Jim Groom isn't particularly thrilled with recent criticism of his "A Domain of One's Own" presentation. I think that the presentation itself makes a good point; for my own part I find hosting my own domain insulates me from arbitrary policy changes and marketing practices common on hosted platforms such as Google, Facebook or Twitter. But critic m,ay have a point about the presentation. He writes that Groom "uses a comic-book-superhero avatar, speaks in a steady stream of movie references, peppers his writings with high-wattage expressions ('excited', 'blown away'), and runs a sidebar of 'testimonials' adjacent to every blog post." And he - like myself - is rather less inclined than Groom to self-identify and express oneself through (mostly commercial) cultural icons and images.
I don't think this is generational, I think it's cultural. I would say that Canadians, for example, prefer a much more grounded, more local, softer, and more personal form of self-identification. We don't go in for marching bands, flag-waving, visual effects, super-heroes and explosions quite the way Americans do (probably no other culture does). We don't identify quite so much with corporate icons (other than hockey teams), scenes from movies or television stars. And we definitely don't do the sort of personal branding or self-marketing that we find south of the border. So the Groom style of presentation feels a bit plastic, glitzy, over-the-top and, yes, self-indulgent. That's OK; it works in his own environment. But maybe not so much here.
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