I would like to know how we can get anything said at all if, before we even open the virtual equivalent of our mouths, we are judged by whatever forum or platform we use to host our statements on. Lately I've seen LJ users flinging mock-insults at Tumblr users, the internet at large tut-tutting LJ users, and so on, all based upon the assumption that the platform you use says something about you in advance, presumed to make your opinion less valid. While every platform is going to be split into content and chaff, assuming that everything's going to be chaff because it's on that platform is, or should be, an obvious fallacy. So why the prevalence of dismissing people because they state something on Platform This or Platform That?
Never mind, though, about these "internal" squabbles. The real conflict - as we're supposed to perceive the "real" conflict - lies between the internet and the traditional (printed) media, with the traditional sneering at the electronic. The usual reasoning for such distaste is that "anyone can post on the internet", which these arguments construe as a reason why nothing (that isn't backed by some "real" outside authority) on the internet can be trusted. In a way, there's a point buried under the bias: anyone can post on the internet.
And so what?
In these arguments, "anyone" is invariably equated with "any amateur". However, the reverse is also true: the internet is an opportunity for any brilliant thinker, activist, writer, visual artist, et cetera to find an outlet for their work. In many cases, it's the only outlet that person has available for any number of reasons, and diminishing it just because its realization takes place on a screen and not on the page should indeed be called out as the arbitrary standard it is. By not being superficially regulated, the internet accumulates content, and there is no reason to think all of this content is vapid or irrelevant simply because it hasn't gone through some sort of approval board before it was released.
This brings us to the question that should always be asked: whose is the advantage? Internet publishing, on the most fundamental level, is disadvantaged by its dual nature: on the one hand, posting something on the internet is usually not considered "legitimate" publishing (regardless of quality) and rarely makes the author's fame; on the other hand, traditional publishers will often require whatever is submitted for their consideration not to have been published before, including on the internet. The only constant here seems to be disdain for the internet by virtue of what it is, but how publishing on it should be seen or treated fluctuates according to whatever is deemed profitable to the traditional publishing houses. My guess is that they do recognize the power of digitally disseminated information (mostly for free, let's not understate that), which provides them with the incentive to delegitimize it because it is free and unsupervised. The image of the double-edged sword could hardly be more fitting.
Profit and control make a compelling rationale. The issue of quality control is often raised in defence of the traditional media - but upon closer inspection, "quality control" often devolves simply into "whatever it is in the publisher's interest to put out". In my experience, I have read absolutely trivial, badly researched, or outright offensive published works (fiction and nonfiction) - but an equal amount of thoughtful, well-written pieces online (fiction and nonfiction). Obviously, it depends on knowing where to look to find the good material, but the point is that this applies to both the internet and print publishing. Nothing is automatically "better" by virtue of being respectably published, and the amount of times this attitude is seen, not to mention presented as something that shouldn't be questioned in the first place, is frankly disturbing.
I have used the word "respectable" on purpose. Traditional publishing is undeniably about sanctioning, about marking a work "fit" for being published in a way that will generate money. It is telling that in this process of legitimizing certain works and not others, the internet is excluded as it is 1) widely accessible without needing to patronize a publisher, and 2) not immediately subject to institutional control. These are interests that have nothing to do with some purported idea of quality (not to mention that, even with quality control as such, cooperating with an editor is not necessarily dependent on submitting anything to an established publishing house). There is a whole host of classist and elitist attitudes inherent in the idea that, say, a piece of writing can only be validated by approval by an institution that expects it to bring back monetary revenue. The point of control discussed above also remains relevant.
When I write academic articles, I believe it would be beneficial for everyone concerned if I could draw upon my selection of tried-and-true online resources for a given topic - but because those particular pages do not happen to be sanctioned in a specific way, their usage is openly discouraged. How's this for perpetuating the establishment as a guarantee, for weeding out ideas that have (for whatever reason, related or unrelated to writing quality) not been put before a committee? I went into academia with the idealistic conviction that it should challenge, not act as just another drone of normativity and prescriptivism that will let you make your point, but only if you back it by using a selection of certain preemptively approved texts and not others. This also highlights the alleged division between theory and practice, when in fact they are inseparable. (Academia, why do you do this to yourself? You need all the contemporary relevance you can get before they turn your institutions into job-training centres in the name of - you guessed it! - profitability.)
Let's wrap this up with the observation that, in any field with loose or partial objective standards, the presence of an evaluation committee guarantees nothing apart from a set of its own biases. That, and an arbitrary approval stamp on top. Is this the sort of cultural discussion we want? More importantly, is it any sort of discussion that can usher in perspectives that are still largely silenced?
Authority: it's not synonymous with quality. It is, however, correlated with ideology and legitimization almost universally, and I wish people would think of that before they instinctively decry the internet for being so thoroughly "unauthorized".
(PS: Hello, LJ. Long time, no see! Oh and yeah, I was thinking of giving Dragon Age a try since I've had it recommended left and right but apparently not. Why does everything have to fail at something, and why can't it at least fail at something that could be ignored?)
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