"The Cult of the Amateur"

[bbobb]

This is bullshit from start to finish.

[cka]

well wikipedia does perpetuate a cycle of ignorance and misinformation

[YellerDog]

This is bullshit from start to finish.

[Port]

Waaaah my shitty $20 book is going to get outdone by a guy posting on a free blogging site waaaah

[AstroBlue]

Haha, I was thinking where did I hear this opinion before; and they I remember MGS2, it's explained by GW or whatever the fuck it is called as the reason for the S3 Plan "Selection for Societal Sanity".

The only reason the internet would ever be a bad thing is the fear of deep homogenisation of culture, opinion and information. Take Wikipedia for example, do some self-research on some obscure fact about a topic, include it in an edit, and then come back a year later to watch it be erased because it's not found in any textbooks or anything. Wikipedia BREEDS the lowest common denominator of information.

Isn't being saturated for choice a good thing, because it means only the truly great stuff will be strong enough to stand out? Isn't that a lot better than having the media pick and choose what it thinks it can sell and then have that shoved down our throats through cross promotions and marketing?

[Hero]

This arguement would only hold water if professionals or cultural gatekeepers or whatever you'd like to call them were holding up their end of the deal. There's no truth, decency, or promotion of a larger culture through traditional media. News just copies and pastes AP reports, or does shit fluff stories on celebrities. Movies are either out to entertain or brow beat the audience with the creators' narrow view of what's right and wrong. Books are a bit different, as I think they fare the best. But even without blogs I believe research/the quality of writing within printed material is getting harder to sift through.

One could argue that all this choice is a bad thing. That people are just big kids, and need their hand held through all decision making options and given fewer, higher quality options than hundreds of crap ideas one has to rake through before hitting something of quality. The problem with that thinking is whoever gets to whittle down the options for us will not do so with our best interests at heart, simply because it's impossible to please everyone all the time.

[FirstBlood]

I can't speak for other forms of music, but the quality of metal music has been falling to ridiculous lows since 1996

No it hasn't, get over it and shut up please.

I really thought you'd grow out of this phase by now.

[YellerDog]

Seeeeriously.

Mastadon is new and metal-y, and not bad at all IMO. Showing my "don't really give a shit about metal in general" hand, but it's a LOT better than that Sweedish hinterland bullshit.

[Scourge]

Somebody make a thread in Music Discussion about good metal bands that have surfaced since 1996. And don't point me to the Official Metal Thread either dickfaces; nobody but metal homos can sift through that shit.

[PaCrappa]

Somebody make a thread in Music Discussion about good metal bands that have surfaced since 1996.

Can't be done. Too many amateurs on the internet made everything false now.