The iPoe

File under: Man, they really, really, really don't want to pay the fucking writers do they?

From Sullivan:

The Second Coming Of The Amateur Blogosphere
07 Jun 2010 06:03 pm

Yglesias predicts:

I think retirees are going to prove to be the killer app of digital content creation. It’s just that at the moment relatively few retired people are all that comfortable with digital media. Ten, twenty, thirty years from now that’ll be very different. Obviously someone who’s affiliated with a larger institution will always have certain advantages over an amateur, and the blogosphere gives heavy advantages to early adopters, but I think a lot is going to continue to change on the internet as demographic change continues.

Me too. The basic truth is that amateurs are often as good as professionals in journalism, which requires simply basic skills, integrity and practice. In the end, newspapers will be super-advertizing vehicles, searching for the best existing blogs out there and aggregating them. In a way, that's already the Dish model.

Wow, that's one helluva strained father/son conversation coming down the pike:

A screen door bangs open and Andy comes rushing in from playing with his friends.

Andy: Dad! Dad! Daaaaad!

Andy's Dad is in the den, blazing away on a keyboard.

Dad: What is it son?

Andy: Uh, can I, uh, can I haz, uh, some free content?

Dad: (pausing from his labors) But I just gave you some free content.

Andy: I know....

Dad: Ten seconds ago.

Andy: I know....

Dad: And what did you do with it?

Andy: (Mumbles)

Dad: What?

Andy: I said I bought. Some. Stuff.

Dad: What "stuff"?

Andy: (mumbles indistinctly)

Dad: What "stuff"!?

Andy: A puppy.

Dad: And?

Andy: And a cruise.

Dad: And?

Andy: And some pot.

Dad: (sighs) Son, you know your Dad works very hard to create that content.

Andy: (mouthing his Dad's words, rolling his eyes)

Dad: What did you say?

Andy: Nuthin.

Dad: You know, content doesn't just grow on motherfucking trees, young man.

Andy: I know, OK? I know.I know.

Long, uncomfortable silence.

Andy: Soooo?

Dad: So?

Andy: So, can I haz some?

Dad: Some what?

Andy: Some free content.

Andy: (muttering) God, why don't you just stab me in the neck!

Dad: OK, I just finished writing a long piece on the future of long-form writing. It took me...

Andy: (grabbing it and running back out to play) Kthxbai!

3...2...1...

A screen door bangs open again and Andy comes rushing back in.

Andy: Dad! Dad! Daaaaad!

Understand that "aggregator" has the same relationship to "writer" as "The Oscar Mayer Company" has to "hogs": to stay in business they need lots of them in a hurry every day, which is why they invent these wonderfully, bloodless, dehumanizing terms to sanitize what they do.

So when they say "content", remember they mean "Art": musical, visual or written.

When they say "aggregate", remember they mean "take". Sometimes with a tip of the hat and sometimes not, but virtually always unpaid.

When they say "killer app", remember they mean "a human being" who has presumable poured enough of their unremunerated time and passion into what they do to make it minimally interesting or humorous or edifying to their fellow human beings.

Also, later, when they say, "Soylent Green"

remember they mean "Grandma".