Web Culture 2.0: The Stampede
 

Web Culture 2.0: The Stampede
By Andrew Gonsalves www.tfproject.org www.andrewgonsalves.com

You too can have your opinions heard on this network of nearly infinite reach. With not so much as a certification to your name, you can reach out. High tide has come and the flood of democratic internet participation has begun crashing through the levies and sandbag walls. And as the waters of free, unencumbered speech carry us into the streets where only experts once walked, we pierce the air with our battle cry. Web 2.0! Democracy will rule the internet!

We extol our wisdom, adding that we are not professionals, but we did stay at a Holiday Inn Express the previous night. We write with passion and conviction, only pausing to reference Wikipedia and our favorite blogs. Our voice is formed with the intent to pound our views into the heads of our audience, and all the while our audience is busy preparing a post of their own. Waiting your first missive is a list of links gleaned from thirteen of your opposition’s favorite message boards, citing opinions which corroborate their own; an undeniable truth.

That is Web 2.0 democracy: majority rules and debate is pretense for pageantry. Not only that, but the masses now control the truth. It is said that he who wins the war writes the book, and the traditional media is definitely not winning this one. With democratized content, users can erase the work of others that they disagree with. Corporations can white-out a black eye on their Wikipedia public record with a single keystroke. Entire representations of opinions can simply disappear on sites like Digg and Reddit, which give its users the power to make dissenting points of view vanish from consideration with a single click. The result is myopic tunnel vision, the perpetuation of unchecked conviction, and a cage match between back-patting and debate. In by the good graces of the predictable social media public, all associated with a favorite subject (both corporate and independent) are on the fast track to recognition with little check for sincerity or validity.

I’m glad I wasn’t the only one to notice the peculiar enthusiasm displayed by advocates of Adobe’s new beta release of a licensed product when it was given the spotlight on the first page of Digg. Nothing sat right with that one; from the infomercial-frankness of the praise, to the unanimous support for a product that costs $1300 for a single license, this front page article was a glistening beacon of fraudulent glory, sheltered by the good will of a democratic internet. Then there is viral marketing. In the works as I write this is a marketing campaign that is creeping toward fruition. My friend is conducting it by writing a blog for her client. Soon, there will be a shocking revelation and people will talk about it. This bit of exploitive information cuddles at night with the saying that there is no such thing as bad publicity. From their union, my friend’s client will glean momentary popularity and attention. And the consumers won’t know what hit them.

Corporate news entertainment has disenchanted us and driven us into the arms of independent, unchecked and volatile quasi-information pumped out in droves by blogs across the expanse of social media. The result is a loss of $4 billion off one corporation’s market cap because of an unchecked newsletter commenting on a bogus internal missive. The result is the loss of a primary election due to unverified claims of party infidelity. The result is a charmingly colloquial take on a situation we’re used to receiving with a modicum of professionalism.

The counter-argument to this all, as I see it, is that the alternative to this is centralized culture, which equates to soulless mainstream lowest common denominator content. Or we simply get more of the same highly streamlined information feeds with the influence of a single supervision. The decay of choice will be followed by the collapse of freedom, which is further compounded by the infliction of someone else’s will. We won’t have that, though. We will fight for our right to be mediocre in the face of art and culture. We will Digg that Paris Hilton story like there’s no tomorrow. We will ensure our roommate comes up first when you Google for “waste of sperm.” And it will be so.

DIGG

It's not the tool, it's what you do with it. Indeed, there are many things about "web 2.0" that are ripe for abuse, but there are plenty of sites available that primarily serve the purpose of networking. Unlike Digg, which lets the masses decide what news is important enough to be read, there are sites like last.fm which allows you to create a musical identity and find others who have similar tastes. From there, you can discover new artists that they listen to but you don't, meet new people, and so on. Recently, I also discovered LibraryThing, which is sort of like last.fm for books. Very cool site (which happens to be down as of this writing). Then there's LinkedIn which is vaguely like facebook for professional networking. Speaking of which, facebook isn't all that terrible either, provided it isn't used in an obnoxious manner. Even if it is, it's miles ahead of myspace: a feature for listing "top friends" had to be created by a third party and only people who want such a stupid feature will have it on their profile, and the facebook people refuse to allow the creation of audio widgets that autoplay on pageload.

It's not web 2.0 that's the problem, it's how we choose to use it, and I think there are plenty of options out there for people who want to seize the power of the internet to bring people together and spread culture.

Good article.

Everyone's an expert. Everyone's a sucker.

We're both extremely cynical and highly gullible when it comes to the internet.

There's so much irony in your article.

What about pie?

Nice article Halx. I can honestly state that I wish I had those kinds of skills when it comes to writing..
I've also noticed you've been writing a lot, posting articles, your opinions, a second iteration of Halism. Thanks for doing more than your share of keeping this site growing.

As for Web 2.0, it's hard to say how I feel about it. I used to be that kid who knew more about the internet than the rest of "them", and know it's almost overflooding with new people, who post their own material and ideas.
I guess the way I feel about the internet is similar to how many conservative americans feel about immigrants.

"Git outta my country, ya damn mexicans!" = "OMG, G37 0FF MY 1N73RW3BS, n00Bz!!"

I don't know much more about this Web2.0 as far as the democratization of data, I do know that it has alot to do with better presentation of data.

From the green screen dumb terminals to the GUI touch screen databases, to today's AJAXed screens that have expanding flyovers of pictures and data is a huge leap in giving the user/consumer the most amount of information possible in one simple screen.

"I've got thirteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from..."

I agree. It's the same shit; the same opinions, input, information, whatever everyone tells you (and has been telling you since forever), just now it comes on a computer screen. Think about it. Sure, shit's more accessible now, but that doesn't really change the shit.