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Impishly adding fuel to the fire, yesterday we asked about the drama surrounding the removal of Violet Blue's writing on Boing Boing. And today BB responded, saying a) the sex scribe's work can be found "indexed on the Wayback Machine," b) they weren't trying to silence her, that "there's a big difference between that and censorship" (which? is correct), and c) "Violet behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her." Which then leads to the inevitable, junior high school-ish question: Like, what happened?
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I suspect it was Violet's lawsuit against a porn actress who was using the same name. It's the kind of thing that only Boing Boing would care enough about to act on.
Why would they remove the material due to a lawsuit that seems unrelated to Boing Boing? Don't really care about the plight of sex columnists, but this is kinda intriguing. The Wayback Machine is commonly used by investigative types to retrieve material from the Web that's been intentionally removed for a number of reasons, sometimes nefarious. Whaddup with this?
Reading BoingBoing's explanation, it's probably not due to the copyright lawsuit, which was filed in October 2007, because the links to VB were removed in July 2007.
It sounds more personal anyway, as they sound like they don't want to be associated with her at all. If it were ideological, I imagine they'd probably not keep quiet about it.
BTW, the histrionic comparisons to 1984, Stalinist purges, and Nazi Germany in the comments on the BB story are coming fast and furious.
An LA Times blog commenter has an interesting theory.
If the Congdon story is the reason, BB is also on crack. There doesn't seem to be much wrong with the column that outed the DuPont shill. Y'know...on the face of it.
If there were only an automobile that could run on passionately fought internet arguments.
oh, also, interesting clarification from bb staff buried in that thread: apparently none of the posts were MADE by Violet Blue, rather they were posts that LINKED TO Violet Blue's website.
Pretty big distinction there, I think.
I'm not sure how uncouth it would be to point out a certain other blog's (Rhymes with Ballet Vag) coverage of this, but they've got some interesting points, such as Xeni Jardin's lesbian relationship with Violet and Violet calling herself the "5th Boingboinger."
Crazy stuff. I hope Laughing Squid decides to do something about Chicken John being involved somehow.
@ Chet Marlboro
That is simply too cogent a theory not to repost in its entirety in this thread.
From commenter 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:
">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."
Here are the conspiracy theories I found by skimming posts:
1. VB got Boing Boing friend Amanda Congdon fired from ABC by mentioning her corporate sideblogging.
2. VB trademarked Violet Blue(R), raising the ire of copyrighter Cory Doctorow.
3. Bizarre Love Triangle: lover's quarrel ends with revisionist history lesson. Oddly, no dead jocks are found with nearby bottles of mineral water.
Did I miss anything?
I think you missed one possibility:
4. Bloggers find out no one outside their insular community reads their blogs, so some dust is kicked up to generate publicity and clickthroughs.
KatyG-- I think your possibility is correct!
"hitting on the wrong answer will get the real answer just as surely as hitting on the real answer will get no response"
So *that's* how blogging works! To paraphrase Jesus and Colbert in the same quote: "you shall know the Truthiness and and Truthiness shall make you free."
The answer seems pretty clear to me: The Internet was running low on drama. Violet Blue clearly took one for the team to get the drama revving up again. Thanks, Violet!