Quote:
Originally Posted by Crompsin
I bet somebody had the same thought when literacy became all the rage.
"Great, now any god-damn peon can read. There goes civilization."
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I think this is exactly right.
Yes, much of the user-generated content is "garbage". So what? I welcome it. To me it is the democratization of content. Why should we be beholden to "taste makers" to tell us what we should like?
Just because someone else likes James Joyce doesn't mean that he turns *my* crank. The same is true for Elvis on velvet (ironically taken or not).
The thing to remember is that the swelling in the ranks does not mean that there is less "good" art or content it just means that there is more of everything. Popular culture has almost always been the home to works that reach for a mass audience. With the distribution of the Internet and the means of production now cheap and available to millions around the world, it should come as no surprise that there is a rapid increase in content of all sorts.
Make no mistake though, so called high art and literature is still being produced and thanks to the Internet's global distribution it is readily available to that same mass audience should they choose to look for it. Walter Benjamin wrote in Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction that the photograph would democratize art and how we see the world. Little did he know that cheap cameras and global networks would take that concept to a stage beyond *anything* that he could dream.
I have a feeling that those who decry the absence of quality content are either not looking hard enough or are just plain old art snob elitists who don't want those with the "common touch" playing their sandbox.