GrodsCorp was a mostly satirical, often obnoxious, but sometimes serious blog that filled a unique niche in the Australian blogosphere from December 2003 to August 2009. Grods — named after a slang word for underpants — started out as my personal blog, but as it evolved it featured over a dozen contributors, with five regular writers joining me in the “GrodsTeam” by the end. Although it became predominantly a politics, society and media blog, GrodsCorp tackled any subject matter that took the contributors’ fancy and this resulted in the coverage of a vast range of topics. In its five-plus years of operation GrodsCorp published 2,600 posts and dozens of thousands of comments. At the site’s peak it attracted almost 100 comments per post, several thousand page views per day, and was read by a couple of hundred RSS subscribers.
By chance of timing, GrodsCorp was one of a core group of Australian blogs that was sort of roughly there when it all started; Grods was launched just before blogging really took off in this country and it out-lasted many blogs of its vintage. Most Australian bloggers were aware of GrodsCorp, for better or for worse, and more than a few current bloggers have cited GrodsCorp as their inspiration. GrodsCorp’s closure triggered several gloating, but many more fond obituaries.
In July this year I decided that I would close GrodsCorp just before heading off in December for a twelve-month overseas adventure. I decided that GrodsCorp had had its time and I couldn’t devote the attention to the site it required while travelling. While I was a bit saddened by this decision I knew that it was best to wrap the site up on my own terms rather than let it die a prolonged and undignified death. However, despite my plans I ended up pulling the plug on 1 August — four months earlier than I’d planned. The reason behind the early closure is a story for another day (no speculation in comments, thanks — I’ll just delete it anyway) but I’m confident that the story will one day be told.
Five years is a long time on the Internet, and a lot happened in GrodsCorp’s five years. When I started blogging in 2003 the medium was still relatively young. Blogging was evolving — it continues to evolve today — and not many bloggers had anything close to a mastery of the format. I certainly didn’t. I wasn’t really sure what to do with a blog, I just knew that I wanted to get involved; it seemed like a really exciting use of the Internet and I still think it is. I’ve got to say, it was pretty bloody satisfying when GrodsCorp, after years of plugging away and writing to an almost non-existent audience, suddenly found its voice and its niche and attracted a wave of new readers. Even though I reckon I’ve got a pretty good understanding of blogs, blogging, and the blogosphere now, I am still struggling to forge a shape and style for this new personal blog of mine. The challenge is part of what makes blogging so satisfying.
That Grods voice I finally found was not something I had planned or designed. Despite my attempts to control the look, feel and style of GrodsCorp, it was very much an organic beast. Even though I was nominally in charge of the place I was often surprised at the directions it took in terms of post content and comments discussion. I influenced other writers, they influenced me, commenters influenced us, and we influenced the readers. And that’s the most exciting and awesome thing about blogging: the community of writers, readers and commenters that make a blog feel alive and give it a soul.
I’m a pretty laissez faire kinda guy, and my approach to GrodsCorp was certainly laissez faire. I wrote what I wanted to write at the time, invited additional contributors as I felt like it, and didn’t care what other bloggers said about my blog. My approach to moderation of comments was not to moderate comments, as I saw blogging, and the Internet, as the ultimate democracy. Over time I learned (sometimes the hard way) that without some sort of governing guidance a democracy degenerates into barely-controlled chaos, and some GrodsCorp threads were very much that. Ultimately a handful of commenters were banned after intense trolling campaigns and I had to run my eye over all comments to remove key words and phrases.
Once a blog attracts a critical mass of readers and commenters the blogger begins to share control of the site with that community, and the blogger must find a balance between taking control and allowing freedom. Initially I didn’t exercise control because I felt like I shouldn’t; my thinking was that GrodsCorp’s community was so integral to the site it would be unfair of me to restrict it. However, with hindsight and experience I can see how careful facilitation of discussion is necessary to produce quality threads of comments and to avoid driving readers away. In fact, that was one of the first things I had a chat about with my readers at this new blog.
But having said that, the thing that made GrodsCorp so good to read was its slightly degenerate nature. There were jokes in bad taste, pithy one-liners, aggressive smack-downs, personal swipes, examples of flagrant bias, and blogwars that were simultaneously lame and awesome. Not exactly Socratic dialogue but a veritable shitload of fun. Nobody read GrodsCorp expecting reasoned and intelligent analysis of the latest Newspoll figures, but a lot of people came to GrodsCorp expecting to read and contribute to a unique and funny pisstake of Brendan Nelson, Steve Fielding or any number of fringe nutjobs that we had uncovered in dark corners of the blogosphere.
The circumstances surrounding GrodsCorp’s closure left me feeling rather ambivalent towards the site’s legacy. At the time I was quite happy to let it disappear into the Internet ether (Interether?) and move on, but with a little bit of distance now having developed between those events, and having spent some time going through the archive, I’m convinced that we published some really, really good stuff and that it deserves to stay online as a viewable archive. That’s not to say I’m blind to the less-than-ideal aspects of the back catalogue; I know that there is some really, really underwhelming stuff, some offensive stuff, some pathetic blogwar stuff, and some stuff that defies categorisation, but I can live with that. For this reason I’ve put GrodsCorp back online with some content removed (posts related to the reason behind the early closure, posts that would only prolong pointless blogwars, and posts that simply have no place being online) and I’ve also deleted all comments as I refuse to go through nearly 30,000 comments one-by-one. Some will crow about gutless self-censorship, salute their reflection in their computer monitors, solemnly declare blogospheric victory, and feel a warm inner glow of smugness as they read this in their mothers’ basements, but, like, for fuck’s sake, whatever.
If I was starting GrodsCorp today there’s no doubt that I would do many things differently, but one of the things that made GrodsCorp unique and made so many people want to read it was its anarchic nature and the feeling that anything might (and probably will) happen. In the end this anarchy is what brought about the demise of the site earlier than planned, but GrodsCorp had a time and a place and I’m not afraid to admit that its time and place has passed. It was heaps of fun, but.
So what was Grodscorp?
At least you could edit your own comments at GrodsCorp.
Nice post, Scott. I remember some of the wild and chaotic comments and posts fondly as well as the more “serious” ones.
I’ll head over to Grods soon and read the archives for old times sake.
But the comments were hilarious! Bron even gave me a medal of honour for something!
Grods was he only place I knew of that could go from Brendan Nelson to Fleshlights in 3 comments. And not feel like any continuity in the conversation was lost.
I lurked for months before commenting, almost always getting a great laugh (and more then once getting my school internet account suspended. CENSORSHIP!!!)
By the end I felt like I had been around Grods forever, so much time had passed and so much had changed around the Blog and the community had grown so much.
But looking back I really only caught the end, and I am glad that I found it before it was gone.
It’s a cliche but, “It’s better to burn out than fade away”.
Grods = the Jim Morrison of blogging.
“Nobody read GrodsCorp expecting reasoned and intelligent analysis”
It still had more cred than the Herald Sun.
My only problem with grods was the targeting of poor cretins who deserved more pity than anything. I thought u lot were better than that.
I think Neil Young said, it’s better to burn out than to fade away…
I know Cambo, but Neil is still going (just). I used Morrison as the example because he truly did burn out after achieving greatness, just like Grods.
But what Morrison once said is equally apt here:
“I’m going to get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.”
I was never a Morrison fan (he died way before I was born).
I wonder if there will be a Grods movie and I wonder who will play Scott? And no one say Val Kilmer.
Hmm, what’s the name of the guy who plays Austen Powers? He’d just need to grow a beard.
I loved Grods cos it was a place where I could say what I often felt couldn’t be said anywhere else. And because it was a place where no one was afraid to call a spade a fucking shovel. Its demise, as understandable as it is, has caused me immeasurable hurt.
Oh, and the fleshlight jokes. I was a fan before the cricket-fleshlight post, a cult member thereafter. When Prodos met the fleshlight in photoshop heaven there was no turning back.
This new blog is much the same as Grods, just with less John Surname fagging things up.
Shut the fuck up all of you.
Grods spirit is afraid.
Is totally alone.
And is 3,000,000 fleshlights from home.
So when is iGrods 2.0 starting up?
I wub my iGrods 2.0
I didn’t like Grods much. I thought most of your humour was lame. I thought you set a bad example to school children on the subject of cyber-bullying. And if you’re a film-maker on the strength of the Lachlan Connor series I’m a musician because I’ve just learnt how to play When The Saints Go Marching In on guitar.
But that said, I liked some posts a great deal. I will always think fondly of Bruce Everett’s first guest post (even if I think he went a bit overboard) and I will always appreciate posts that attack Jim Schembri.
Speaking of the posts in which you attacked Schembri for blogging after he dismissed the medium, are you going to attack Guy Rundle at Pure Poison for blogging at Crikey after he dismissed the medium?
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/05/09/guy-rundle-on-blogs/
Cheers.
I for one loved Grods and it took me a while to get over its demise.
I have moved on now but I still hate Scott for closing it …
: )
Unique niche, yes.
I too spent much time there even though I only discovered it in its later days. I don’t know why either. ;-)
Cultural memes serve a purpose I guess. And there was a desperate need for ranting, immature or otherwise. Our country was invading other countries ffs.
I was never a fan of some of the attempted smack-downs of random right-wingers and the reason I expected more was because your Connor Lachlan series was excellent, and the interviews you did during that election of the far left were respectful and insightful. I still consider that as an excellent example of utilisation of one man’s resources to produce some awesome citizen journalism. In fact, I wanted to move to Victoria to vote for Margarita Windisch.
And there is still a niche for serious interviews and spoofs of both the far left and right, so I hope you keep developing your craft and are back in Oz for 2010.
I’m sure I’m not alone though, in saying that if its early closure had anything to do with us commenters, well, our humblest apologies. Am I allowed to note that you obviously aren’t being sued by Pauline Hanson?
Congrats on creating something bigger than itself though, reflective of its time and place in cultural history. Pretty cool eh?
If you remember the Grods, you weren’t really there.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Grods was the blog we had to have. So many cliches, so little cyber space to list them all.
For someone who was there from Grods early-ish days, and got to star in one of its salubrious Youtube debuts to at least five viewers, I have to say: good on ya, Scotty.