55 Comments to “Bloggers and Hippies”

1. January 25th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
   Francie said

   I’ll take a leap here, and say, “I hope not!” That’s a subjective response based on my somewhat anti-hippie prejudice.

   On a positive note, I think of hippies as being progressive and responsible for the liberty of men to have long hair and women to wear pants. So, in that respect, I could go along with your theory.
   But, in the bigger picture, I think of hippies as being dirty and druggies and being responsible for too many anti-system,negative and nonproductive free-for-alls. So, no!

   No offense to any old hippies who happen by – peace and love

2. January 25th, 2007 at 6:54 pm
   ME Strauss said

   Hi Francie!
   I don’t have a theory, Francie. I only have a question. Actually it’s a wondering about similarities.

   If you replace the drugs with keyboards and and online addiction . . . and you think about the communes and communities.

   Hmmmmm.

3. January 25th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
   Jeff Brown said

   Blogs require discipline, a character trait which is in short supply when it comes to hippies. I went through my teenage years in the ’60′s and my experience with them can reliably be reduced to:

   1. The world owes me
   2. All free enterprise commerce is evil
   3. I want the profits from #2 given to me
   4. Dude, this is good………stuff.

   The only thing worse than hippies?

   Their offspring.

4. January 25th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
   ME Strauss said

   Hi Jeff,
   Don’t you think that any hippies gave birth to any Alex Keatons?

5. January 25th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
   Jeff Brown said

   I certainly do. And that’s proof there is a God, and He has a divine sense of humor.

6. January 25th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
   ME Strauss said

   Whew, Jeff, what a relief! I thought for a minute that all kids of hippies were doomed never to blog.

7. January 25th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
   Jeff Brown said

   Most of them write for moveon.org

8. January 25th, 2007 at 7:22 pm
   ME Strauss said

   Wait a minute. The character “Alex Keaton ” would never write for moveon.org

9. January 25th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
   Duncan said

   How do I say this without swearing…hmmm…absolutely positively NOT. I don’t smell, I don’t smoke drugs, I work…as do most bloggers. I don’t live in a commune. How can bloggers be hippies? after all, when did Kombi vans come with Internet access?

10. January 25th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Duncan!
    Great to see you!
    So as a fringe group, are we the flappers and gangsters of the 20s? Who are we?

    We’re certainly changing history and out of the mainstream.

11. January 25th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
    Jeff Brown said

    Alex is anything but ‘most of them’.

12. January 25th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
    Francie said

    Oops, sorry Liz. I was making unfounded presumptions there. You’re right, no theory espoused.

    I can see the community aspect, but I think blogging communities are more culturally inclusive than the counter culture communities of hippies. I think bloggers also cross wider demographics – age, economic, etc.

13. January 25th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Maybe we’re pioneers?

14. January 25th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Francie!
    No worries! I agree with you and Jeff, and Duncan. There weren’t any work-at-home mom hippies.

15. January 25th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
    Jeff Brown said

    Francie – you make an excellent point.

    Possibly the Marines are the only group more conformist as a group than hippies were.

16. January 25th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
    ME Strauss said

    So, we’re not the Marines and we’re not hippies. Who are we? Marco Polo?

17. January 25th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
    Jeff Brown said

    Liz – One of most successful clients is a hippie through and through. However, she’s very intelligent, which means her learning curve led her to some changes in her economic model.

    In other words she decided once and for all that just being against something had no value in and of itself – especially if you were wrong. She decided being rich wasn’t as evil as previously thought.

    The hippies who didn’t adjust to reality have become marginalized, not even on our radar. My favorite ‘learning curve’ hippie conversion was the guy who was so famous, (Chicago 7?) who became a stock broker. Too funny, though sad at the same time.

    Most of them eventually found out screaming you’re against gravity works well until you hit the ground.

    On the other hand, some of the absolutely coolest (coolest?) folks I know were hippies when young. They have the perspective of experiencing what it’s like to be so intensely sincere only to find out later they were sincerly wrong. I’ve driven that bus myself many times.

18. January 25th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
    David Krug said

    I think we absolutely are. Well some of us. I smoke, I do drugs, I”m an alcoholic. I’ve been to prison in a foreign country. And those are just the good things. Good thing I have a sense of humor.

19. January 25th, 2007 at 8:09 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Jeff,
    I’m not sure that I ever knew a real hippie very well when I was young — I hung with the wrong crowd. I was a theater person.

    I missed the anger, the riots etc. I was too busy studying.

    I wasn’t looking for a literal comparison.

20. January 25th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
    ME Strauss said

    David,
    You do have a sense of humor and you do take on the system.

    Maybe we’re all overgrown college kids . . . just another version.

21. January 25th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
    David Krug said

    Haha,
    Well I never made it to college. I grew up in the rugged hills of Montana. Thus my lack of fear of anything.

    So I’m more Montanan than hippy.

22. January 25th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
    ME Strauss said

    So we’re back to pioneers. I think.

23. January 25th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
    David Krug said

    I think its more pioneer than hippy.

24. January 25th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Yeah, clearing the way, building blog cabins and cutting the mainstream media to their trunks.

    I bet Duncan would buy that one.

25. January 25th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
    David Krug said

    There you go blog cabins.

26. January 25th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
    ME Strauss said

    I knew that blogrolling had a long history and tradition.

27. January 25th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
    Char said

    “Most of them eventually found out screaming you’re against gravity works well until you hit the ground. ”

    Jeff – this is the best quote I’ve seen in a long time!

    I would tend to think more along the lines of pioneers – forging the way across the unknown technology territories. It’s not just the bloggers, though.

28. January 25th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Char,
    I would suppose that bloggers would be the pioneers that were in the wagon trains. We’re not really the Lewis and Clark lot.

    Jeff is great with words, isn’t he?

29. January 25th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
    Robert Hruzek said

    Liz, intriguing question! Y’all try this on for size:

    I don’t think we’re like hippies, the pioneers, or any one particular group. Could it be we’re more like EVERY group, put together. Take a look at the blogging community and you’ll see virtually any segment of society represented here.

    It’s really like it’s two parallel worlds – one “real” and one virtual.

30. January 25th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Robert,
    I’m not sure I agree. Not every slice of society . . . slow adopters aren’t here. People who don’t own computers aren’t here. Folks who have to work two jobs aren’t here.

    I think bloggers are a self-selected group. One study said that bloggers are more intelligent and more curious on average. I suspect that we’re also more introverts than the general population.

    Blogging is an individual sport, not a team sport. So we are independent of nature — less inclined to group think, I suspect.

    Your turn.

31. January 25th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
    Rick Cockrum said

    I tend to the pioneer side of things. Closer may be the pamphleteers of the 18th and early 19th centuries – we all have something to say and want the world to know about it. Our blogs are our broadsides.

32. January 25th, 2007 at 9:25 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Rick!
    I was trying to think of them and I didn’t know what to call them. Thank you for giving them a name. Pamphleteers that makes total sense. I think you’ve hit on something!

33. January 25th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
    Whitney said

    I’m so glad Rick posted his comment so that I can finally go to bed. I’d been racking my brain trying to think of the historical reference…banging and clanging around on Yahoo’s search engine hoping that a search result would help jar loose the reference that was just out of my memory’s reach. Kept going too far back. And then he comes along with…the pamphleteers. Spot on, Rick, spot on. Nicely done.

34. January 25th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Whitney,
    I was right with you, believe me. I kept thinking revolutionaries and I knew that was wrong. I also knew it was close enough to be throwing me.

    Rick is a Hero!

35. January 25th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
    Rick Cockrum said

    Hi Liz,

    That’s what I feel like, at least. Blogs are used for everything from diaries to teaching to opinion to marketing, but as pioneers, we’re a self-selected group that’s on the forefront of using the medium to talk about what we care about.

    Speaking on a side note, hippies are getting a bad rap. When I was young I was sorry I wasn’t born 10 years earlier so I could be one. Their biggest problem was they were too young, so we ended up with a mass Lord of the Flies type of thing. Someone like Patrick Henry or Thomas Paine may have fit right in with the radicals of the time.

36. January 25th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
    ME Strauss said

    I hear you, Rick. I’ve been thinking about Thomas Paine all night.

37. January 25th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
    Rick Cockrum said

    Thanks for a good think, Liz! Like Whitney (thank you, Whitney) I’m off to bed. Of course, now the Beatles’ Revolution is rumbling around my head.

    Have a good night!

38. January 25th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Good night Whitney!
    Good night, Rick!

39. January 25th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
    Mike Maddaloni said

    Not everyone was a hippie, but everyone is becoming a blogger!

    mp/m

40. January 25th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Exactly, Mike!
    I agree with you completely.
    See comment #30.

41. January 26th, 2007 at 1:56 am
    Jessica Doyle said

    Bloggers blog for freedom from the invisible restraints society created and later idealized.

    I don’t think we are anti-anything. We are pro-choice. We are pro-individual. We are pro-community. We are solace to a much cluttered world of “same”.

    We blog to become who we are. We blog to let go. We blog to discover. We blog to share and learn. We blog for family, unity and friends.

    We are people from the world. We each have a voice. We may follow or lead with that voice. We may form alliances. We may later break them. We shy away from government legislation but fight tooth and nail to preserve our right to broadcast ourself from our blogs. We make money and sometimes we don’t. We pay our taxes and sometimes we don’t.

    We could be hippies and pioneers. We could be artists and writers or actors with managers. We could be farmers or musketeers. We could be fathers, mothers, children or sisters. We could be anyone.

    We.could.be.anyone. We are everyone.

    We will live and die. We are bloggers. We are here.

42. January 26th, 2007 at 4:32 am
    Karin said

    Hi all (10.30am here, freezing and little snow-flakes)
    If hippies are ‘outlaws of culture’ (i.e. protesting, trying to change to established ‘old’ culture) than bloggers are the modern ‘outlaws of culture’. Not an original thought of myself, but honestly stolen from Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba who wrote about this in Citizen Marketers (wonderful book).

    I always wanted to be an ‘outlaw’ now it seems I am
    http://www.thekissbusiness.co.uk/2007/01/prebook_review_.html

43. January 26th, 2007 at 6:05 am
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Jessica,
    What a lovely comment! You have caught the essence of who we are and laid it here with verve and passion. I so enjoyed reading it. Thank you. thank you.

44. January 26th, 2007 at 6:09 am
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Karin,
    (Still dark in Chicago,)
    We must be counter-culture, or at least have been perceived so as a group, or else why would the mainstream media have gone to such pains to calls euphemistic names, such as “citizen journalists” and try to define how we should work within THEIR system and THEIR rules.

    I’m sure that the many in the MSMedia see us still as outlaws, mavericks, strays, and lost sheep at the very least still.

45. January 26th, 2007 at 6:52 am
    Tim Singleton said

    Weeelllllllll, at the rate that computers catch viruses, worms and a host of other infections through having contact with the wrong kinds of sites and just because they have been exposed to other PCs who have had contact with the wrong kind of sites through the sharing of files and disks, then I would have to say, “Yeah…man. It’s like, wow, we’re back and I KNEW if we just did enough drugs that it would open up a world of info we never imagined!”

46. January 26th, 2007 at 6:55 am
    Tim Singleton said

    Seriously, though, we are the modern equivalent of those thinkers who refused to be defined by society. God bless the Internet because I am pretty sure we would have all gotten in some serious trouble by now without it.

47. January 26th, 2007 at 6:57 am
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Tim,
    I’m laughing out loud and picturing you doing George Carlin’s new improved ‘Hippie Dippy Blogger Weatherman.”

48. January 26th, 2007 at 7:17 am
    Karin said

    Hi Liz

    I do hope mainstream keeps seeing ‘us’ as mavericks, outlaws and the likes. Not because I like to ‘stand-out’ (for from that!, mostly very ‘conservative’), but fully in agreement with Tim: society needs people who don’t conform to the definitions created/dictated by that same society in order to evolve and progress (and afterwards that ‘society’ will love us for our perseverance and outlawed ideas, so in fact: nothing new under the old sun)

49. January 26th, 2007 at 7:23 am
    ME Strauss said

    Yeah, Karin,
    The mainstream needs a balance — folks like bloggers who call them on what they say, when it’s not on the money.

    I suppose it doesn’t matter what THEY call us, what matters is whether we hold true to our independent spirit and don’t look at them so hard that we slowly take on their faults instead of their virtues.

50. January 26th, 2007 at 7:33 am
    Steve said

    Hippies? I don’t know. I think, in some way, we are exhibitionists and peeping toms…voluntary and encouraged. We pull back the curtains just enough for others to peek in.

51. January 26th, 2007 at 7:38 am
    ME Strauss said

    Hi Steve,
    I know that you mean that in only the very best way.

    We are observers and reporters. We are also the observed and reported upon.

    The interesting twist to me is that we talk to each other about it.

52. January 26th, 2007 at 8:01 am
    Tisha said

    I’m going to be a pain as usual and say a little bit of both. While many bloggers are changing the way people feel, think and react and may be considered the hippies of today, they are also pioneers forging the future.

    We’ve left too much in the hands of authorities including the responsibilities and many are realizing through blogging that they can make a change.

    If your voice isn’t heard you don’t exist!

    I’ve stopped lurking and started participating:)

53. January 26th, 2007 at 8:05 am
    ME Strauss said

    Tisha,
    That’s not being pain — that’s seeing more than one point of view! I often answer “It depends.” Same thing. [That's my story and I'm sticking to it.]

    Participation sure is a key word here. You can’t be a pioneer or challenge ideas without a voice. I agree.

54. January 26th, 2007 at 11:51 am
    GP said

    Coming from Montana… methinks MORE pioneers. Shades of Frontier House??

    GP in Montana who always enjoys the “food for thought”

55. January 26th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
    ME Strauss said

    Hi GP!
    We’re a hearty bunch of independent souls!