters stapled to every tree and lamppost on the island, most of them probably of Kav or Dario.

Then, since this is an e-voting exercise, presumably there will be Nora Owen-esque tears from the losers and someone will abscond with €50 million of state funds.

But unlike most Irish elections, which are popularity contests between Tweedledum, Tweedledee and assorted mini-Tweedles, all of whom are the sort of power-crazed middle-aged men you'd flee from in the pub, the candidates for the Irish Blog Awards are really good, mostly.

The long list for each category is up here and a quick perusal of some of the categories reveals the very high standard of Irish blogging across the board.

Skinflicks has been nominated for best blog, best political blog, best news/current affairs blog and best newcomer. Please take the time out to vote for us in any or all of those categories. I'd offer bribes and threats to motivate you except Garda Special Branch have already warned me not to.

This now legendary guide to drinking has been nominated for best blog post overall, and this sad litany of how people name their kids after soft drinks and other horrors has been nominated for most humorous blog post.

Feel free to vote for either of those posts too. Again, sadly I can't give you a few bob for doing so, nor can I promise you that this blog will restore the health service, put more police on our streets, bolster foreign direct investment or put an end to child poverty if elected.

But don't let that stop you. As they say in Fermanagh and parts of Belfast, vote early and vote often!

Where's my gong?

In a world where entire squadrons of failed English cricketers can get MBEs, where even Scousers, amateur golfers and cycling historians are granted gongs, surely it is time to reward your humble servant JC Skinner with a blog award?

Yes, it's that time of the year when the Irish Blog Awards seek nominations of the good, the bad and Twenty Major for their annual recognition of Irish contributions to the blogosphere.

And that means it is also the time of the year for my shameless plug and undignified begging for your nomination.

Feel free to go here and give me a nomination before the 26th of January. Or I'll come round your house because I know where you live.*


*May not actually be true.