There’s a book going around now that alleges that Web 2.0 is socially destructive because blogs undermine traditional media and Wikipedia is oft inaccurate and prone to abuse. Some parts of this argument, as regards news and information, do have some validity, I think, although generally the book is not being embraced, unsurprisingly, by the blogosphere.
What’s more interesting to me, though, is the effect of Web. 2.0 on entertainment and the arts. Unlike the fields of journalism and scholarship, here mishaps seem less dangerous, because accuracy is not a priority. From the reviews, it seems the author rips into the mash-up and piracy cultures on the web, as well as the fact that youtube has a lot of crap on it. However, I think mash-ups actually show the primacy of commercial culture, because the enjoyment of them is dependent on having viewed the originals. (Okay, maybe you can enjoy the Abridged YuGiOh without having watched/read YuGiOh, but honestly, it works better if you have read it.) As I discussed previously in my LJ, though, I think the real potential problem with amateur culture growing is that to some extent, entertainment is a zero-sum game because we viewers are not infinite, and more importantly, nor do we have infinite time. Recently, Prince gave away copies of his new CD as a newspaper insert in Britain, and this move was seen as quite saavy, because it got him publicity and exposure. Exposure is the key to success now, and so I don’t really buy the author’s point that mash-ups will harm the source they’re derived from.
However, what about the stuff that no one remixes? And what about the original art produced in a Web 2.0 zone? Focusing on parodies and remixes and fanfic and fanvids in a context of simply copyright and originality, to me, misses the point. Parody culture and fandom: I love parodies, and I’m a fan of many things, but I have to worry about what this means for the midlist. It seems that on Web 2.0, things are only visible and thus worthy and profitable (in whatever form of capital) if they are embraced by a group and can become a locus for gathering. But being in a community takes up much more time than readership, doesn’t it?
tags>>internet|web 2.0
4 Responses for "Cult of the Amateur"
That’s because in the Web 2.0 business school of thought, you need the gathering of community in order to be valuable to advertisers and marketers. So far they haven’t figured out how to market to one individual, so they have to have the aggregate.
As for the fandom issue, did you see Jo Walton’s post on the Third Artist Problem? I’d have to hunt down the link, but I’m almost sure you saw it. I wonder if you can call the majority of fanfic fandom prey to that problem. Walton was essentially describing fanon, I think, but as she’s not in media fandom she didn’t use those terms.
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Mm, yes, so it’s all about the advertisers. Perhaps in a way this is to some extent also true of print media, because you do need to sell to more than one person to be commercially successful, but nowadays it just seems to be all centered around portals.
Yeees, I saw it awhile back. I was going to talk about it, but it was mostly about SF, and my experience is mostly fantasy, and since fantasy IS often not going off real things, but going off mythos (which can be thought of as previous works?), I had a harder time applying it to that genre. (Although, I think it can, but it you have to nuance it more because SF’s supposed raison d’etre is following the impact of technology, so it’s easier to see why the Third Artist is an issue.)
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Ah crap, I wrote a long comment that got deleted because I didn’t put in an email. The fields don’t say they are required!
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Argghh, sorry.
On most of the themes, it does say that an email is required. I shall in the future change them?
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