Interesting debate today — for a small period of time — BubbleGeneration’s Umair Haque leveled some interesting assertions at Mikey A et al. over at TechCrunch, and subsequently took the post down … but was then put up again, in response to it getting mirrored over at Crunchnotes.

His own assertions aren’t really that interesting to me (TC is plateauing, its ongoing growth is vested in the conflict of others, love >>> hate, koooooo-m-baya), but his other thoughts about taking TC on *is*. More specifically, that its a tough thing to do, because TC is a multi-headed monster, and incurring said wrath is like inviting a multi-layered dogpiled beating.

I mean, I don’t have anything particularly profound other than saying that I *agree* — somewhat.

First of all, Mike A et al. rarely single out or take on small minows and bottom feeder blogs (points to self). Secondly if he does, it is usually because its in reaction to a shit blogstorm that has occurred secondary to that.

Having said that, Umair’s got a point.

If you have a beef against what TC has written about you, there’s very little recourse.

Oh, sure … in *principle* having a blog means that you also have the potential platform to millions. But come now. If you’re reading *this* blog, you *aren’t*.

Fact is, if you want to rebut something Miky A has said about you or your business, there’s not much you can do to refute it, even if you have your own blog, particularly if that blog isn’t known, and you have no juice in the business.

Is it unfair? Of course it is.

But that’s the dynamics and economics of attention.

And you can substitute TechCrunch for “Perez Hilton”, if you want (although its a poor analogy: there’s no reason why he would write about you unless you were a minor celebrity involved in some stage of humiliating personal distress), or a larger publication that isn’t blog-like.

Of course what makes this challenging from a strictly blogging-centric point of view, is that blogs are usually fairly flat structures (particularly if its a single author blog) — and because of the personal nature that blogs often demand their authors to take, personal beefs can come out.

We can debate about whether or not such beefs actually *make* the target of the beef successful (or, more succesful, rather, than someone who is the object of praise — see PayPerPost … er, Aizea, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days) … but at the end of the day, attention is like any other commodity.

There is a natural scarcity of it, and some destinations have bucketloads of it, while others have none. Do stewards of that resource have to guard it carefully? Somewhat. Do they have an ethical obligation not to be royal douchebags? Of course.

But whether they are or not is immaterial, and much like gravity, the deathspiraling career of Britney Spears, and the inexplicable never-ending success of American Idol, these are things I take as givens now, and now worth wasting my time over the why’s and wherefore’s.

Mostly because I know that asking such questions, beating my chest, and woefully lamenting my poor lot in life (if I were ever the target of an injustice) {not that Umair *is* though} really accomplishes little.

Now, that’s not to say that as time turns and the wheels of change move on, sites like TC will not continue to lose their status as chief gorilla pimps of “new media”. I mean it might. But I don’t envision any one of us being agents of that change, necessarily, because of (another) nerd / blog / geek fight.

I think :)