Internet Marketing Coach
Amateur Media Destroying Culture - Give me a Break!
September 19th, 2007 | 2 commentsI just about puked after reading an article on Associated Content today. It was titled “An Interview with Andrew Keen, Author of The Cult of the Amateur” and it spoke of the inaccuracy of information that is present on the web today due to amateurs (like you and I) blogging and participating in social media networks like MySpace.
I’ll begin with two somewhat positive points:
1. This guy is obviously leveraging the power of controversy and it looks like he’s doing a good job of that, so for that I commend him.
2. It is true that there is an over abundance of bad information floating around the web, but without “amateur media” the only information we would have is from .org, .edu and .gov sites. True, there is some good info on these more professional sites, but I wonder how many times Andrew Keen has learned something from the “amateur sites” he’s visited!
One comment really got me:
…Amateurs can’t write whatever they want - especially on topics like Iraq - because their facts, expertise and judgment are suspect…
hmm I’ve written several articles on Iraq. I’ve also BEEN THERE!!! I wonder if he has? I have much more knowledge of Iraq than anyone who has never been there. I was there for a year fighting a war, one that I don’t agree with, but I’ve been there. Is my expertise suspect? I don’t think so!
The fact is, the WWW wouldn’t be anything without amateur media. Without us amateurs, people like Andrew Keen would have a much harder time marketing marketing their books and getting their opinion to the masses.
Without amateurs like you and I the WWW would be full of “book answers” and it would lack real world advice.
Of course we should consider the source when searching online. We should always remember the fact that not everything on the web is factual, but is the abundance of “amateur media” really destroying culture? I don’t think so, do you?
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20th September, 2007 at 5:34 am
Interesting one.
I concede that there is a lot of erroneous information out there on the web but it doesn’t just come from amateurs. It’s nothing new. What about tabloid journalism, or hundreds of popular magazines, often so full of garbage and misleading crap written by “professionals”? The global warming hysteria is just one subject that has been fueled by the mainstream media, often based on little in the way of hard facts. Sure, everyone has jumped on that bandwagon, from the qualified to the plain lunatic, but the professionals can hardly claim to know everything about everything, in the same way that we can’t.
I get pretty steamed when I see journalists pontificating about their lofty standards and so called professional ethics. They hate change, they hate anything that is a threat to existing cozy media relationships and the status quo. There are plenty of amateur writers and bloggers who put some paid ‘word smiths’ to shame and plenty of eminently qualified people in a huge diversity of subjects who also happen to blog.
I would have to agree that the teen culture of places like MySpace are pretty nauseating and as one commentator over at the quoted post said, seem to be a contributing factor in the whole “dumbing down” of some younger people. Having seen a thread yesterday at a “teen celeb gossip” site, I wonder how any of the participants even managed to learn how to turn on a phone or computer, so appalling were their attempts at writing and social interaction.
On the whole though, it’s just another “expert” plugging himself and his opinions to sell product. Good luck to him; I’m sure our amateur and stupid conversations are far beneath such as he
28th September, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I think that there a lot of so-called “experts” and “professionals” who find the internet (blogosphere in particular) very threatening. The main reason is that people can see that while there’s a lot of crap being written, there’s also a lot of wisdom out there as well. And a lot of it is being given for free by “amateurs”.
People reading this then see that the “experts” aren’t that expert after all, eroding their authority. That’s why they’re so pissed off, and try to denigrate these “amateurs” whenever they can.