Samizdata » M

Moonbat

Perry de Havilland (London) — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 08:40:27 +0000

noun. See ‘Barking Moonbat’.

MSM

Perry de Havilland (London) — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 14:37:26 +0000

acronym. Mainstream media

Mediasphere

Perry de Havilland (London) — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 16:30:33 +0000

noun. The conventional media collectively (as opposed to the blogosphere) . See Old Media.

Moblog

Perry de Havilland (London) — Fri, 06 Jun 2003 23:25:35 +0000

noun. A blog maintained via mobile hardware, typically a mobile phone (‘cell phone’) with a built-in digital camera. Moblogs are usually ‘photo journals’ rather than text intensive (though this varies).

Whilst moblogs are general run from a phone, it can also be run from a laptop, palmtop or web enabled PDA as the defining element of a moblog is it is used to ‘blog away from the desk’.

Misting

Perry de Havilland (London) — Wed, 20 Nov 2002 12:18:20 +0000

verb. Similar to fisking in that it is a refutation of another’s views, but misting is less aggressive and is usually humorous. ‘Mistings’ usually take the form of an imaginary exchange of views.

‘Misting’ is really MiSTing – from the show MST3K, Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was a show on The Comedy Channel about characters who were captured by malicious aliens and forced to watch terrible old sci-fi movies. They responded by commenting (rather hilariously) about the movies.

The term has rather different connotations amongst German speaking bloggers.

Minarchist

Perry de Havilland (London) — Fri, 01 Nov 2002 21:28:17 +0000

noun. Derived from anarchist. An advocate of minimal government, often described as the night watchman state, in which the state exist legitimately only to enable appropriate law and order and to deal with collective territorial defense.

Such as state can exist to reinforce the liberty of individuals but not to ‘do things’ and is therefore a largely ‘apolitical polity’ guarding the boundaries of civil society.

Some minarchists view this as a transitional state leading inevitably to completely stateless anarcho-capitalism, whilst others see minarchy as a stable end point.

Whilst this is not a blog specific term, it is often used on ‘pundit blogs’, many of which are libertarian, hence its inclusion here.

Meme war

Perry de Havilland (London) — Tue, 01 Oct 2002 10:34:46 +0000

noun. Using googlebombs (qv), comment spam (qv), hostile trackbacks and other technical means to propagate memes.

Meme hack

Perry de Havilland (London) — Tue, 01 Oct 2002 10:24:03 +0000

noun. Intentionally altering a concept or phrase, or using it in a different context, so as to subvert the meaning. Also: memehack

Usage: for example the use of ‘socialist’ imagery to in fact advocate capitalism:

Meme

Perry de Havilland (London) — Tue, 01 Oct 2002 09:59:10 +0000

noun. A meme is considered to be a discrete idea that replicates itself, with the connotation that memes replicate themselves and are propagated by people through social and technological networks, much like both real and computer viruses.

(Coined by Richard Dawkins)

Usage: “The sarcastic meme of ‘Our friends, the Saudis’ continues to spread across the Intenet”

Note: Although not strictly speaking a ‘blog specific’ term, meme is very widely used in the Blogosphere (qv).

Also see: Meme hack, Meme war

Meta-blogging

Perry de Havilland (London) — Sun, 15 Sep 2002 01:45:58 +0000

verb. To write blog articles about blogging. Also: metablogging.

Movable Type

Perry de Havilland (London) — Sat, 14 Sep 2002 03:14:33 +0000

proprietary. A popular blog publishing software package. www.movabletype.org

Me-zine

Perry de Havilland (London) — Sat, 14 Sep 2002 02:54:39 +0000

1. noun. A blog (meaning 1).

2. noun. A single contributor weblog.

Note: The term Me-zine is already fading from use, being rapidly replaced by ‘blog’.

(Possibly coined by Dori)