Bacchus

Sunni: Has your ErosBlog gig always been mostly posting pictures and pointing to other sex sites? Your current entries seem to go back only to your switch to GreyMatter.

Bacchus: I'm not sure I understand? My archives go all the way back to October 2002.

Sunni: When I clicked through to your archives and went to the bottom of the page, the first entry was for September 1, 2004. Let me check again. [extended pause] Oops. That's where your daily archives begin, but higher up the page, under monthly archives, I see the links going back to 2002. I totally missed that section -- and I don't have the excuse of any pictures there distracting me! [laughs]

Bacchus: Well, now you've got something to read next time you get a slow rainy weekend. [chuckles] I've always posted pictures and pointed to other web sites; my goal was always to be more of an anthologist than an author. I'm trying to build links to fun sexy stuff on the web, not trying to create stuff like that myself. There's a bit of the critical role to the picture-posting part; I enjoy finding and sharing images that strike me as better, somehow, than the general run of ho-hum pornography. My commentary -- about sex, porn, the web, society -- has always been a sort of tertiary effort, something I do when the muse strikes me, but not something I see as essential to the blog. Sure, it helps give the blog a unique voice, but it's never been the main purpose.

Sunni: It's interesting to me that one of your recent non-sex posts has generated more discussion than any other ErosBlog entry I've seen. I'm talking about the one where you called people who remove web pages "internet vandals". Were you surprised by the negativity your rant received?

Bacchus: I said I expected hate mail right up front, and I did. But I was quite surprised at the nature of it. I expected people to disagree with my absolutist claim that there's nothing to be gained in removing things from the web, because it's really quite debatable. I never expected them to be so dismissive of my claim that the web is important because of its connections. Hearing my concerns dismissed as "minor problems of link maintenance" was a shock. And the idea that I was trying to "control" or "dictate" the behavior of others caught me flat-footed. I still don't see where that's coming from. What really shocked me, though, were all the people who clearly wanted my arguments silenced, who argued in various ways that I shouldn't have spoken out or that my opinions were not legitimate and I therefore shouldn't have expressed them. That's an old political correctness trick, where someone says "It's wrong to make that argument" instead of saying "That argument is wrong". That really got my dander up; I'm a free speech abolutist, so I can't abide someone telling me that particular arguments should never be voiced.

Sunni: It was clear to me that you weren't trying to force your will on anyone, but several commenters seemed to think you were. Do you think that's because they felt bad for the people you were giving the tongue-lashing to? A lot of that seemed quite like the kind of spats I recall from high school, and don't miss at all.

Bacchus: I was homeschooled, so I don't know what goes on in high school. I'm bewildered where the idea of force came into this debate. Force is guns in your face. Did I say, "People who do this should be threatened with guns, or taken out and shot?" Did I say, "There ought to be a law against this?" I did not. So all that came from somewhere out in left field, as far as I'm concerned. And I don't know why anyone should feel bad for the bloggers who triggered my rant. They left a reassuring goodbye message in which they said, in effect, that they were fine, that there was no crisis, and that they didn't have any compelling reason to pull the blog but just thought it would be better for them. I've bitten my tongue in the past because I thought a particular blogger might be in a crisis leading to bad judgment, and didn't need any friendly fire from my direction. In this case, I decided to take these bloggers at their word.