Bye Bye Glutter. (For a Period of Time Anyway).

Tonight I found out that this little drama has not ended as I thought. 12 Glutter posts later, it’s still up and running. It got even more public and ugly. A private email was posted. I am speechless regarding this.

I think it’s enough. I don’t like my intelligence and personality insulted because I don’t think that person read my blog ever. I don’t like my family insulted because I am now an independent adult. I have to say, oddly, a certain bitch, after the anger subsided I saw how well placed it was, as it attacked the thing I care about most, it made me laugh. I shall probably forever say if anyone complimented me, “Oh my stuff is just dull, insipid and over wrought!” I always fancy myself a romance novel writer at 60.

I also do not want people to blame the few names you can name for this decision. It’s not them I object to. It’s more the whole culture which has developed in the Hong Kong and maybe China Blog world. That allows and perpetuates this behavior.

It is, as Phil suggests, influenced by the personalities who are here, but I also agree people can’t always help who they are. But somehow the interaction has grown as such that it also includes many opinionated commentators some with their own blogs some who spend time living that symbiotic relationship of certain plants and animals, sharks and sucker fish, (that’s what they really are called, I am not calling anyone suckers,) blog to blog to the person who comments. Sometimes it’s genuine in its thoughtfulness, even if I don’t agree with all of what it says, sometimes it’s just inane. But it all adds up little by little to being a smaller and smaller pond with load of village gossips, keeping things alive, taken out of context and reiterated wrongly. Rather than an ever expanding interconnected hyperlinked universe which is why I love the internet

I can’t speak for the rest. I know Phil and I reached an amicable understanding that we are both human, and the other guys, I doubt have thrown a thought this way since.

However, I am extremely tired from and of all of this. And tonight as look at all my future postings. I no longer want to share. As sharing is opening up myself, my thoughts and my time. To do that there has to be a pleasure in it.

And although creating art does that. Otherwise I would sit in an office and work up the corporate ladder and make money for a more settled, comfortable way of life, which I have the capacity for. And in the last two years, I came to the conclusion I don’t want to do that and much the same, I decided I don’t want to do this either. It will most probably be only a while, but I can’t say how long. I shall share for various reasons as we go along.

It’s just that when I look at my “unfinished” folder and the posts that read “Future.” I get this kind of unhappy doubting feeling. What small thing can someone pick to on to start a fight? Which could again spiral into some other argument all together.

In psychology there is an idea called “silencing,” something is done to make someone doubt their thoughts, and inhibit expression. The process has started within me, and in some ways I will be damned to let it happen again.

And as an writer and filmmaker, I cannot allow that to happen. I can honestly say before it was exciting. I once called blogging “extreme writing,” in one of my old posts somewhere. That it does not allow you a lot of time to mull, as you need to keep the blog updated, and once it’s done, you click “Post” and that’s it. It’s out in the world.

It was like letting someone peek into my mind for a little bit just as it came to me. Words I don’t share with many people and sometimes never ever at all. It is a conversation to the world I never had. And I love anything different and unknown.

But as the months passed I learn ways to keep updating but give me some time. I just plan ahead. Maybe spent a whole day writing and then faff around the whole week with new ideas. Which I have many. But I am going have to hold them back, and switch the old posts to “draft.”

Having to deal with petty personal issues over free information to me is a waste of time. And watching it spread onto other people’s private space, makes is all the more annoying (I am sorry B).

It’s not the attacks that bother me.

I have been here before.

One of my other project was hacked. Removed from site listings, I got called every kind of name you could imagine because a group of people and I were creating a free space that offered all the same services as one that was paid. I continued it because it hadn’t reached its end point, and I wanted it to. This time I don’t. I think the difference is, if I have to make a bad analogy, last time was a war. The little place versus and existing powerful place, and this time it’s a question of claustrophobia.

For five months Glutter existed peacefully with the rest of the internet world, and the influx of Hong Kong readers only gave me an extra hundred of so hits a day. It is not really that much considering the combined hits of this one and the old one. When I look at this fact, I know the size and spread of the melodrama does not reflect the numbers of readers. As I said, it’s all spread on the grapevine of little moles, who read one post and make lots of judgments.

All this doesn’t affect just me, it rubs others outside indirectly too. The other day a blog I like was doing a “Comment Fest.” Where the ever so elusive author went to every single blog he is linked to leave a part of his novel in progress. My blog was missed. He says he forgot, but I know on the day he did that, blood was dripping so to speak.

I worry that some of this crap is going to spill into the other writer’s sites. What if? I have no idea what can happen. I had no idea what occurred and the amount of people it eventually involved over one little spat was even possible.

And the time frame it took, when I posted the “Internet Dissident” Post and Peking Duck linked to it. That was the beginning of my interest and participation in Hong Kong blogs –that took place 24 days ago. It took a little over three weeks for my name and this blog to be plastered on this so called “community” in many unfathomable ways.

Glutter has over 1000 posts and I would say at least 400 of them are of pretty good quality, if nothing else it talked about stuff most people haven never had the chance to experience. I find it sickening my name and my writing is warped and will for a time after associated with an overblown misunderstanding.

This new landscape does not appear to have the same etiquette as I understand. I no longer want to advertise other blogs I like, and what they write anymore. It would bother me hugely if something happened similarly with a different group of people, had it come from a link of mine.

I like finding new blogs out there to link. My tastes will always remain edgy. There is a post I read called, “The No Power Party” I really like. Against the whole idea of having to have a dominant force in anything but I figured it could be misconstrued as a dig and decided I better not. There are some political rants I enjoyed, about a host of why conservatives stink and someone did a really funny post on the weirdest search term that found its way onto her site, which was “uterus porn.” And although I started to write about it, I had to admit linking to her is trouble.

As she outright rants against the power of white men, she outright speaks of the sexism, racism and homophobia she sees and the people who perpetuated it. So far I have not seen any serious issues over there and as I was the first to link her, I should know. If you think I am provocative in any serious way. I suggest stepping out of the Hong Kong blogs and having a look.

I have to admit I already hold my tongue because I know how conservative this city is. How stuck in it’s ways and behind in liberal thinking it can be. How unwilling it is to accept the truth and try in turn breech some gaps, because it rather not be challenged.

I wanted Glutter to do that, I figure I would start gently, before I really bit. But I don’t think the time has come and I really am not in the mood to deal with the consequences. I doubt I would ever be in the mood to deal with questionable behaviors, but there are better days and better nights to stand firm and let it wash over me.

If one little post which was a joke and a comment, (Hemlock read it and said, “It don’t think it’s completely fair, but will give us hits that’s for sure.”) Could sprawl eight blogs to put direct postings on it, I hate to imagine if I seriously decided to challenge as ask questions how it would end up. Everyone took way too seriously, which was what I was being accused off funnily enough, because I still believe, it called some people out and it could only do that if was a little bit of truth in it. Methinks doth protest too much.

But a lot of expats do live up to what I said as well as the Chinese women involved. I asked both Phil to write about it for Glutter and Ron to discuss what it is to be a father of a mixed race children. One agreed, the other didn’t even reply. But it got taken out of context again and again, and used against me. It is what a lot of Chinese people feel. I may not particularly, but ask your Chinese friends, hopefully you will have some.

I wanted to precipitate debate, I realized in retrospect it was not the best way. The person who took most offense could have written to me as I was an email away. If he stated his views, I might have changed it. He didn’t, brought it up at a bad time, and now it’s a mess, and I am quitting for a while and so is someone else in her own way, but we get to that in a little bit.

None of any of this needed to happen, if we all existed in a more cordial environment in the first place and everyone had a little more practice in discussing issues without getting irate, personal and know how to pull back. As I said, to Phil, I never meant to side step any issues, I merely tried to damage control and take the stream out of the argument and give everyone breathing time. It works on most occasions if not all I have encountered before. But not in this case.

I always thought the idea of self publishing is to allow information flow from individuals to the public by subverting the corporate media structures. A place of multitudes of voices to discuss thing outside the monolithic culture of the news media, and start conversations, but no one can start talking, if anger is the response, and ridicule is the way people think will make the point.

But I do want to make a point that we live in a Chinese city, and already that you have very few English writers of Chinese decent in this space. I do not think it’s right that I have to be part of a minority when writing about my home town, but it’s a reality I have to accept.

I know that when I approached a few other women to start doing the same they refused because of they did not want to be associated with what was out there already. I am sure after this, it’s going to put off a few more people from doing so. In fact I know. Coz Glutter is slated to start hosting different voices and different writers wanting to try to do the blog thing. A test run for them.

When I explain why I am on a break I doubt they will be very enthusiastic to take their own chance. But I did present it to them that the blogsphere was an accepting place and no one even notices your gaffs, how wrong was I, and I am glad this happened before I put someone else up there on my word.

This is not just Glutter either trolling and the continuing minor explosions exponentially to other blogs didn’t just happen to me this week. It happened to another very bright Chinese Writer across in Taiwan. Same thing, same dynamics, same bullshit. Shame on all of you involved in that one. I wrote to her as a means of support, and she wrote back and told me she decided she didn’t feel the need to share what Chinese people thought to the Westerners about politics anymore after this. It’s not an obligation. And I know from one of my favorite bloggers felt it was such a shame, it angered him. And I know he’s going to feel disappointed that this is my decision also.

But when she said that I saw her logic, and realized I don’t feel like sharing my art or thoughts in what I can clearly see a questionable environment. Maybe it’s Chinese culture as Richard Suggests. Maybe I hate dealing with bullshit when I find it unnecessary to. Especially when I decided that I hid behind as mask far too much of my life, and needed a place to truly show it.

The internet is an ever expanding entity and has plenty of room for it to grow in parallel paths. If we all have to think they same, shall we recreate the Cultural Revolution again and see if it works this time around?

All this talk about it being public and therefore obnoxious behavior is tolerated and encourage just shows me whoever happens to be talking at that moment, don’t “get it.” The stuff is free. It is about voice and speaking our own truths. There is no real acclaim to it. None of us are that important and we speak for what we stand for or not. It’s not that cut throat a world. I am not trying to get a book published or get my film to win Sundance, where the stakes are high and mean a breaking or making a career and being able to pay of your debts or not. Which in the case of the former two, is true for a lot of the participants. This thing called blogging except for a few, to them is at most an interesting diversion or at least taken that way.

So I am taking a break. I am really sorry coz it’s not everybody involved help create, perpetuate or even agree. I had such lovely emails from a lot of people. I had two favorites. One said I mastered language in the funniest of poem, another said, that I made him think. It surprised me 99% of the readers who wrote were white guys in big important corporate jobs (as they had their names and job posting attached.) Maybe that’s who my HK reader base is. Maybe it’s who was most compelled to separate themselves from the pack. I don’t know. I don’t care what they do or who they are, just that they enjoyed Glutter.

But I think I this piece is as well written as I am going to allow the time for and I think there is a lot for people to think about within it. I doubt so much if this will get the sort of attention the other half page and one comment could ever reach, because who’s going to read five pages worth of what’s wrong with the way it is as it stands when it doesn’t piss them off in a personal way. Hopefully no comment or word that can be repeated over and over, and picked at.

Although I can think of about six people who would wade through this and no doubt by the end of today, my inbox will be them replying to this in their own way. I am turning off the comment box for this, because I am sick of private feelings spread for the public to see. And this blog was always about private feelings for the public to see.

But I have lots of other things to do. It’s not like I don’t have another huge list of creative projects and even collaborations to work on. When I finish those, I probably need a space to share it, and then maybe Glutter will come alive again. I promised myself it won’t be within this year though. But the year ends very shortly so maybe until my 30th birthday.

But the truth is I know the lost is not leaning towards my side. It’s leaning towards yours more.

And now as Jerry Springer (a ridiculous caricature of a US talk show filled with cat fights, trashy activities and behaviors) says at the end of each show

“Take Care of Yourself and Each Other.”