Eating the Dinosaur

This section below, from page 19, hooked me. I know that even if the rest of the book is total rubbish, I have to finish it.¹ The opening essay explores the question “Why do people take part in interviews?”, and this bit expands on a quote from Chris Heath, British music critic.

>>>>>begin excerpt<<<<<

“We are used to the idea of giving witness to one’s life as an important and noble counterpoint to being /unheard, especially when applied to people in certain disadvantaged, oppressed or unacceptable situations. But in a slightly more pathological way, I’m not sure that we aren’t seeing the emergence of a society in which almost everyone who isn’t famous considers themselves cruelly and unfairly unheard. As though being famous, and the subject of wide attention, is considered to be a fulfilled human being’s natural state – and so, as a corollary, the cruelly unheard millions are perpetually primed and fired up to answer any and all questions in order to redress this awful imbalance.”

There’s a lot of truth in that last bit. I fear that most contemporary people are answering questions not because they’re flattered by the attention; they’re answering questions because they feel as though they deserve to be asked. About everything. Their opinions are special, so they are entitled to a public forum. Their voice is supposed to be heard, lest their life become empty.

This, in one paragraph (minus technology), explains the rise of New Media.

>>>>end excerpt<<<<<

I have two thoughts on this. Not as well written as Klosterman’s, but hey.

1) This articulates the fuzziness and messiness of blogs and how they relate to self-identity, which I haltingly explored in some posts earlier this year.

2) Klosterman leaves out a huge bit with that paranthetical remark on technology, so big as to misrepresent the real process going on with what he terms New Media. There’s a feedback loop going on between technology and culture. Without the possibility and new frontiers that the new technology opens up, in particular the ability to speak to Anyone in the world, is what even lets you think in the first place that you deserve to be seen and heard by millions.