One of the virtues of being an old fart on the web is being able to watch folks scramble to proclaim that they have discovered the latest communication medium that will transform the world into the Technicolor world of kittens, butterflies and rainbows. Envision Whirled Peas and all that.
Same Old, Shiny New Wrapper. NOW WITH AJAX!!
For example, Dick and Jane Twitteriffic will have you believe that all problems can be solved in 140 characters. “I cum therefore I sleep”, ” i has can writers block” “i has to pee, BRB” while significant, declaratory, perhaps even sanitary in nature, is more suited to the advertising and PR industries whose worlds are crumpled around their knees, while the waters of user generated content are rising above their chins. There are a lot of things that can be said in 140 characters, but most of them have lifetimes just a little bit shorter than your laboratory bred elements.
With the invention of ‘Social Media’, which as far as I can see, merely means having a sort of conversation in your browser, with weblogs, posting and commenting, relieving some folks of the burden of remembering that email serves the same purpose.
The Social Media crowd which consists of Ad Men, PR Flacks, and Internet Consultants, want you to join in the conversation. However, they would like to be able to generate some fees before you open up that blog. (Just because millions of folks have blogs, doesn’t mean that you know what to do with one, and need professional help)
Hell, everybody who knows anything, knows that PR is the most important career in the universe. Just ask Steve Rubel, or his boss, Big Dick Edelman. And just so you don’t think that BIG PR is the only solution, stop by Brian Solis,(the new energizer bunny of PR 2.0 Social Media) or Todd Defren, (the birthmother of the Social Media Press Release)
The politicians have grasped the bit of the Interweb jackass of danger and are moving swiftly to shut off those troubling tubes of child pornography, (once again disguising ‘motion as activity’ in going after the symptom rather than the disease), while grasping for every bit of loose change they can get funneled through their websites. Too bad they staff out those sites.
The expository bulimics like Nick Carr and Andrew Keen would have you believe that anything shorter than say 5000 words means that your are a shallow, ignorant child of the 3 minute media fix, and cannot grapple with anything more complex than a simple bass line. As an added bonus they use the very medium aka, the Internet to put forth their arguments that the Internet is the demonic lovechild of MTV and the cathode ray tube, while providing Amazon links to their latest books. And of course Google is the root of all evil.
Some of the folks who actually get the circle of ends nature of the net, are getting sidetracked into Vendor Relationship Management, which is an upscale version of Money for Stuff. That you are allowing yourself to be tracked, categorized, packaged, and sold to the next advertiser with a checkbook, is a personal problem, and does not scale. Until you cut off their access to yourself, expect more money saving coupons to show up in your browser.
I could go on, but I must take my Economic Stimulus Check over to my local Regional Lifestyle Center,(aka The Mall) and buy more cheap shiny shit, to let all my peeps know that I am supporting a lifestyle and culture that is bankrupt, and just doesn’t have the sense to lie down and die.
Conspiracy theory, my ass. Schools and teachers, the motor vehicle bureau, the IRS, the military, the line at the bank, the television set, the newspapers at the checkout stand, the news on your radio, the billboards along the highway, and now a hundred thousand cold-comfort Web sites. All are tuned to your brain at the deepest level and you have lined up for the coolest, latest-model implant. The carrier wave has been tuned at huge cost to deliver a single message: you are not free, you desire nothing but the products we produce, you have no world but the world we give you.
If you’re OK with this, then eat it up. There’s a bulimic’s dream-feast of killer kontent on the way. But if it already makes you want to puke, get angry. Write it, code it, paint it, play it – rattle the cage however you can. Stay hungry. Stay free. And believe it: win, lose, or draw, we’re here to stay. Armed only with imagination, we’re gonna rip the fucking lid off.
There’s your market.