I really don't know where to post it, but I had to post it. It is the best troll I've read in months.
It does everything right: no trollish flamboyance, just arguing a vague and stupid point by using as unfashionable and unrelated ideas as possible, namedropping dozens of dead white males, calling the opponents commies, and a lot of stuff I don't want to spoil. At the end of the article, you can't help but think the author is serious, in spite of all the dead giveaways (and BTW, his bio is fucking hilarious in the context of the article).
I'm sure that dozens of those annoying bloggers are pissing over themselves writing long rants replying to it right now!
Read and learn, trollers, that's how it's fucking done:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/714fjczq.asp?pg=1
I think he's 100% right. Everyone should just shut up and not express their opinion, dammit.
There are certainly kernels of truth in there. The parts about customizing to a view of only what you agree with (but the same exists for the real world too..) and the ease of publishing results in lots and lots of suck. There will always be people that devote themselves to finding the gems in the cesspool though. Elitest connoisseur and such. Which is worse, a great artist that never is able to express themselves or a great artist that never gets recognition? Obviously it is the first one, and great artists not getting recognized in their lifetimes is nothing new.
http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html
> Those in the print media who dismiss the writing online because of its low average quality are missing an important point: no one reads the average blog. In the old world of channels, it meant something to talk about average quality, because that's what you were getting whether you liked it or not. But now you can read any writer you want. So the average quality of writing online isn't what the print media are competing against. They're competing against the best writing online.
Keen doesn't seem to understand, or acknowledge, that the best stuff rises to the top.
> Keen doesn't seem to understand, or acknowledge, that the best stuff rises to the top.
And he does it in an incredibly brilliant way
> The purpose of our media and culture industries--beyond the obvious need to make money and entertain people--is to discover, nurture, and reward elite talent. Our traditional mainstream media has done this with great success over the last century. Consider Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, Vertigo and a couple of other brilliantly talented works of the same name Vertigo: the 1999 book called Vertigo, by Anglo-German writer W.G. Sebald, and the 2004 song "Vertigo," by Irish rock star Bono. Hitchcock could never have made his expensive, complex movies outside the Hollywood studio system. Bono would never have become Bono without the music industry's super-heavyweight marketing muscle. And W.G. Sebald, the most obscure of this trinity of talent, would have remained an unknown university professor had a high-end publishing house not had the good taste to discover and distribute his work. Elite artists and an elite media industry are symbiotic. If you democratize media, then you end up democratizing talent. The unintended consequence of all this democratization, to misquote Web 2.0 apologist Thomas Friedman, is cultural "flattening." No more Hitchcocks, Bonos, or Sebalds. Just the flat noise of opinion--Socrates's nightmare.
That stuff is fucking priceless!!
>>4
Please direct me to the top of the internet.
Don't use "sage", and you will find it!
It's entitled top so it must be true.
Any links to bloggers raging about the article yet?
It is a god damn blogstorm of idiocy!
Having taken a little bit of time to read through Keen's blog, I do not think this masterpiece was intentional. I actually found more insight while reading through his blog.. skipping some of the dumber articles. However, this insight came mostly from some of the excellent comments rather than the originals.
http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2006/02/nailing_martin_.html#comment-13985977
http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2006/02/w_g_winfred_geo.html
http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2006/02/a_nation_of_par.html
http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2006/02/ive_had_hundred.html
http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2006/02/ive_had_a_numbe.html
I find the points of there no longer being a 'bad' opinion or 'bad' music, only what you do not like poigant. Also the issue of being reactionary and just putting your thoughts out instead of spending time to develop them properly.
It looks like this guy has only written 1 article in his whole life, but rehashed it in 20 different versions. He should drop the pretentiousness, why does this guy thinks he's so important? I think he needs a shrink and to stop reading the shitty blogs he links to.
Also, it's funny he ran my comment in spite of the moderation: http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2006/02/ive_had_a_numbe.html#comment-14127911
>I toroughly enjoyed your weekly strandard troll. You are an example for all of us. Please keep up the fine entertainment!
I figured that was a 4-ch'er