God I love me a good rant. It reminds me a little of Dave Olson’s Northern Voice 2008 presentation entitled, Fuck Stats, Make Art.
This presentation at the 140 conference by writer Chris Weingarten is pretty darn fascinating. It’s true that those listening to Hype Machine believe they’re getting an alternative rather than the aggregate of common blogger tastes and it’s true that negative reviews rarely get clicks or SEO juice. But, I’m not sure I see it in quite so bleak a light.
I think there are a fair number of netizens that are curious enough to seek out great content and art rather than listen to the “bland middling taste of the internet hive mind”. And regardless of what we think about other people’s content, I really believe the accessibility afforded to so many voices is a good thing for obscure writer, artist and music discovery.
My favorite line of this rant by far is, “Don’t click on things that just exist for you to click on them” - the irony of it is that when someone tells me not to click on something, I totally will.
