I’m trying to make my mind up whether to do what Tigtog has done and de-link Barry, AKA Amp, AKA Alas, a Blog, from my blogroll. At the moment I’m inclined not to.
I love Alas. It was one of the first US blogs I read regularly. The posts there by Amp and others are long, meaty, informative. His link farm threads are always a goldmine. His caricatures are wonderful (not so much the strip cartoons, which don’t grab me). Above all, Amp has been a civil, rational, brilliant male feminist voice in the blogosphere, and in my mind has more than done his bit to move society forward just a little. But there is a problem.
A couple of months back, Amp, beset by financial problems, was approached by a buyer for the larger website, amptoons.com, of which Alas is a part. Amp no longer controls the site, except for Alas. The buyer – in a quite subtle sort of way – links, on the Amptoons home page, to “Amped Reviews”. These are reviews for, largely, pr0n.
The reason for the buyer’s interest is not that feminists will find their way to the pr0n links and be converted, but that by linking there in this way, he will improve his Google ranking on the back of the popularity of the Amptoons domain. In other words, feminist bloggers linking to Alas will boost traffic to pr0n sites – which is kind of a problem as a lot of feminists (not all of them) are not impressed by pr0n. To put it mildly.
You can read about it in his own words here. I’ve added “rel=”nofollow”" to the link, which apparently negates the advantage to the pr0n merchant.
Plenty of wise people have pointed out that Amp, who provides a public service for free, should be able to do anything with his own domain he bloody well likes. “…unreasonable — in fact, unjust — expectations of a blogger’s duties to them,” says Chris Clarke, and I have a lot of sympathy for that view. Others have pointed out that we all go to free sites like Google and MSN all the time, which link to all kinds of awful stuff, so why not.
But.
I went and had a look myself, and it’s evident to me that the pr0n reviews and links are not just separate entities “hanging off” the Amptoons main page. Click on “review software” (which is an inaccurate description, although the reviews do include software), and it takes you to a page with the links in question. The page template has the soft yellow background with heading and graphics in terracotta – just like Alas, a Blog. The heading says “Amped Reviews”. if you’re new to Amptoons.com, it would give you the definite impression that “Amp” of Alas, a Blog and “Amped” Reviews would be the same person. It ties together the blog and the “review” page and identifies one with the other, even if this is specious.
Secondly, if you’re a regular Alas reader, the presence of paragraphs like these in the “review” pages will make your brain bleed out of your ears with the sheer dissonance of it:
Fleshlight
Score: 92 | Added: Jul 13, 2006
Fleshlight. It’s like having a girlfriend, but without all the nagging and headaches. [Misogyny on Amptoons. Joy!] Now more dates with Ms. Michigan. Find out if the Fleshlight is the real deal.Review of MILF Lessons
Score: 84
Sub-Section: Mature
Company: BangBros Online
Date: Aug 8, 2006
Milf Lessons is, without a doubt, one of the best Milf sites out there. Every week, it features a new sexy mom, just dying to get it on with one of the young studs. These Milfs just get out of control when the camera goes on. The things they do and say will make even you blush. Each one is aged to perfection and presented in DVD quality videos.I cannot say enough good things about Milf Lessons. These moms are super hot and down right dirty. Exactly what I, and all you are probably looking for. Each mom has her own full-length video …[Snip product description...]
…It offers a great mix in the types of women. Some of them are down right gorgeous trophy-looking wives, while others seem to be just your average hot mom. The one thing I did notice that they all had in common was their chest size. Most of these women have some rather large knockers. This seems true on a lot of MILF sites. I have my opinion as to why that is, but that isn’t very important.
Liz Vicious
Score: 85 | Added: Jul 22, 2006
As the hottest thing since slice bread, Liz Vicious is taking the Internet by storm. Find out if the red-haired goth teen lives up to the hype.
Oy, the spam I’m going to get having posted that.
Much as I sympathise with Barry/Amp’s situation, much as I admit I don’t know what I’d do with my own back to the wall, much as I leave the Pr0n / Anti Pr0n debate quite a way down on my list of priorities… I still think he’s seriously messed with his “brand”, as they say in corporate land. Or as we say here in Orstraya, he’s shat in his own nest.
I don’t feel condemnatory towards Amp. I just feel sad. I think he does too.
.
Nick Possum
Uncensor
Comments (9)
Nice analysis, Helen. I’m with you that pr0n is not at the top of the list of my feminist priorities, although as I posted last week the industry’s uptick in highly misogynistic pr0n is definitely troubling.
The main reason I delinked Amp is that I’m not willing to have a link at my place that takes a reader to a site benefiting pornographers (no matter how minutely, and with Google rankings only) without the readers’ knowledge.
It’s a terrible shame after all the good work Amp has done in building a strong community there and a valuable ‘net resource. I’m sick about it.
I’m hesitating to de link it because Alas *is* such an awesome resource. I just started reading Blue of The Gimp Parade because of her guest posts there, for instance. I might change the alt.text in the link to warn readers that other parts of the domain are very different from the blog.
I think it’s quite a compelling argument that we can’t keep ourselves pure because of clicking on Google, etc – on the other hand, Google, MSN and the rest are not self proclaimed feminist sites…
[...] http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2006/10/08/alas-a-blog-reviews-hardcore-pornography-websites-did-everybody-but-me-already-know-this/#comment-3416 http://sourduck.blogspot.com/2006/10/alas-porn-site.html http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2006/10/08/the-revolution-will-be-commodified-alternatives-to-selling-feminist-websites-and-blogs-to-the-man/ http://hugoboy.typepad.com/hugo_schwyzer/2006/10/ampersand_male_.html http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/?p=411 http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/?p=412 http://laurelin.wordpress.com/2006/10/10/alas-a-sell-out/ http://viv.id.au/blog/?p=88 http://angryforareason.blogspot.com/2006/10/no-really-im-feminist.html http://sparklematrix.wordpress.com/2006/10/09/alas-a-blog-sold-out-to-pimp-my-ride/ http://ginmar.livejournal.com/909066.html http://witchywoo.wordpress.com/2006/10/10/fuckery-and-betrayal/ http://rocr.xepher.net/weblog/archives/001793.html http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2006/10/12/pimp-my-domain-for-dummies-not-mysterious/ http://fauxrealtho.com/2006/10/10/um-yeah/ http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2006/10/11/bad-ideas/ http://community.livejournal.com/mf_unicorns/7838.html http://incurable-hippie.blogspot.com/2006/10/alas-bastard.html http://community.livejournal.com/mf_unicorns/8004.html http://www.slanttruth.com/2006/10/11/confused/ http://community.livejournal.com/mf_unicorns/8258.html http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/42929/ http://danaseilhan.livejournal.com/98287.html http://melancholicfeminista.blogspot.com/2006/10/new-feminist-blogosphere-blowup-porn.html http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/index.php/2006/10/13/the-fascinating-tale-of-pro-feminist-male-blogger-and-the-porno-sell-out/ http://blog.shrub.com/archives/tekanji/2006-10-13_426 http://www.feminish.net/2006/10/13/another-world-is-possible/ http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2006/10/13/amp-gate-epilogue/ http://angryandqueer.wordpress.com/2006/10/13/turned-out-to-be-a-unicorn-after-all/ http://castironbalcony.media2.org/?p=268 [...]
I’d rather see people not support Amps Porn business. It is interesting that some think that he is the male spokesperson for feminism. I don’t think he is. Amp/Barry has shown his colors.
Why link to him? Alas is not what some think it is or was. It will not be the feminist male blogger site that some viewed years ago. Many will never erase his actions from their knowledge base, and to link to him, thinking that a service is being done to man-kind, is ignoring the feminist women bloggers who have just as much to say, and *they* won’t sell out to Pr0n, and have said as much.
Amp finally showed what he thought of women. Let it go. The curtain was pulled back. Why try to stay linked and pretend it didn’t happen, and that he is not *still* being the flagship for males that sellout to P0rn businessmen. It’s done, no going back.
Every time you promote his link, you are in the same boat; you are okay with what he did. He needs you because you helped him sell to the P0rnphucks, he greased his pockets with the bodies of little girls and women, and to me, it isn’t much of a decision as to whether I want to link to and support that kind of site. I am not going to dice up his decision in an effort to make an excuse for his actions.
If you desire a consistent feminist discourse, try here, http://womensspace.wordpress.com/ . There are plenty of link stems from there.
If you want to make sure that your links aren’t supporting pornographers you can use the rel=”nofollow” tag in your link. Then google won’t follow it.
Hi Maia
I’ve done that in my post, but unfortunately, Wordpress doesn’t allow me to put “nofollow” in blogroll links.
I’ve changed the alt.text to warn anyone who clicks, but I think actually having the link on a page which is refreshed improves the page ranking – anyone know?
Uppity Biscuit
It’s not that I disagree with you, but when I read your post “the worst immorality” I can categorically state that I couldn’t pass those criteria myself. So I’m wrestling with the problem that deleting Amp’s link, besides denying voices like Blue, Maia and Piny to new readers, I’m indulging in pretty bad hypocrisy.
On the other hand, yes, those links suck…
I think I may be influenced by the fact that when I started thinking about it, I am probably clicking on links every day where I don’t know who I’m giving cyberspace to- and the amount of ci_a_lis, Russian d_a_ting and v_1_agra spam I get testifies to that. I know how lame that must sound, but here in Oz, we could publish the most kickass article in the MSM and it would profit one of two media moguls – Rupert Murdoch or the Packer clan – who we disagree with violently.
And what about my own domain? I’ve never met the people who run my server IRL. Should I run a check or something? How would I know? What about all our ISPs?… and the list goes on…
Helen, you’re right about virtually everything here, alas. I didn’t design or write the review pages, and to tell you the truth I’ve only looked at them once. But after reading your post, I’ve written the author and asked him to remove the word “Amped” and to change the color scheme.
I can’t blame anyone who delinks me. But I’m grateful to those who can still manage to have sympathy for me despite my screwing up, and to those who haven’t delinked.
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