Xeni Jardin is the BoingBoing blogger who recently admitted that she deleted (or as she keeps insisting, “unpublished,” as if there’s a difference) all references to her former friend Violet Blue. Somewhere between 70-100 posts, depending on who you believe, were all flushed down the Memory Hole. Even if a post only mentioned VB in passing, down it went.
Was this the result of a nasty romantic breakup? Or something more mundane, like an intellectual disagreement over trademark law? So far, nobody involved is saying. Here’s as specific as Xeni has been willing to get, as she told the LA Times:
It’s hard for me to articulate exactly how weird this is. Suddenly it became this big huge thing with all this public scrutiny and all this speculation. But at the time I just wanted to take this material down for a host of reasons that I don’t want to talk about in public because I don’t think it would do this person any good. We don’t blog in detail about every minute decision we make about what to publish and what not to.
…There wasn’t an attempt to hide it. And I didn’t bring it up again in part because it involved some personal, private stuff that I don’t tend to get into. Like whether someone’s character is this or that, or whatever kind of personal dirty laundry was involved.
Oh, okay! She’s actually doing Violet Blue a favor by letting people speculate about what this “personal dirty laundry” might be. She’s respecting VB’s privacy.
You know who else probably wishes Xeni had respected his privacy? Tomo Foote-Lennox. Back in 2006, he ran afoul of Jardin when the Internet content filtering software created by his company, Secure Computing, blocked BoingBoing in several Middle Eastern countries and at several U.S. corporations. Why, that’s censorship! So Xeni had no problem reporting that “numerous blogs were saying” Foote-Lennox had once posted to a Usenet newsgroup for adult baby fetishists. Here’s how Xeni couched it, in a BoingBoing post that has since been mysteriously unpublished deleted but can still be found at archive.org:
Much of the debate focuses on whether having allegedly participated in “diaper-lover” culture, as infant fetishists describe themselves, would disqualify someone from passing judgment over what online content children or adults are allowed to see.
We’re skeptical of this here at Boing Boing. We believe the problem isn’t that people allegedly into unusual sexual stuff have no business setting standards for others. The real problem: is anyone qualified to tell other adults — entire nations at a time — what they can and can’t access online?
Yeah, it’s not about what a consenting adult likes to do in his or her spare time. It’s not about interfering with the ad revenue of a blogger who can mobilize a lot of readers very quickly to dig up dirt on you. It’s about the higher principle. People should be able to access the information they want online.
Well, unless you want to access the BoingBoing posts that mentioned Violet Blue. That you don’t get to decide for yourself. And you don’t get to know why. Because it’s private.
Oh, and guess who dug up that “adult baby” connection? You’ll never guess.
“Who cares?” complaints can be left in the comments. Keep in mind that this whole BoingBoing debaclebacle has been covered in not just the LA Times but also the NY Times, CNBC, the Toronto Globe & Mail, the Chicago Tribune, and even G4. So I’m not the only one who stinks. As blogs grow more popular and powerful, we’re likely to see more stories like these.
(Hat tip to waraw and CCBC at Metafilter, as well as domoni.com)
Just as an aside: Remind me not to write about Internet “celebrities” again. Just trying to keep the twists and turns straight is maddening enough, let alone trying to explain it all. I wish Leo DiCaprio would brag about his Prius or something. Anything…
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’d settle for less nerd stories, and more Jessica Simpson boob stories. That’s just fine with me. Unless of course it’s a nerdy Jessica Simpson boob story, like… “Jessica Simpson’s boobs drive Leo DiCaprio’s Prius”. That would be cool too. Then Violet Blue can blog about it, BoingBoing can delete it then you can report it. Circle of life man.
I don’t mind the nerd stories, but yeah, they do get confusing when you don’t know who they are to begin with. Still a fun read.
Simon, going THROUGH the twists and turns to find out what is going on is maddening! I’ve heard of Boing Boing, but never actually read it. I wanted to kill some time with the drama. Jumping back and forth from various news blogs, Boing Boing, and Violet Blue’s blog posts seems like a labyrinth. I’m just glad some links I clicked in there were deleted. It’s interesting to see “Internet Celebrities” become celebrities. You’re absolutely right, it’s odd to watch the internet grow at such a crazy pace. It’s so odd so many major news sources have covered this. I really don’t want to see the day something like this is covered on the evening news; well, Entertainment Tonight will be first.
““Jessica Simpson’s boobs drive Leo DiCaprio’s Prius”.
Thank you, Pastafarian … it’s hot here, I’m tired, and I rather needed that laugh.
Thanks Pasta for starting my day with a laugh …. and now to clean the coffee off the computer screen (not the first time you’ve made me laugh like that). Nerdy Jessica Simpson boob stories- heh heh
Whether it’s celeb hypocrisy or self-righteous blogger hypocrisy it’s all good to me. Never read BoingBoing, never will.
Keep it up!
Thanks I’ll be here all week. Try the veal!
Never heard of them, don’t care what the fight was about but Jardin should have just stated that it’s her site, she was mad at Violet and removed all her content. End of story. But no she had to try and make it seem like she did it for other reasons, her choice now she has to live with it.
Violet has been very frank about the fact that she has issues stemming from a very rough youth. The newpaper and online editors who exploit her, pushing her on to write more and more salacious stuff, didn’t help. Believe it or not it’s not all that healthy to be obsessed with sex and pushing the envelope all the time. Jardin did Violet a favor, some of that writing should not have seen the light of day. Maybe one day some of you will develop a little compassion to mix in with your knee jerk righteous first amendment reactionism. Things are more complicated than than they may seem at first glance.
Now there’s a new one…
@Hi Heels — Taking someone else’s material off-line is not doing them a favor; it’s censorship. If Violet put that stuff out there, it’s her business on whether or not she wants people to read it. It is not the right of anyone else to make that decision. It is not compassion to censor someone for private reasons, especially since it doesn’t seem like everything taken off-line had anything to do with the kind of materials that you feel shouldn’t have seen the light of day.
Hell, I’ve put things out on the web that you would probably feel should be taken down because I allow personal things from my childhood to be displayed, but you know what? You don’t get to make that decision. And when you become a licensed psychologist who knows how healthy or unhealthy it is to talk about sex a lot, give me a call. Until then….
SailorAlphaCentauri –
Jardin took *her own material* off-line, not Violet’s. Her material included links to Violet’s material. Please process that information, and re-think.
It looks to me like this was the Internet equivalent of packing the old girl-friend out and sending her shoes after her. Immature? Yep. Censorship? Nup.
I do remember a next-door neighbor, in his front yard in the middle of the night, yelling “Honey? Please just throw out my shoes!”
Those books were not burned, they were “unprinted”.
I think we can get a lot of mileage out of this new language of obfuscation.