I am still of two minds about the wisdom of expressing an opinion in print about the latest developments in the cyber world of blogging; something which, I am sure, most of you are aware has rocked Maltese society like a force 8 Richter Scale earthquake... I had decided to leave it well alone. Blogging is just not my scene.

Anybody who knows me well will agree that, no matter how annoyed and frustrated I am about something, like, for instance Renzo Piano's open-air theatre joke, I keep within the accepted limits of decency and decorum. I am, therefore, hazarding this article because I feel Malta has reached a point of no return in as far as exploring the possibilities and opportunities presented by online blogging to its very limits. The last couple of months have opened up an entirely new scenario in as far as dissemination of information is concerned. You all know precisely what I am talking about, which is why I feel the matter should be discussed.

A close friend of mine, an occasional blog victim along with everyone else, President to dustman, describes this sort of blogging as comparable to heroin. You know it's bad. You know it's harmful; deadly even. You know it's anything but rewarding or salubrious and, yet, one cannot get enough of it... until it is too late.

We Maltese are gossips. How can we not be? With a population barely comparable to that of a small city, if we are not related to everyone else we probably know them, well or by sight. We live in each other's pockets. We know everybody's business and who is sleeping with whom and when and where. Escapades are discussed over the bridge tables in an "exchange of information" and anywhere within the vibrant 50 metres between the law courts and Café Cordina. It's no use pretending. Gossip is a national pastime; some is harmless, some is fun but a lot of it is malicious. So what is so different about a blog?

Whereas Gossip with a capital G has always sustained our natural inquisitiveness, there are, or were, certain limits of decency subject to unwritten rules that control it. The laws governing the local press have ensured that nothing remotely resembling what is written both by the bloggers and the commentators can ever be printed unless the newspaper has a death-wish to fold up pronto after a plethora of lawsuits.

Despite our fondness for litigation, the general impression is that no such regulations apply to blogs as they can be as uninhibited as they please without any fear of reprisal, legal or otherwise! Hence their universal appeal. This is absolutely untrue, which makes the situation such a puzzling one. There are two sides to every question and as the Duchess in Alice said, "there's a moral to everything as long as you can find it". These blogs are embroiling so many people that it reminds me of Tangentopoli barely a couple of decades ago... and where did that lead?

People are now so wary of falling victim to bloggers, myself included, that even the efficaciousness if not the safety of social marvels like Facebook is being questioned. It has taken all the fun out of it. All it takes is one dubious photograph and POW! This has been going on for several years now but in the last couple of months it has escalated to ridiculous proportions and today's dinner table conversation is almost exclusively about blogging and its ramifications.

There is no way of fighting back. One is petrified, as if faced by Medusa herself, before such malevolence. As you see, I am being very circumspect not to upset or compromise my editor. I am not prepared to start a counter blog. I am no match anyway. I certainly have no penchant for that sort of thing. I am, nonetheless, morbidly fascinated by the ability that some people have of going for the jugular. I cannot admire it. I certainly do not condone it. Yet, I am one of the hundreds of thousands of people who hit these sites regularly to see what they are going to come up with next even though it does me no good to know the unwholesome details that are revealed about "other people". It's an addiction precisely because we have not got the equivalent of a "reveal all" tabloid British press here to satisfy people's morbid curiosity.

Technogossip has opened up a Pandora's box against which the law appears to be inadequate. The events of the last couple of months have thrown our hitherto well-ordered if hypocritical society out of synch. The power of blogging knows no bounds and it has managed to pull off an unprecedented declaration from the courts which hitherto had, like the Queen, always maintained a "never complain, never explain" attitude to public opinion, namely that no member of the judiciary or those in public office should be members of socially interactive sites like Facebook. A rather tame reaction, I thought, considering that the consequences of what has and still is developing are so enormous.

What's next? One cannot but wonder how far it will go. I feel something has to give. What, is the question?

kzt@onvol.net