I just plain don’t like 1). And 2) is something that can be seen throughout history. Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Mao, any number of South American countries…they all become what they hate. When Tucker launched his idea for Rudius, it was essentially “Come to Tucker, who does the same basic thing as TV/movies/books (promote artists he thinks are good), but won’t compromise your message.” The only thing the Rudius writer can rely on is that Tucker won’t become what he’s fighting, that he won’t ignore quality content because he stupidly thinks it won’t sell.

The problem with YouTube is that it takes work to get the video for a Motley Crue song, rather than getting a video of two fat girls singing a karaoke version of a Motley Crue song. What YouTube needs is something like Digg has, where videos are streamlined according to popularity and according to category. I use YouTube only for music, sometimes for UFC vids that get deleted, and for standup/sketch comedy (SNL/Chappelle, etc.) I don’t want to see an Adidas ad or a soccer fight. If someone does, they can click on the “sports” section, whereas I can bypass that and go straight to the “classic rock” section.

All media has a laundry list of shit that exists below what’s good; and, historically, what always always happens is the shit (that may be extremely popular in its day) drops off the radar. People won’t remember “Hollaback Girl” in 50 years, but they will remember [insert great song here] on the condition that someone creates it. They won’t remember [insert shitty blog here] but they will remember Philalawyer.

How crappy can they be if people like them? People vote with their mouse. I hate the notion that people don’t know what they like, it is ridiculously elitist, and not in a good way. It is not the job of the consumer to only consume “good” videos; it their job to consume the things they enjoy. Who is to say what is good and what isn’t? You can argue that there are certain objective criteria that makes something good, but ultimately, what matters is whether or not an audience likes it. In economics, price is determined by scarcity, not need, hence the diamonds/water paradox. The same is true with art.

It seems that many presume that the content will just arise because this huge avenue to the world is now open to us. Hardly true, since most people still have neither the drive, nor the confidence, nor the intelligence to contribute anything of merit. What we DO gain is a larger distribution of people to pick from, i.e. almost everyone, and slowly we can funnel our way through the morass to pick out what is good and worth watching, and what is not.

Eventually, smart people will begin to pick up what the Internet is really useful for, i.e. an active interface, being able to see the two-way portals. However, for more than twenty-thirty years our main home content providers (the TV, the newspaper, the radio) has led many of us to a more passive form of thinking, to kneejerk react to talking heads, laughtracks, talk shows. I think it’ll be awhile before many smart people wrap their heads around the idea of active, two-way interaction, since the Internet is still primarily used for passive things outside of email (checking sports scores, rapid news updates).

YouTube is barely a year old, the blogosphere isn’t even at a decade yet, and the things that are coming out of them are still fairly more remarkable and innovative than most things on TV. But I wouldn’t expect a dramatic upsurge in content for quite a bit until we get students to creatively think again, which hopefully won’t be too long. For now, everyone has something to say; few people have something worth listening to.