Yep, totally pissed off at me. Not Robert, but Maryam Scoble.
Last night I saw a fun video on Gia’s blog (I am not going to link to her blog again, because apparently that doesn’t matter), and linked to it, because it was really funny. Then Robert saw that on my blog and linked to her as well. He didn’t give me the credit for having found the link on Gia’s blog and linked directly to her. He is such a rip off artist. Apparently someone died and made me blog research specialist. I real all the blogs; I find the good stuff and then let you link to them. That’s enough to make one mad. A little note saying thanks Maryam for the link would’ve been real nice. Then I see on Gia’s blog (no I am not going to link to her because it doesn’t really matter) that she is thanking Scoble for linking to her, except she doesn’t acknowledge that it was this Scoble who linked to her first.
Clearly, Maryam is feeling a bit “Yoko”. No matter what Maryam does online she’s always going to be overshadowed by her husband. Whenever he likes something that she likes and writes about it (and doesn’t credit her), her contribution is going to be swept under the carpet while everyone swoons over her husband. That’s just how it’s going to be.
I have lived the past 15 years in the shadows of two extremely talented and rather well-known men. After seeing far more than a couple handfuls of my ideas greet the world under my partner’s name or under both of our names, but when the contract comes my name mysteriously has vanished, I know exactly how Maryam feels. It really, really sucks.
One time when I gave my ex an idea for one of his programmes, he took it into work, told everyone he worked with about it, they thought it was fucking excellent and thought he was a genius for coming up with it. He came home, told me all this and then said, ‘Don’t ever tell anyone it was your idea.’
Seriously.
When your own partner writes you out of the equation, it makes this “Feeling Yoko” stuff even more difficult to deal with. If, like it is now with Brian, your partner always acknowledges your contribution and makes sure that you aren’t overlooked by others (which happens a whole lot, let me tell you), then, though still not “fun”, it makes it bearable.
I will say this in my defence to, Maryam (cos I genuinely do like her):
I woke up yesterday morning with about 2,000 hits coming through from Robert. I use a free stats thingy which only records the info of the last 100 hits. They were all from Scobleizer. I had a parents’ assembly at school and then had to rush off to my first day at Channel 4. I didn’t make a point of looking at Technorati to see who else was linking to me… Also, when I wrote my post about Robert linking to me it was- and hopefully was taken as - tongue-in-cheek. Believe it or not, I don’t think that being linked to by Robert Scoble is the highlight of my life- nor my blog, for that matter.
ALSO, I CAN’T BLOODY COMMENT ON MARYAM’S BLOG UNLESS I SIGN UP TO SOME MICROSOFT THINGY!!!
I would have loved to have gone on to her blog to tell her this there, but I’m just not going to sign up to any of these things anymore.
So, I now rely on Technorati to relay this message to her. And if that doesn’t work, then if you all just click through to Maryam’s blog so that she can see people coming from here, that’d be lovely.
I find it interesting how online we battle against the draconian copyright laws, we release our writing under the Creative Commons, we allow anyone to use and publish our photos, we get seriously pissed off when we think that tradmedia is manipulating “our” free media, we all happily admit to engaging in “file sharing” and acquiring large parts of our vast MP3 collections for free, we drone on and on about destroying the top-down mentality of the media, we sit in our little ‘geek gatherings’ and collectively dream about a day when our “free”, “open” and “unrestricted” way of thinking will be the norm…
And then we get angry about not getting “credit” for linking to someone else who is linking to something else which has already been distributed far and wide.
If Maryam or Robert had linked directly to the YouTube video rather than my post with the video embedded and NOT credited me as their “source”, would I have cared? Not one single bit. It’s not my video, why should I care?
When we watch something on tv or hear it on the radio do we say, ‘Last night I was watching Channel 4’s ‘Celebrity Big Brother’- which I found out about while reading the Radio Times which is published by BBC Magazines which is owned by BBC Worldwide which is owned by the BBC which is technically owned by me through payment of my license fee…”??
It’s just silliness.
If you create something, you deserve credit. Full stop. If you merely facilitate the distribution of someone else’s creation, I genuinely don’t think it’s the end of the world if you don’t get a credit.
Typing “a href” is not a creative act. (I just made that up. And you all better fucking credit me if you use it, because it’s a great sentence.)
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