Whoa whoa whoa. Hold the love, here.
1. Russ seems to have a problem with the fact that the Internet is chock full of so many quacking yahoos that the true visionaries can't get their voices heard. And granted, perhaps, looking down, this is the case. But who makes the decision as to whom these supposed visionaries are that are being muffled? Isn't that decision made later on by people with the benefit of hindsight? You can't claim genius is being muffled when it's not entirely clear who's actually a genius and who is just very talented at something people like presently (be it for entertainment or scholarly reasons). You don't know what is important culturally until later, after the dust of progress settles a bit. And the Internet is too new to think this has happened yet.
A second point on this point. Let's say Russ is right, that genius IS being drowned out. When, on the Internet and before it, hasn't this happened? People who are revolutionary are ALWAYS shouted down by the majority, because they're out to change everyone's world. This is typical human behavior. When exactly was this supposed Golden Age Russ seems to think existed, when progressives were heard and everyone wanted to hear them? I don't seem to remember that.
2. Which leads to another problem. If this age did exist, it existed at some point in the past. You know, a past dominated by white male writers, writing for white male readers, for pieces of paper which featured pictures of (in many cases) white male writer/readers. Other voices were heard, but were relegated to low shelves and back pages because they offended majority sensibilities. I'm not saying these white male writers didn't have voices worth hearing. My point is that they were not the only ones who did, and yet, because of money, connections, scholastic bias, etc., they were all that were heard through what were expensively-produced channels. I don't think of this situation as being some kind of great age of talent and reason simply because only a handful of people were deemed "worthy" enough to be heard, and I don't see how a contemporary intellect could.
3. That line Russ has about there not being any "gold" in the hills of YouTube really shocks me. By "gold," I assume he means great talent. Pardon, Russ, but wasn't a certain Mr. Yahtzee posting on this same YouTube before the Escapist hired him, and wasn't he doing there exactly what he is doing here? Or doesn't he consider Yahtzee "gold?" It's perfectly fair to not like what Yahtzee does (if Russ in fact doesn't), but to claim that he isn't one of the standouts of Internet content confuses me. If he isn't, then who is?
4. Which raises another point. Russ uses the word "quality" a lot in this essay, and says that he believes it matters. And yes, who would disagree with this? The problem arises when you start trying to figure out who has what standards of quality, and why. The Internet is a global culture. Quality is as variable a trait online as it is in the off-line world, taken as a whole. Is anime quality? Is only some of it? What about Flash animation? Amateur-produced music? What makes some "quality," and other "garbage?" Sure, we can all look at YouTube videos of people falling down and note that this isn't "quality" work as compared to The Guild. But that's because we're accustomed to professional television, and The Guild conformed to those standards of quality. The Internet isn't television. Why does it have to be? Why can't it have its own standards of quality? I think it can, but I don't know what those are yet, and I think that's because the Internet is so large and so international that it may actually be impossible to tie it down to one integrated standard of quality.
5. And that is what makes the Internet great, isn't it? The vast egalitarianism of content? That everything, good, bad, and otherwise is all in the same place, for the discerning viewer to sort out? Sure, there's a ton of it, but I just don't see how anyone could consider that fundamentally a bad thing. I think there ARE nuggets of gold out there. It's just that they may be hard to find. And there's also the fact that everyone can now find their own self-proclaimed "nuggets" without asking corporate media what it thinks they should think is gold.
6. Which is why the essay confuses me. If Russ clearly thinks the pre-Internet model of quality control was great, he can't also talk about how terrible it is that individual voices are being squashed by majority opinions. That is the very essence of the old model, as I pointed out above! You either have all the content in one place, on equal footing, and the "gold" must be extracted from the rubble, or someone decides what is good enough to be consumed and throws out the rest, never to be seen again, and there's no promise that they won't hawk pro-majority product, which they probably will, because it sells.
The only other option is to have some kind of Grand Internet Media Council that sits over the Internet and picks out which content it thinks is "quality", and then somehow gives it more press than what it thinks is crap. And speaking personally, I'd infinitely prefer to make my judgments on the basis of hit counts logged by Google than on the declarations of people who claim they "know" what I "need" to think is worthwhile. That, after all, is the old model. And it's because WE DON'T LIKE the old model that all of us have abandoned the old corporate media for the new.
Yes, Russ's editorial was very well-written. But there is one thing that matters to me more than almighty quality, and that's content. And while the content here is well constructed, it doesn't seem to make a whole lot of quality sense.
