Blogging For Better, For Worse

Throughout this semester, my global communications class has explored many of the ways blogs can be used in communications contexts. Marketing and public relations executives constantly find new and exciting ways to take the blog to new levels, and blogging is certainly not limited to theses professionals. Any average person can have his or her own blog, and some of these Average Joes’ blogs have become global phenomena. Unfortunately, even with all their benefits we also use blogs for bad. The dark side of blogging has affected the SMU community in two major ways this academic year.

First, a website called Dirty D Town uploads pictures daily, mostly of SMU students in compromising or manipulated situations. As many students know, most of these pictures are taken from Facebook without permission, and posted out of context along with disparaging comments.

More recently, students can find their friends and their own names on a similar site, juicycampus.com. Even more disturbing with the juicycampus site is that posts are made by students, about students, as opposed to Dirty D Town, which is maintained by an older outsider. What juicycampus lacks in photos, it makes up for with detailed personal attacks, including first and last names. Students who visit the site curious about whether their own name appears on it, and the students who are doing the posting generate hundreds of hits daily, driving more advertising dollars for the sites administrator(s). 

Sites like Dirty D Town and juicycampus present the community with a dilemma. We all want to see what is being said, whether we are the ones posting or the opposition to the existence of the site, but each time someone visits the site or posts a comment, even one condemning the site, it becomes more popular. Ideally, a total boycott of the both sites and any others like it would be the answer, but as we see on a larger scale with tabloids and entertainment blog sites, as a culture, we like to be in each others’ business, celebrity or not. The more damaging the story, the more popular it is.

So of course I think it is important to think about how to get students to boycott sites like Dirty D Town and juicycampus, but isn’t it more important to think about why they got started at all?