the porousness of ideological borders*

Who said that academics are the only ones who live in small, insular communities? Try to stomach this one, it's a doozie: a blogger takes Adam Curry to task for his self-aggrandizing Wikipedia entry on, you guessed it, podcasting.

Ugh.

But, wait! Some of the comments make reading (i.e., enduring) the post worth it. Here are a few:

Calling downloadable mp3's "podcasting" is ridiculous to begin with.
pwb | 2005-12-02 01:06 AM

You know, i'm looking at all of this.. And i'm seeing a bunch of borderline unemployed grown men bickering like schoolgirls over insignificant pieces of code, and probably poorly-written pieces of code at that..

You Apple twinks need to get a life. Seriously.

If you want to change the world, for God's sake, write up an RFC for "Transport Method For Delivering Whines, Bitchery And Complaint In Audio Form". From there, you'll have the market cornered on whiner-enabling devices like iPods.


Jesus..Just shut UP.
Hey, I have a great idea! Lets be a bunch of losers! | 2005-12-02 02:37 AM |

Downloading an MP3 of somebody whining about something = a "podcast".

If I took a shit in public and recorded it, would that make it an "buttcast"?

Surprise! You're unimportant, and your whining/blogging/podcasting won't solve that. It makes you no different, and no more important or unique than anyone else. If anything, it makes you a pompous ass for assuming that somehow your thoughts or views carry more weight than your neighbors.

The fact is, the internet has no celebrities. The "global village" contains only idiots. As difficult as it is to comprehend, and as painful as it is to realize, at the end of the day, you aren't much. You're the guy people see in their rear view mirror picking his nose, or on the subway who rheaks of ass and urine...a momentary global village idiot that will be forgotten by all the instant the next idiot rolls up.

Take your delusional self-important tripe and ram it where all the other wannabe attention whores do. /dev/null.

See as Fonzie jumps a shark labelled "podcasting". | 2005-12-02 02:51 AM |

I don't understnd this stuff. I'm not too bright - I don't even know what Podcasting is. I challenge this Adam Curry guy meet me on the corner of 89th and Amsterdam for a beating. Adam - bring your mom - I'm going to reintroduce her to my trouser trout.
Question | 2005-12-02 08:01 AM

"Podcasting: It's snob for 'streaming audio.'"
Maddox | 2005-12-02 08:42 AM |

And so it goes in The Blogosphere. Full of these little non-scandals.

Clearly, I blog. It's a nice toy to play with, but ultimately it's an online diary. I write about mundane events in my life and I intend to keep it that way. Political blogs are slightly more obnoxious than having thin reeds inserted in my fingertips, which is slightly more annoying than celebrity blogs.** Most blogs are bullshit, though. Like 98% of them. Just read them if you don't believe me. Most are products of bored, suburban adult-children, in a panic over how pretentious they might be coming off to the treasured hoi polloi. For example, this blog named My Blog is Poop. Well, okay. It is a pretty shitty blog. Look at this entry about proper end-of-the-year music list etiquette, which seemed to be shamelessly copied from this PopMatters article. At least try not to be so obvious in your derivative drip drabs of "snarkiness."

I'm a poor working class sort, the sort of trash who grew up on welfare and all that; in other words, I'm precisely the kind of person suburban bloggers desperately want to befriend (it's all about street cred). One of the ways they go about this is to appeal, in that classy George W. Bush sort of way, to the proletariat's supposed disdain for the "elite." What these privileged suburbanites fail to realize is that working class people can be just as snobby and "elitist" as the latest "reality" TV show reject. Just think of us as Anna Wintours sans the money and influence. It's a cute myth, this "little guy" thing, but a myth nonetheless. Take me, for example. I'm a total snobby hipster. Some of the snobbiest people I've ever known grew up in economic wastelands. We covet what we've never had. Of course, the "elite" is a group or an individual who holds considerable power over a group or society. Choosing one style of music over another does not make you an "elitist"; it simply means you have discriminating taste. Everyone has discriminating taste. Pop culture junkies will always choose Kylie Minogue's Fever over Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain or something equally devoid of hooks. I guess the argument before was that intellectuals and academics listened to jazz (or some other form of inaccessible art), and therefore it was an "elite" genre. Of course, jazz went through a long period of rejection by the "elite" until it was finally taken seriously, now considered "America's classical music." The same thing is currently happening with pop culture. Intellectuals like Steven Johnson, Camille Paglia, Slavoj Zizek, Douglas Rushkoff, etc. are championing kitsch over other "serious" forms of art (sometimes bitchily so, betraying a strain of insecurity). Soon, Kelly Clarkson will be the stuff of the "elite," whilst a compilation of recorded flatulence will be all the rage at Pitchfork v. 8.0 for its "total unpretensiousness."

*With a nod to David Foster Wallace.

**If you hate celebrities so much, as the proprietors of (some) these blogs state, then why spend so much time on them? The argument that celebrities deserve to be ridiculed because they permeate so much of our culture is circular: they permeate so much of our culture because people are obsessed with chronicling their every scratch of the ribs and flake of dandruff at popfunyumrocksteamkristenjolieegodurdendo.blogspot.com. And criticizing Perez Hilton for socializing with Paris Hilton is ridiculous because we all know that 1. you will "sell out" the first chance to hang out with a celebrity presents itself and 2. you are jealous "fat and fugly" Perez gets to hob knob and you're still working at your office job. Admit it: you're hoplessly in love with the cult of personality and you hate celebrities simply because they're famous and you're not. Try not to be so transparent—it's a little more pathetic than someone's come-back tour.