Violet Blue scratches her head over BoingBoing purge

Incongruously, the forward-thinking, free-culture-touting blog BoingBoing has apparently deleted from its giant archives more than 100 posts related to, written by or containing the name of Violet Blue, the San Francisco Chronicle sex columnist, contributor to Gawker's Fleshbot, and otherwise prolific writer about the nasty.

No one, including Blue herself, has any idea what's behind the scrubbing. BoingBoing has been conspicuously silent; despite considerable confusion in the blogopshere, the site has not posted about the issue or said they planned to.  Blogger and long-time BoingBoing contributer Xeni Jardin did not respond to an e-mail from me, and several other bloggers and writers reported non-answers too.

Almost all of the deleted blog entries, according to Blue, were posted not by her but by BoingBoing writers highlighting and linking to her work. (Here's an example of a scrubbed post, courtesy of the Wayback Machine.)  Blue said that none of the her-related posts were particularly scandalous, illegal, or "disgusting." Not all were even about sex. The one post Blue did write herself — also deleted — was edited by Jardin before publication.

"I’ve been wracking my brain thinking of what issues I might’ve come down on the wrong side of," Blue told me on the phone. "There’s been no argument, there's been no disagreement, no flame war, none of the usual things."

So she didn't kick BoingBoing writer Cory Doctorow's dog — there goes my theory. Any other possibilities?

"I haven’t blogged positively about anyone they hate. I haven’t decided that DRM is awesome. I’m not totally pro-AT&T wiretapping. I’m just trying to figure it out," Blue said.  "If there’s an issue they have with me, they haven’t told me. If it's someone I've made friends with that they don't like, no one's said, 'Hey, this person's really hurt us, and we're no longer comfortable associating with you.'  Or whatever. I'm just making it up as I go here."

It's bizarre that BoingBoing has failed to take any steps to clarify the situation.

For one thing, post-snuffing is usually "a serious no-no," said Eve Batey, Blue's friend and Chronicle editor. "That's just against the rules of the blog world."

But there's also the fact that BoingBoing has often presented itself as a stalwart of cultural openness. Doctorow himself is a well-known copyfighter — a crusader against restrictive intellectual property laws. He has removed a post at least once before — when writer Ursula K. Le Guin asked that an excerpt of her book be taken down — but he immediately wrote a long, apologetic explanation of the incident. 

In the case of Violet Blue, no such explanation has been offered, and at least one person has claimed that a comment he left on BoingBoing regarding the issue was "quietly censored."

Given that there is no apparent ill will, that the Blue posts were not illegal or obscene, and that BoingBoing has plenty of other sex-related posts that it hasn't removed, this situation will remain inexplicable until the BB crew feels like cluing us in.

Meanwhile, rumors go undisputed — free to fuel plenty of conspiracy theories and speculation about BoingBoing's intent.

top photo courtesy of Violet Blue used with permission, bottom photo of Xeni Jardin and Violet Blue in better days by justin via flickr

Comments

[DB]

There's been much discussion about Boing Boing's deletion spree today, with plenty of the site's defenders tossing out "it's their site and they can do what they want, and they don't have to offer an explanation to anyone." That's quite true. However, given the Boing Boing editors' stance on transparency and openness, their actions (or lack of actions) regarding this matter really have lessened their credibility in my eyes. Boing Boing may still preach about transparency and openness, but it will ring hollow. Oh well, it's their reputation to damage.

[Paul]

This is front page news? An independent website deciding not to post links to a sex columnist anymore?

We're three hours from SAG's contract expiring and the only story I've seen from the LA Times is about George Clooney's involvement. Cover your town's industry, folks. If Detroit's auto workers were going on strike, you better believe their paper would have a story.

[Nobody]

How can anyone -- anyone -- pretend that BoingBoing has any relevancy or credibility after this? It's a site of shameless self-promoters who lie to their audience on a more embarrassing level than the corporations they go after.

[richard schumacher]

Boing Boing now sucks. *plonk*

[jason]

Personally, I find Violet Blue to be unrepresentative of human sexuality in general. She appears to be an "enabler of the sleazy straight guy fantasy". She basically promotes female bisexuality as a normal accompaniment to heterosexuality yet she doesn't apply the same acceptance notion to male bisexuality.

We can do without the Violet Blue's of this wortd contributing to discussions about human sexuality. She is one the proponents of the bisexual double standard, a double standard which is marginalizing and segregating gay and bisexual men from society in general. I'm not shedding any tears over Violet.

[Paul]

Censors create their own irrelevance.

[SarahR]

Wow, this piece of journalistic excellence covered the spectrum from "puff piece" to "self-indulgent whining." Does anyone actually care that a group of bloggers no longer wants to be associated with another blogger? Wow.

[samuel]

Comments that posters make on Violet Blue's own website are apparently subject to moderation and a careful screening process which appears to be censorship. Violet Blue is in no real position to complain.

[Lewis]

David,

As a student of Cory's seminar when he was a visiting Fulbright prof. at USC and as someone who sat next to you when I interned at LAX last summer, I am sure there is an explanation.

My guess is that, as Kara Swisher has written, there's the Silicon Valley Echo-Chamber effect going on.

I love Violet's site; she gave CrushedPlanet's new series a rave review, but all these people came up in the same SF tech scene. It reminds me of when I began working in Hollywierd in mid-90s when indie/Sundance blew up. It's incestuous; of course there has to be some history and BoingBoing is being stubborn, and in my opinion, lame and self-sabatoging by waiting to comment on this.

I heard Swisher talk at an Ogilvy PR panel and she was ripping all the same start-up herd mentality. Funny how the Nocalers look down on Socal and yet their herd mentality/group think VC mentality is just as bad as ours.

Oh well, there goes the future of the Internet........

[Durante]

What a terrible pity! How did BoingBoing just up and turned into Fark (where "censors creating their own irrelevance" lives) overnight? That's really a shame!

[bigyaz]

Samuel: Moderating comments (to weed out disgusting, racist and otherwise vile postings) is in no way comparable to deleting postings on your own blog months and years after the fact. I'm quite sure you recognize the difference.

The fact that the subject is Violet Blue (whoever she is) or anyone else is irrelevant. BoingBoing has just sacrificed its credibility.

[booger]

I suspect that Boingboing has a good reasons for what they did, and although this makes them look bad, they can rectify the situation by explaining it publicly. Sure, you can question boing boing's credibility because of this, but you should have been questioning boing boing's credibility all along, just like you should question Violet Blue's credibility or George W. Bush's credibility.

I now see on boing boing they have addressed the situation: "Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her. . . . We hope you'll respect our choice to keep the reasons behind this private."

Hmmm. Whatever. Not gonna stop me from reading boing boing or Violet Blue.

[bob]

Boing Boing is dead to me now.

[Seth]

SarahR and others: let's get one thing straight, censorship is something that only the government can do. If a private person, group of people, or company does it, it's editing. There's a world of difference.

[Violent Steve]

Hopefully she sends the people at BoingBoing a thank you card because otherwise no one else would have known about another generic coaster writing another boring advice column about sex.

[Susie Q]

Here's the best theory I've come up with - and DO feel free to send this around the blogosphere, since hitting on the wrong answer will get the real answer just as surely as hitting on the real answer will get no response - it all comes down to this article on friend-of-boingboing Amanda Congdon:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2007/04/05/violetblue.DTL
This is a pretty blatant slam on Congdon for dishonesty regarding her corporate sponsorships, and may in fact have been related to Congdon leaving ABC ( I believe I heard a rumor about them getting upset when they found out about the side vlogging).
Essentially, Violet Blue possibly got Amanda Congdon fired, or at least that's what it looks like. I would imagine that very likely, VB found out about this in a Boing Boing-related way. It could even be that VB didn't get her fired, but betrayed their trust in revealing the info about her.
Which is why they're not saying what the reason is. Because it's actually the only thing that would make them look more hypocritical... because it's anti-transparency.
But note that the only hint we get in their note of explanation is that VB's posts were removed about a year ago - and this was the only really noteworthy thing she did around that time; at least, publicly.

[Lewis]

Like I thought, much ado over an inter-personal matter that resembles Hollywood more than Silicon Valley would like to admit.

Still, Violet has better pictures; BB I'll still take for copyfight.

[Lsv]

This is stupid, you're all a bunch of emo losers. Snuff this.

[Dirk]

Nothing new here folks. So many of the "now popular blogs" have sold out to traditional media. BoingBoing is nothing more than one more example of a corporate shill.
If you like their content then by all means keep reading it, but bear in mind that they will never bite the hand that feeds them. In my case, their tired and stale articles turned me off a few months ago, so this is no surprise. BoingBoing is a waste of my time and I have found more credible sources for my information .But, that is just my opinion. Always remember folks, that for the time being we are a free society, and have the choice to go elsewhere. Vote with your traffic is my motto.

[SameOldNewSpeak]

Follow the money. Little Brother? Big Publisher. Figure it out, already.

[Lewis]

@Dirk, come on man, share the love.

Seriously, I'd be interested in any recommendations.

[Salamandor]

@Dirk - money where your mount is, man - where's the beef?

[aluxeterna]

yes, I agree: Dirk, if you're still reading this line of comments and you would be so kind, what are the other options? This is not the first time BB has exhibited this sort of hypocrisy, and if another option is out there for some combination of that delightful esoteric/paleo-future/technowonder content to which they often link, I'd be happy (well, not exactly happy, but resigned) to move on.

(I've given up on them as a protector of human rights long ago. They still post on free speech and other issues, but their content in this seems rather worn at this point...better to go directly to the real investigative journalists for these matters.)

[KateCoe]

Did Violet make the fatal mistake of suggesting Xeni's a trannie? Or mentioned that Xeni's speaking Mayan is a fiction? (ask me sometime about Xeni and my family Mayan expert.)

Or does the scrubbing have more to do with Violet's trademarking her name, which would twist Cory's tighty-whities into a knot?

[copyrightcrayon]

Has no one noticed Xeni's pointed refusal to type Ms. Blue's name in the Boing Boing comments? I'm guessing that when VB decided to copyright her name it became an issue for the Boingers. VB's delayed response suggests there is far more to the story, but that would certainly explain the unpublishing...