apology not accepted
For some reason, probably the high level of snark, this blog post from Cracked.com is making the rounds.
It epitomizes everything that the Web shouldn’t be; it’s unreflective, specious, pandering.
Let’s build a better Web. Let’s start with a takedown job on “5 ways we ruined the Occupy Generation.”
5) Making you ashamed to hold menial jobs.
Ha, ha. As a nation, we should be ashamed of what we pay people who work menial jobs. The reason young people try to avoid working at MacDonald’s is not because of social stigma. It’s that employees don’t earn enough to pay their bills. Working for minimum wage isn’t shameful; it’s dangerous. This guy obviously hasn’t read Nickel and Dimed; no time like the present!
4) Implying that college would guarantee you a good job.
This never happened. Nobody thought this. Most people who heard I was majoring in English felt quite sure I WOULDN’T get a good job unless I went to law school afterward.
3) Adding seven more years to being a teenager
OK, I’ll allow it. But I won’t allow “a world that expects maturity.” Dear blogger, are YOU the world? Is Charlie Sheen, in your opinion, a mature individual?
2) Creating the idea that entertainment has no monetary value
If John Cheese (sic) can find me one person who doesn’t know that Jay-Z and J. K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer and Tobey Maguire are rich, then I will sign off on this little item. I’m not going to take the bait about pirated music, though.
1) Taking Away Every Reason To Go Outside
Really? Modern Warfare as obesity vector? If we want people to go outside, we should build better parks and better transportation systems. We should try to change the culture of irrational fear perpetuated by way crime gets reported on television. I know these things will work, because I tried them out on the island of Tropico 4, and they worked AWESOME.
I usually find your words quite thoughtful and well argued, and this piece is no exception. However, in this case, I have to side with john Cheese about the entertainment industry. Being anyone in the entertainment/arts industry who is not as lucky as the .01% of whom you take your examples from is obviously harder nowadays because of the internet. In the 90′s, before the rise of internet pirating, television networks payed budding comedians, writers and other artists development deals out the wazoo, BEFORE they even had a television show to produce. This started many of the great’s careers. Record companies actually still signed bands to contracts or gave them the means to record professionally just because they were able to achieve small sales of a couple hundred units, giving growing bands an income to jump start their career and fuel creative projects with actual money. And as the cracked writer already explained, indie films and edgy projects were more likely to be taken on and given some budget when it was likely that people would still purchase them. Risks like these are absolutely not taken anymore by industry, instead it is by the artists themselves, which is extremely costly.
The entertainment industry is an entity that caters to a very small group, which includes your above mentioned examples. It has always been that way. However, this group has shrunk more and more with the ease of use at which people expect things to be free. Almost every indie band, film maker, writer, comedian or artist I follow on the internet, no longer even tries to sell their art, because they either think, or are aware that it is hopeless. It is essentially true too, as the majority of people have become indignant at the thought of paying for something that can be found digitally for free. Even those truly inspired works that may have taken months, or years of work and personal commitment for artists to produce lose their value when they are on your computer in under a minute at the click of a button.
Today, instead of making what small means they can from their physical work, most artists opt to give it away, and sell themselves instead. They sell their brand, or the idea of their art rather than the art itself. Today, if they make money at all, they make it from marketing. This is because the physical artifact which they created has become worthless/obsolete. And those big names/moguls who have the money will always trump the little guys in their marketing resources, and ability to sell to the masses, and therefore still make money. Overall, this is what John Cheese’s actual point appears to be, and I think it is a good one.
Hey Will, thanks for the comment! I’ll work on answering your likewise thoughtful, well-argued comments tomorrow, perhaps in a new post.
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