Thursday, June 28, 2012

Crap.

The central creative issue of our era isn't the lack of a big idea, originality or even impact and intrusiveness. The central creative issue we face is one of editing.

Most people and clients--especially online--produce and "publish" so much dreck that everything, even what's good suffers from guilt by association.

The news I listen to, arguably the most serious news in America (NPR), has more content on Charlie Sheen than it does on a bloody war in Syria. If you want to seriously depress yourself about the Empire of Illusion in which we reside, go to Yahoo's homepage. "Britney Spears Radiant in Red Dress" it screams followed by "The Simplest Way to Cook Corn."

Clients, of course, are incredibly guilty. As are the agencies that "serve" them. Websites are like content roach motels: The copy goes up but it never comes down.

When I worked on IBM I remember having heard that their website was 4.5 million pages long. I said to them that's 22,500 200-page books. That was ten years ago.

If you write it, it will post.

The genius of traditional media--print, broadcast, outdoor and radio--is that they were constructed with boundaries. You can fit only so many words in :30 seconds. The web is ever-expanding and hierarchy-less. It is like the Collyer Brother's apartment. Stuffed to the gills with crap.

Often online a friend will post a couple dozen photographs. Two are good. Even Woody Allen, whom I respect as an auteur, has just released "To Rome With Love." It would have been 100% better if it were 30% shorter.

Maybe I'm guilty as well.

This post is already too long.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

No — "editng" is the bugbear here.

If I had a dollar for every misspelt word and misappropriated metaphor I saw on the Web — I'd be the King of Siam.

"Content" is a good word for the dreck these jerks pound out in response to the Googlezation of Human Discourse — they know not which troubles they bring.

Signed,

Teh [sic] last of them bitter English majors...