Hype

It's having a resurgence.

The Internet was supposed to change everything, just like 9/11, but almost twenty years past its Summer of Love, 1995, when everybody bought a computer and signed up for AOL to play, it's the same as it ever was.

In other words, I might get hassled at the airport, but I've got no fear going to the mall. Sure, there are terrorists in the Middle East, but other than the government spying on me, I'm not thinking about it.

And in the early part of the twenty first century it was all about letting your freak flag fly, embracing your differences, finding your niche. Now it's about selling out to the corporation so it can make you a star, because only these giant entities have the money and power to get your message heard by many.

Apple's greatest flaw?

Not advertising the Genius Bar.

If they had, Martha Stewart never would have ranted on Twitter that she was waiting for the company to pick up her broken iPad. She was ignorant. We're all ignorant now. Oh, you might know there's a Genius Bar, but I was at dinner last week with big time music educators and they were clueless as to Dr. Luke. And people still believe you can't use a Verizon iPhone overseas. As for the odds of getting rich in America... The American Dream lives larger in Europe than the U.S., and this lack of factual knowledge is exactly how the fat cats like it. Believe in the myth, the truth is irrelevant.

Laura Wasser... Do you know who that is?

You do if you read today's "New York Times" and this month's "Vanity Fair." She's a celebrity divorce lawyer who just wrote a book. What are the odds she's good with prose? Much lower than those of an Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate publishing his first novel. But if that novel gets reviewed at all, it sits amongst a zillion other undifferentiated tomes, and is therefore ignored.

We revere brand names. The old dying media institutions? Those who've survived, who haven't thrown in the towel, have turned the corner, they're our new filters, even though many haven't embraced it.

"The New Yorker," "The New York Times"...they should worry about their credibility. It's less how much they review than what they review. Just by reviewing something it looks important. And since we're all scrounging for information, if you mess up and choose badly, we ignore you in the future.

"The Los Angeles Times" is cutting back. It already lost the plot, the intelligentsia have canceled their subscriptions. Yes, those who will survive have doubled down.

Oh, you're losing the plot.

But that's just the point, we're living in a game of inside baseball, where the most powerful people on earth are publicists, who can get your story ink. Especially online, where there's little editorial vetting, where it's news only, where titillation triumphs.

We've been waiting for new online monoliths to curate and declare what's attention-worthy. So far, they haven't appeared, they may never appear, because there just doesn't seem to be enough money in it. iTunes Radio has already put a dent into Pandora, I believe it's better, but it doesn't matter, it's done by APPLE!

Yes, we're all overloaded, we're on input fatigue. We want someone to make sense of it. There are way too many musical acts to pay attention to, it's easier to watch Miley Cyrus on the VMAs and have an opinion, to read what she has to say in "Rolling Stone," even though it's the ravings of a wet behind the ears twenty year old no different from any generation before.

But if we don't pay attention to her, who do we gravitate to? The favorites of people who love music but have no idea how to recommend it? It's not what YOU like, but what I do. Which is why I'm gravitating to the radio or the magazine, to anyone with critical mass, since even if I hate it, at least I'm part of the social fabric.

Yes, we're at a turning point. The Internet has devolved into cacophony. We're looking to the edifices for direction. Some of them are new media, many of them are old. The ones who will survive are not those looking for short term profits, but those that realize it's a war of attrition, but one or two will come out the other side and be much more powerful.

Meanwhile, our social networks are failing. We're losing trust in the rantings and ravings of blowhards online, even our friends. We want commonality, we want arbitration, we want to be told what to pay attention to.

So the rich get richer and the poor bitch and eventually give up.


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