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| Subject: Re: Reading, A Lost Art | |
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Author: TechnoAtheist |
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Date Posted: 16:55:51 06/11/01 Mon In reply to: pieceoftheuniverse 's message, "Re: Reading, A Lost Art" on 15:19:52 06/11/01 Mon POTU did decree: >~steve-o said: >>Personally, I think the web has done more to promote >>literacy among the lazy than TV Guide. > >Unfortunately, as I've stated in the past, this only >holds the average steady at about the fourth-grade >reading level. Yes, we have more literate people than >ever before, but a larger portion than one might feel >comfortable with only recognize words made popular by >the porn industry. After all, what is the number one >word searched for in both search engines and >dictionaries? Not the phrase you think, but it is very close to the top. >I was reading him the >other day after having finished Oliver Twist, and >thought to myself, "Is it me who's too impatient or is >it him who just doesn't have the knack?" > >Then I threw the book away. Dickens was interesting because he was the first guy to really create the soap opera. He wrote long drawn out serials that he modifed based on reader reaction (puts a whole new twist on his works, donnit?) I really wish that someone put together one of his books along with the letters that were written in response to each chapter. Personally, I don't like Dickens, but I get what he did. > >>I think even someone like Hemingway would have >>problems selling to the mass market. Nobody would give >>a crap about his travels. > >Well, I've never been a big fan of Hemmingway. I >still don't give a crap about him, no matter what era >he's from. Hemmingway did the same thing as Dickens, he was just more direct about it and didn't really give a crap about what his audience thought. >[snip] >>the >>glut of bad writers has taken the visibility away from >>good writers. Content providers are afraid of working >>with content producers because the image of the online >>writer is an amateur geek who writes bad soap operas >>or X-Files slash. > >And here we have a pro and a con, both of roughly >equal weight. The internet may be (for all intents >and purposes) a level playing field, but that's the >problem. Someone working strictly from a Markov chain >has the same amount of publicity as you do, and yet >for some reason -he- is getting all your hits. Why? >Because no matter what you do, someone is going to run >a search string that misses you completely. > >Not too long ago I was bored (this was at work, of >course) and so ran a search for stories in Yahoo. >Actually, not so much a search as clicking through the >categories they have set up. No Hydrogen Guy, Well, that's changed. As for the others, it helps to have A LOT of good material, and more importantly hitting at the right point. > >There's much more chaff than wheat out there. Out of >the potential millions of webcomics out there, I've >got ten that I faithfully read every day. I've got 20-40 depending on the day, but I'll concede that point. >So tell me: what are the other nine hundred >thousand nine hundred ninety doing when their time >could be better spent devising new and interesting >ways to win Darwin Awards? IMHO, of course. Like myself, they are performing acts of digital masterbation. Performing a waste of time for my own short term pleasure. (Wow, you ought to see the expression on your face when you read that...) > >This is the crux of the matter, and one of the major >mental blocks I can't seem to get by when I think of >updating my site. Damn near everyone has a website >with their little fifteen megabytes of fame. What >makes my particular contribution valuable enough to >innundate surfers around the globe with yet another >link? What if I, unknowingly, am part of the chaff? >Worse yet, what if I carry the metaphor too far and >become moldy wheat? Then you need to answer that question with the same answer as everyone else did. Why the hell not? To wave the flag of the great unwashed, I have absolutely no idea if anyone enjoys this or even why the hell I'm doing it. Although I make great statements like "I don't care if anyone reads this", I lie alot. I really do care that a number of people read this and either tell me it sucks, or it's ok, or even it's good (but those people have problems typing when they are that drunk). The real problem is getting exposure. Sure Yahoo! is great for getting a site exposed. I'm sure JIM might be able to mark a slight increase in traffic for his site, but how do people know about it to begin with? Getting back to one of my original points, a site like Sluggy Freelance, or User Friendly has a big win in that folks can print out funny strips and stick them on their wall, or email them to each other or whatever. A few of those folks will then read more strips to see if there are more naked chicks or rabid staplers or what-have-you. Hell, it's what made Dilbert so damn popular. Text based sites don't really have that option, sure I can come up with clever 'siggable' punchlines like: "Can we not press the self destruct button, A SECOND TIME!" or "She had grace. She had beauty, she was a bit like Martha Stewart in drag." or "I would rather be forced to listen to Jar-Jar Binks sing 'It's A Small World' than listen to you for one more minute!" but it's really hard to get those into a storyline and have them make some sort of sense. I could create posters of some of the jokes that lend themselves to visuals, but even those seem oddly contrived. > >$DEITY, I hope not. > >Writing should, IMO, be done only because you like >doing it. Anyone writing for any other objective -- >for money, for sex (well, this one might be okay), for >fame, for glory -- is going to suck. Which isn't too >say they won't achieve their objective; after all, >some folks will buy anything. But how many truly >classic works have been created in the past decade? Dunno. It's only been ten years, and I refuse to believe that anything written less than twenty is a classic(although The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comes really damn close). >The past three decades? Out of how many writers? Now >compare that ratio with, say, the late eighteen >hundreds/early ninteens. Sad, isn't it? Nope, the signal to noise level is the same, the difference is that we've had a hundred years to burn or bury the dross. > >Not to say that everyone who puts pen to paper (or, in >this case, fingers to keyboard) has to be Samuel >Clemens, either. But what the internet does is allow >anyone with a copper line going into their work or >home to "publish" whatever they like with no >third-party intervention or editorial process >whatsoever. Censorship is one thing; public appraisal >of true worth is something else entirely. And the >number of hits a site gets is no indication of worth >at all. well then why am i addicted to checking my site counter?!?! > >-- >pieceoftheuniverse - as to the future ... well, who >knows? In high school, a teacher asked us to write a story of what life will be like twenty years, at the turn of the mmillenniuumm. I said that we'd be wearing blue jeans, watching TV, and driving pretty much the same cars we were then. Sadly, I was right. A hundred years from now? Blue jeans, cars, TV, nation states (slightly modified from the current), war, famine, hunger, limited space programs, rising population, and a bunch of re-creationists doing Civil War battles. Oh, and folks saying how much crap there is on the net and how the only good stuff is on TV. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| Subject | Author | Date |
| Re: Reading, A Lost Art | JIM | 21:50:47 06/11/01 Mon |
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