A reader writes:
I’m afraid that as blogs proliferate, the medium threatens to become as “oceanic” and inefficent as the myriad other venues on the net–and off. Not enough time is allotted to us in our lifetimes to paddle through this immense and ever-increasing expanse of random opinion. And I fear that the super-high SQ (Snark Quotient) threatens to trivialize the medium, sapping it of real serious intent. I suppose it may be contrary to the essentially free-wheeling nature of the medium, but is there a way to counteract “blog smog”?
I know exactly what my correspondent means, but I also think it’s in “the essentially free-wheeling nature of the medium” for arts bloggers (and all other kinds of bloggers, for that matter) to write whatever the hell they want and let their readers sort it out. This is, after all, a market, and a fairly efficient one, too. Given a certain amount of effort, it quickly becomes apparent which arts blogs are worth reading daily, which ones weekly, and which ones not at all.
Even more interesting is the fact that bloggers also tend to link to one another, meaning that we do the sorting, and my guess is that it is in this manner that the Web will gradually become less random and more accessible–through organic evolution rather than central planning, so to speak. It used to be widely said that what the Web lacked were “gatekeepers” who could sort through everything out there and tell the great unwashed public what was worth reading–sort of like, oh, print-media editors. But then the great unwashed public started noticing that more than a few of the existing print-media gatekeepers were doing a rotten job of keeping their gates, and shortly thereafter, the blogosphere started to pick up speed. Coincidence? I suspect not.
As for the snarkiness, well, I kind of like it, at least when it’s wicked clever, as Mainers say. “Serious intent,” after all, comes under many different covers. I won’t blow the cover of my correspondent, but I will tell you that he is the very distinguished classical composer whom I mentioned
in this space a few weeks ago–the one who sings Emily Dickinson poems to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme at drunken parties, and who has also been known to emit the odd snarky remark from time to time.
Lest we forget, blogging is a fairly new phenomenon, one still in the process of finding its footing. Frankly, I think we need more arts blogging, not less. For openers, I know I’d love to read a blog about the daily life of a classical composer. Any takers?