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Ahmed Salem
read and liked
oriana's
review of The Cult of the Amateur: How Blogs, MySpace, YouTube and the Rest of Today's User Generated Media Are Killing Our Culture and Economy:
"Let me start by saying that I opened this book with a totally open mind. Seriously! I too think that blogs, MySpace, and YouTube are doing horrible things to our culture in this country, so I though I was going to be the choir this guy was preaching ...more
Let me start by saying that I opened this book with a totally open mind. Seriously! I too think that blogs, MySpace, and YouTube are doing horrible things to our culture in this country, so I though I was going to be the choir this guy was preaching to.
Not so.
And let me say, too, that the reason this is two stars and not one (and actually was almost three) is that it really made me mad, and really made me think, which is no small feat. Plus it got me into several (loud) arguments with my boyfriend in public places, which is always a plus.
Anyway. The fundamental flaw in this guy's logic (in my perhaps overly optimistic opinion) is that he thinks everyone is really stupid. And I'm not at all saying that there aren't a whole lot of stupid people, but Andrew Keen just takes it too far, postulating a world where, for example, due to the wild proliferation of blogs, no one will be able to tell the difference anymore between what some douche happens to rant about while drunk and a distinguished news article on a particular topic. Seriously? Even the dumbest among us knows the difference between cnn.com and doucheymcdoucherson.blogspot.com. (I hope that's not a real blog.)
See, Keen is really just a crazed alarmist, decrying every aspect of user-generated culture. He is also extremely enamored with his writing skills, and utterly enraptured with dramatics. In the second half of the book, he uses a lot of case-in-point sob-stories which made me cringe and cringe and cringe. Like the Mormon college kid who got so 'addicted' to online gambling that he had to go rob a bank. Dear god.
Below are a few of the incendiary things Keen says, and my incensed reactions:
From the anti-blog chapter: With more and more of the information online unedited, unverified, and unsubstantiated, we will have no choice but to read everything with a skeptical eye.
Oh my god no!! Truly Andy? Are you telling me that, prior to the internet, you never though any writer of any article or story or book might have a personal bias or agenda that a reader might want to take into account before blindly following? You are a douche.
From the anti–self publishing chapter: Do we really need to wade through the tidal wave of amateurish works of authors who have never been professionally selected for publication?
Um, no. Here is what you do: do not read self-published books if you do not want to contend with amateur writing. Is there a serious book person anywhere who can't tell on sight a self-published book from one put out by a major (or minor) press? If scillions of people want to go to a vanity press and have their inane mumblings made into a 'book', that does not affect you or me. Let them be happy! They will most likely never become a bestselling author, and they wouldn't have anyway.
In a chapter where he talks about Beck releasing that album where people could choose their own cover art, and then equates that with the loss of the musician-as-artist due to the dilution of expertly produced music: Similarly, the Barenaked Ladies recently launched a 'remix' contest, allowing fans to download songs from their latest album and re-mix and re-edit them into new versions, the best of which will eventually be released on CD.... That's like a surgeon who, instead of performing the surgery, leaves the amateur in the operating chamber with some surgical instruments and a brief pep talk.
This is the one where I started shrieking. First of all, buddy, even the most fervent devotee of art would never, never conflate making a record with performing surgery. What is wrong with you? And second of all, how great is that Barenaked Ladies thing? See, that is not actually a case of amateurs diluting artistic output, but of giving amateurs a chance to prove that maybe they also have some talent! No one is saying that we need a CD of thousands of bad remixes, but if out of the thousand submitted, maybe ten are really good, how great would it be for those ten people to be on a CD, an opportunity which it is very unlikely they'd have been afforded otherwise?
This is the last one because I bet no one's reading this anymore since it's so freaking long. But this is from the chapter about how amateurs are ruining advertising too. Take, for example, the competition that Frito-Lay ran to 'discover' an amateur commercial for their Doritos corn chips. According to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the average professionally produced thirty-second spot costs $381,000. Yet Frito-Lay paid a mere $10,000 to each of the five finalists in the competition, leaving $331,000 on the table. That's $331,000 that wasn't paid to professional filmmakers, scriptwriters, actors, and marketing companies—$331,000 sucked out of the economy.
Holy fuck that made me so furious. Sucked out of the economy??? Here is what that means: the 'economy' of making commercials (and by extension movies, TV shows, pro sports, and all the rest of it) is BLOATED, CORRUPT, AND TOTALLY ABSURD. If you are going to tell me that we NEED to be paying our movie stars $1 million per picture, or our ad agencies $331,000 per THIRTY-SECOND FUCKING SPOT, you are out of your goddamn mind. The current system is totally fucked, and if 'the cult of the amateur' is what it takes to, if not fix it, then at least force it to make some fucking changes, that is fucking great. Keep sucking, amateur film- and commercial-makers!
There's a lot more, but I really do have better things to do than be mad about this book. And honestly, when I wasn't being made furious, this guy does have some not-so-dumb things to say. I mean, like I said, I think a lot is wrong with "Web 2.0" (what an awful buzzword). But Keen really goes too far, and makes the whole thing preposterous. A lot is good about it, too, and he doesn't really seem interested in talking about any of that. (less)
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