Andrew Keen's popular (although sometimes savagely reviewed) Cult of the Amateur is uniformly terrible. Much of his moralizing and snobbery – not the Fox News epithet kind, but real, honest-to-god snobbery – would be funny if he were not so deadly serious. For the unfamiliar, the book is a jeremiad about how the internet is killing Our Culture because it allows anyone with a computer to fill the cultural arena with pure bullshit.
This is undoubtedly and obviously true. What Keen utterly fails to do, however, is defend the superiority of the "establishment" in comparison to the rank amateurism of the internet. Is Wikipedia inherently inferior to Encyclopedia Brittanica? Is Pitchfork inferior to the chatter at your local record store (pretend for a moment that most towns even still have them, aside from big box chains)? Are bloggers really providing less news than Fox and CNN? Is ginandtacos inherently inferior to Serious, Professional, Credentialed editorials in Offical News Sources? Hell, there are hundreds of people on the crude, lowbrow internet who write better critical essays on a daily basis than David Brooks and Charles Krauthammer have written in their entire lives (to say nothing of vacuous, widely-circulated ass clowns like Laura Ingraham).
Keen's irrational obsession with comparing the proliferation of DIY crap via the internet to Marxism is his Achille's Heel. The internet's power to give anyone a soapbox does not imply equality.
buy elavil online buy elavil no prescription
Shit is still shit. There simply is more of it. The actual problem, which Keen misses entirely, is not that the internet is Marxism incarnate but that the internet is like the nightmare libertarian version of market forces untamed. Since nearly anyone can use it to spread whatever information he or she desires and content is completely unregulated, the internet is simply more able to respond to demand than the traditional media. A blog about celebrity gossip or fashion becomes popular because people want to read about celebrity gossip and fashion.
buy priligy online buy priligy no prescription
Said blog becomes important because it becomes popular (note how often TMZ, for instance, is now cited as a source by establishment newspaper and news networks). Popularity drives demand which drives legitimacy, since the market is our sole arbiter of right and wrong.
The complete absence of overhead – starting one's own record label, magazine, or TV network versus starting a blog for $7/month – is the only difference from regular media. The internet simply allows more people to participate in the race to the cultural bottom. The market rewards stupidity and consistently punishes that which Keen would consider "good" or quality. Frontline gets worse ratings than Survivor. Wikipedia gets more readers than Brittanica. Pro Wrestling draws millions more viewers than the Olympics or World Series. The reason for all three of these examples is that the more popular item is judged to be more fun and requires less thought.
The market will reward base entertainment over quality every single time.
The problem with the internet is not its cult of amateurish nonsense but the fact that, as the most perfect example of an unregulated market for information with almost no barrier to entry, it encourages amateurish nonsense to proliferate. It is full of baseless conspiracy bullshit and "news" that is flat-out wrong because people seem to enjoy reading baseless conspiracy bullshit and news that is flat-out wrong. The internet, in other words, merely flanks the costs of entry into conventional media and more efficiently gives consumers what they want. Gossip. Pop culture. Porn. Angry white backlash. Shit. Mountains and mountains of shit. Establishment media give readers/viewers mountains of shit too.
The internet just does it more efficiently, for which Keen apparently cannot forgive it.
Blogging teaches one about these market forces very quickly. Things that are well thought-out, serious, and even-handed rarely attract attention or interest. Spouting off half-cocked and full of bravado generates the comments, links, and hits. After a few years I have reached the point of being able to tell how much response a post will get before it's even written. Things I consider to be "good" and involving effort = neck-breaking yawns. Things I write in 20 minutes while I'm pissed off, inevitably riddled with ad hominems and arguments unsupported by fact = hits. The internet is not a cult of amateurism as much as it is a medium that allows every shmuck with a modem to experience Mencken's truism about opinion discourse: the most popular are inevitably those who preach what they know to be false to people they know to be idiots.
vghoul says:
I'm certain this book will soon pass into the trashpile of history along with its cousin, The Death of the West. Good riddance, and enjoy your AIDS.
BK says:
So, Ed… what's the over/under on replies this time around??
You're right on, but I think once again an author or pundit – in this case Keen – misses out on a common theme missing from many critiques of culture/the internet/the media/politics/civics. That is – people get what they deserve.
The reason why shit on the internet is popular isn't soley because there is a lot of it and it's easy to get to and digest, it's that many Americans have at best a third grade reading level and an even lower understanding of anything outside of open mouth, put food in… repeat.
peggy says:
as always, you are clearly correct. Example: I love G&T even if you seem to think that someone named Achille had a heel.
Perhaps it's just that I'm a lowbrow fool, but I like a mix of things, too. Yes, I watch total shit like America's Next Top Model sometimes, but I also got super excited about Netflix dropping off a Masterpiece Theater version of one of Langston Hughes' short stories. Sometimes, when my brain hurts, I just want to read a romance novel and eat ice cream straight from the carton. This doesn't mean I'm not also interested in reading Dostoyevsky while eating ice cream straight from the carton as well.
I think giving people a way to create things is going to end up well–there will be a lot of shit, OF COURSE, but sometimes people *learn* by creating shit and trying to get better. (I'm not defending "two girls and a cup" as something that's going to lead us to the next Citizen Kane, but sometimes you need training wheels.) Like: I used to read and write a lot of fanfiction. Most fanfiction is utterly awful. Much of what I wrote was utterly awful. But it did help me grow as a writer, and I had an incentive to write because there was an impartial audience. And some fanfiction is really good–and really popular–and has lead authors to gain entry to the traditional media via book deals. I have definitely read Harry Potter fanfic that's better than actual Harry Potter books. Not a lot of it, but some.
I think maybe this guy's freakout is also connected to the idea that he and others like him are no longer gatekeepers who control who is given a media voice and who isn't. If anybody can go to lulu.com and print a book, what is the value of his printed book?
Kreggg says:
Way to generate some agreement Ed. Get back to work!
j says:
I think one reason there is buzz about your 20 minute adlibs but not your well-researched theses is because things straight off the top of your head resonate with people who are thinking straight off the top of their heads. Going deep down takes time and effort, and people looking for entertainment are not going to invest that energy.
Ed says:
Regardless, I am not willing to give up investing that energy. But it would probably make sense.
Nan says:
Invest the energy. Even we low-brows occasionally enjoy being forced to think.
J. Dryden says:
There's also something to be said for the value of inspired improvisation–like jazz, it can take you to creative and interesting places that pause-and-reflection-based writing cannot. But just as the best jazz can only be played by talented musicians who've done their time in the trenches of chopsticks, scales, and "Fur Elise", the best improvisation is the result of being able to mine a substantial vein of erudition and a basic understanding of effective composition. While we all (clearly) appreciate the time and effort of the well-researched theses, that doesn't mean that your off-the-cuff work isn't more than mere entertainment–while it doesn't have the logical polish of your heavier stuff, it's still coming from a place of intelligence and creativity, using muscles that wouldn't be developed if you didn't write the heavy stuff. All of which is to say, I don't think that when you do your ad libs, you're in any way selling out to the cheaper side of yourself or your audience.
peggy says:
I agree with J. Dryden. I think you give us a nice mix of irate fluff and well-researched stuff. One of the reasons that you get less responses to the deeply researched things might be that a)you've done such a complete job that we'vc got nothing to say (this has happened to me here) or b)we are flummoxed, because we're smart enough to realize we have no idea what we're talking about, but you seem to.
Clearly the solution is to invest in more trolls like that rabid Clintonite you had a while ago. Then we can all comment on her asinine comments! Except watching you do that is also sort of more awesome. Hmm.
beau says:
i think people like Keen like the idea of knowing the "right" answers – literature over pulp, non-fiction over fiction, civilisation over barbarism, etc. These are scared people, whose certainties are draining away. They just don't want to accept that they are groping around in the dark with the rest of us.
Ed, never forget – some of us just came for the moustache diaries and have never found our way out. Make us laugh, and we'll follow you anywhere.