Dave Winer has cooked up a snappy new application for aggregating entries and images from bloggers at the political conferences, and has deployed it at a site powered by a high-speed server. All of this is very cool, and deserves all the link-love that Dave requests.
Using the prospect of seeing a picture of a naked woman to draw attention to his new site is would be not cool, but Dave has explained to me that he intended to give specific warning, so that people who might be offended wouldn’t follow his link. I would have constructed such a warning differently, but I was wrong to infer from Dave’s entry that he intended to encourage visitors to go and ogle.
Dave clearly cares that people not think ill of him on this kind of point, and although he and I certainly disagree about gender politics at a number of points, on this one I mistakenly concluded that Dave was up to something roughly the opposite of what he wanted to do — sorry, Dave, my mistake.
Posted by AKMA at July 24, 2004 12:14 PM | TrackBackOh you were doing so well AKMA, you know, at the generosity thing -- but that last paragraph spoiled the whole effect. If I may be so bold, since you so frequently offer advice -- loosen the collar a bit, we're not all members of your herd. And btw, nipples are one of God's creations too, a rather nice one. And me have nipples too, so there. Neener neener. ;->
Posted by: Dave Winer at July 24, 2004 02:11 PMExcuse the typo, I meant "men" not "me" (although me is one of men).
Posted by: Dave Winer at July 24, 2004 02:13 PMDave, I have nothing against people's body parts — I like them, in fact. But the ways we call attention to, conceal, consume, and show respect for bodies and parts communicates a lot (often more than we deliberately plan to communicate).
I don’t see the congruence between your advice that I lighten up and your indication that you were trying to warn people that they might be offended. Nipples don’t offend me; using women to sell attention does. If you were trying to help people not-be-offended, then we were on a similar wavelength and presumably I needn’t lighten up; if I should relax and not worry so much about how you linked to the post with the particular image, then it’s hard to see why you were warning people (presumably they should relax, too).
Posted by: AKMA at July 24, 2004 04:15 PM