Labels.
Labels grinds my gears. Elitist, populist, amateur, professional. Who really defines these labels. People with credentials such as degrees, positions, and badges? or mass consensus? Even if we picked a group to align with, a view to look through, there's always an opposing side even within that group.
Why must we lock ourselves into any one position? Why can't I stand in the middle? Oh but if I did that I'm wishy washy. #@&! that.
I just read an article from the American Society of Association Executives and I just about puked. Andrew Keen made me puked a little bit in my mouth. That didn't stop me from reading his other piece at Weekly Standard that says Web2.0 is essentially communism in effect.
Have you ever read or heard something that's just so ridiculous you experience disbelief and immediate nausea? well those 2 articles did that for me. Granted it's a pretty frequent occurence for me of late, all caused by Mr. Keen's elite traditional media no less (The O'Really He Did Not Just Say That Factor, and the recent CNN presidential debates).
Keen is a hypocrite, but I'll get back to this later. Since I'm only a college student, I'm not worthy enough to criticize Mr. Keen. So I'll borrow BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis's view, which I agree with to start. "In web 2.0, Keen sees the means of flattening culture. I see the means of the people speaking. That’s not communism. That’s democracy. That’s freedom."
What Keen calls amateur "junk" are the people's voices. How is that killing culture? how is that "flattening" it. I would think that everyone obeying some elitist's point of view will flatten culture not the other way around.
Keen says that because of Web 2.0, the only courageous thing for people to do is not to write, not to have an opinion. "Since everyone will use digital media to express themselves, the only decisive act will be to not mark the paper." Those are his actual words. It's complete bullshit and this is where he's a hypocrite. He himself have a blog and a podcast. At the end of the day, he's just another Web 2.0 nobody, if you look at it from his point of view. The only thing I can agree with Keen is that Web2.0 is a neutral tool.
I can spiel on and on about this, but I'll leave you with this clip from Good Will Hunting. Matt Damon's last line toward the Harvard graduate student is great.
P.S.: I just added the AnswerTips application, double click anyword to get definition. It even works with movies, so try double clicking anything on this page.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?
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5 comments:
Hey Emperor,
Yes, I have come across things that make me feel like vomiting. It mostly occurs when people try to deny very obvious things... like annoying habits of theirs that they don't realize they do, but claim that they never do that... (i.e. chewing with their mouth open... yargh).
But when I first started reading your post, I thought that you meant you hated labels, as in, tags on blog posts. I was thinking to myself, didn't he just write a post a few weeks ago about how much he loves labels because he can put "ron paul" on everything and get dramatically increased traffic to his blog? Then I read on and discovered that you were in fact talking about stereotyping and the more physical social act of labeling people... assuming things about them, etc.
Good post! You've got me hooked as a reader.
Bring back adsense.
You know what really grinds my gears? This Lindsay Lohan. Lindsay Lohan with all those little outfits, jumping around there on stage, half-naked with your little outfits. Ya know? You're a... You're out there jumping around and I'm just sitting here with my beer. So, what am I supposed to do? What you want? You know, are we gonna go out? Is that what you're trying to - why why are you leaping around there, throwing those things all up in my, over there in my face? What do you want, Lindsay? Tell me what you want? Well, I'll tell you what you want, you want nothing. You want nothing. All right? Because we all know that no woman anywhere wants to have sex with anyone, and to titillate us with any thoughts otherwise is - is just bogus.
people on your blog are too serious, bleck!
hahahahahahahaha...priceless...and speechless
Great post, and I'd like to make this comment sound a bit more educated, but I'm too lazy to read all the links you included.
That elitism of Andrew Keen definitely irritated me a bit. I do believe that credentials can say something, to some extent, but not in all situations do they convey that an individual has met up to a certain standard. By meeting up to that standard, they are legit in that way.
But that's definitely not true. The video clip is a great example of that. Not everyone can afford to pursue an education, there are circumstances not totally in our control that set us back, that hurt us, that prevent us from pursuing the things we'd like to. At the same time, not everyone is interested in attending uni.
Pete, I enjoy reading your blog, have endorsed in my own, and want to say thanks for that clip. Just put me back on track with how I feel about some things in life....
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