1) Libel/defamation law
2) Abuse, bullying - 100% legal, but extremely undesirable social behavior.

Often, someone argues “anyone could have their own soapbox”, so then #1 is solved (”whether even defamation laws were really as necessary”), so presumably #2 is ALSO solved - that is “*EVEN* … necessary” implies there is NO wrong which cannot be effectively redressed in this wonderful new world of equality.

When it’s pointed out that the “soapbox” argument is just let-them-eat-cake, the argument shifts. It brings up the fact that libel/defamation law can be abused, which substitutes a cost-benefit analysis for the fact that extreme wrongs can be done without redress. It’s a valid argument to say “Yes, little guys can be libelled and defamed, have their reputations ruined, but if there’s a legal means to fight back, those means will be mostly perverted too by the big guys”. I’m not saying this argument is wrong - I’m saying it exists purely apart from any blog/Internet fantasy, and should be debated on its merits or lack thereof. That is, it’s an argument against libel/defamation redress based on subversion, nothing to do with blog/Internet. Trying to make it about blog/Interent goes back to let-them-eat-cake, that an ordinary person has very little power.

This also holds for abusive bullying. One can say “Yes, A-listers can lie, smear attack, insult, and Z-listers can’t effectively fight back. But if there were any institutional means of redress, that would be very very bad, an overreaction causing far more harm than good”. I am also not saying that argument is wrong (though it sure looks suspicious when coming from A-listers). However, it’s again a cost-benefit analysis that shouldn’t deny the power imbalance exists.

The idea about “newspaper columnists” was my way of pointing out that “other louder voices” have always existed and are of little help overall. That is, the argument that a Z-lister can find some othe A-lister to champion their cause is like an argument that a citizen might be able to find a metro columnist or radio talk show host to help them out. It happens on occasion, but it’s very rare.

The exponential distribution of attention is a mathematical fact. Structurally, there will be a few people with immense power, and many who are practically voiceless. That’s not what blog evangelism preaches, but everyone can’t be above average either.

As to the last point, who ever mentioned newspaper columnists or becoming a cause celebre? I’ve reached hundreds of thousands of people on this blog alone - without ever having any that important or interesting to say - and as far as I can tell no columnist has ever mentioned me (oops - Mathew, but he doesn’t *really* count) nor have I ever become a cause celebre for anything.

Frankly, it would be easier to have a conversation with you if didn’t keep theatrically exaggerating the case - the point I made in my first reply. You used the words “sneering in the face” earlier to frame the threat, yet there’s a chiding, mocking tone to your responses that is uncomfortably close to just that - pollyanna-ish? Spare me, OK? I simply think it’s quite easy to reach a large audience with even a modest blog and a simple message. You seem to have a very different idea.

I think your last claim is Pollyana-ishly confusing fights between people who each have some effective access, where both have loud voices, with the problem of the imbalance itself. Sure, it can happen that someone’s case gets taken up by a newspaper columnist or becomes a cause-celebre. But it’s a rare event, precisely because attention is so exponentially distributed that there are so few of those slots available.

And I frankly doubt that even in those cases would the imbalance you suggest often be the case - if someone has a legitimate beef, their story will get picked up in an atomized media landscape - their own blog may not be the loudest voice, but other louder voices will likely pick up the cause as well.

And it’s a deep peeve of mine, since I’ve been hearing that nonsense for more than a decade now (yes, pre-blog, going back to the popularization of the Internet). Too often coming from an arrogant bully who is metaphorically sneering in the face of someone he’s viciously attacked and he knows damn well can’t effectively respond.
[Not accusing you of this, but explaining I do think the issues warrants some emotion to it, other than the cruelty of let-them-eat-cake (as in, let them post on their own A-list blog)]

Do you really believe this, in an age where a tiny, tiny, number of A-listers have huge megaphones, and basically everyone else squeaks down at the bottom of the crowd?

This is not a rhetorical question - how, after it’s clear that a few bloggers reach tens of thousands, can whip-up “dumb” mobs, have major media connections … and most other people have at best a diary page - can you seriously write that a person libelled by what is by rational measures a syndicated columnist, should be content to write something somewhere than virtually nobody would ever hear?