Social Media: A Rant From a Times New Roman Soap-Box in 800 Words or Less

Imagine a room full to bursting of people, all talking; A room in which everyone can be heard. Who talks the loudest? Who hears the most? Where can voices travel unimpeded and reach far? What languages are used and understood? Babel exists in binary, flowing from node to human node across paths of hypertext—not the babel of difference, but noise. If a tree falls in a forest full of falling trees, does it make a sound?

The internet is a dangerous place. Never before has such a huge population had access to such a staggering distribution channel—or such a huge catalogue of content. It's the age of magic. Naming and transmografication abound. But what happens with this power of access? Does it matter—is the access all-important or the use? I'm inclined to believe the option, choice, availability is most important. But access is limited, regulated. The media-distribution spectrum is regulated by subversive cultural standards and vulgar, direct controls from the corporate. Norms and biases, bandwidth and search-ranking... all poured into the same global crucible. And does the seperation matter? Paralels can be drawn to the system of incorporated religion, going all the way back to the explosion of indulgances—direct flight to heaven, meal included, movie featuring Ralph Macchio to be shown. Buy your access, distribution, audience (all seperately, of course) in the non-neutral net. Pay as you go, pay as you show. And some things you can't buy. No tithe, no pile of gold on the collection plate can give an anti-christ absolution.

Lonelygirl 15 and angry-wife billboards1 vs Diamonds are Forever vs this concert is brought to you by Sprite vs Run DMC's adidas. I want to say the obvious is better. I want to see the vulgar adverts and know them for what they are, not be tricked into coveting two purrr of those Urrrr Force Ones because everyone's a star-fucker, a follower. And I hate advertisements and commercials and all the fucking billboards staining the scenery on cross-country highways. I hate finding myself humming some jingle heard on a commercial break. What's it mean when ad campaigns spew forth memes like so many ozone particles from a can of hairspray? I want original and independantly bedroom produced, evocative content on YouTube, not episodes of Night Rider, or do I? Does it take a professional of a medium to create in his medium? I hear about a surge of amateur. With Apple's all-included personal publishing platform, YOU TOO can be a multimedia producer, actor, musician, recording engineer, blogger, oh annointed child of the information zeitgeist. But I don't care if your cat makes funny faces.

There's an electricity in the mob. Are people inherently evil, vulnerable and so easily manipulated... Can individual desire mesh with the collective mind, and is there a quantifiable difference? Which of Plato's worlds do people live in—shadows or ideas? There's a disconnect between the physical and the meta-physical, attributed to media-confusion and individuality. The anti-luddite jumps the not-quite-metaphorical shark, pausing to store more data with cell-phone, digital camera, palm-pilot graffiti text entry, blue-tooth enabled heart-rate sensing Nike ipod shoes. Memory has been kicked in the face by storage, only to be picasso'd by a bullshit classification from the folksonomy. Hegemony painted in the jersey of the masses by the minimal -expense, -scandal—strike that, scandals create investment, cause frenzy. The insestuous wasps hive grows paths that lead to no-where but the catacomb of the minataur.

New systems are being created faster than the old ones can die. The sun sets on event horizons before they are visible, still blocked by mountains of zeros and ones, pixels and frames. Media confusion is eclipsed by techno-fetishism. And the content is forgotten. Media is fine, but it's conduit. New York City water is only as good as its rusty, lead and arsenic and asbestos-lined, ninja-turtle-dwelling pipes. What is the hive-mind putting out? Who is the benefactor, who is the audience? Is the arm aware of the big-toe and where's the brain in all this? Fuck your cat and your sneakers.