Adam Curtis: The TV elite has lost the plot. Now this is a curiosity. My least favourite online journalist, Andrew “blogs are shit” Orlowski, interviews one of my favourite documentary makers, Adam “Power of Nightmares” Curtis and, surprise surprise, the initial topic is how blogs are ruining television, or something along those lines.
First of all, the people who do blogging, for example, are self-selecting. Quite frankly it’s quite clear that what bloggers are is bullies. The internet has removed a lot of constraints on them. You know what they’re like: they’re deeply emotional, they’re bullies, and they often don’t get out enough. And they are parasitic upon already existing sources of information – they do little research of their own.
What then happens is this idea of the ‘hive mind’, instead of leading to a new plurality or a new richness, leads to a growing simplicity.
The bloggers from one side act to try to force mainstream media one way, the others try to force it the other way. So what the mainstream media ends up doing is it nervously tries to steer a course between these polarised extremes.
This, obviously, pisses me off no end. Not because they’re wrong but because they’re talking about political bloggers, a subset of the form which everybody thinks is fucking irritating. This is not a problem with blogging. The problem is the mainstream media not realising that these people are idiots who should be ignored. The rest of the blog world figured this out years ago – leave them to their pointless echo-chamber and get on with the important stuff – but Curtis, filtered through Orlowski, isn’t there yet.
At some point I intend to work through the interview and sift out the useful stuff but I suspect it’s not worth it arguing against the blog-hate. Orlowski is his own echo chamber and, as I’ve said before, that The Register continues to employ him is the main reason I really don’t trust them as a news source. It’s like trying to debate with the Daily Mail. Sigh…
via LMG