Adam Curtis. Bloggers Are Bullies

luka

Well-known member
who read this?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/20/adam_curtis_interview/page5.html

i thought it was spot on. it made me think of three things in particular.
1)the way oliver craners blog went from some of the best contemporary writing around to something, utterly reprehensible, completely lacking in imagination and wholly parasitic on secondary sources. just another man on a soapbox. disappointing.
2)the group hounding of vimothy on dissensus. very shameful.
3)the ranting padraig and his captain haddock like stream of invective and personal insult.
 

luka

Well-known member
and these bits

TV now tells you what to feel.

It doesn't tell you what to think anymore. From EastEnders to reality format shows, you're on the emotional journey of people - and through the editing, it gently suggests to you what is the agreed form of feeling. "Hugs and Kisses", I call it.

I nicked that off Mark Ravenhill who wrote a very good piece which said that if you analyse television now it's a system of guidance - it tells you who is having the Bad Feelings and who is having the Good Feelings. And the person who is having the Bad Feelings is redeemed through a "hugs and kisses" moment at the end. It really is a system not of moral guidance, but of emotional guidance.

Morality has been replaced by feeling.

That's what all the disorders are about. They are a way of oppressing and measuring whether what you're feeling is the correct feeling. Intellect and morality are intimately related but feeling is now predominant.


and

It's very difficult to take people out of themselves.

Because what you're doing is reinforcing the priority of their own feelings about themselves. The thing about our age is that everyone monitors themselves. It's really fascinating. I did this with the psychological disorders in The Trap. They've become a way of policing yourself.

"Am I the right shape? Am I the right emotional construct?"

So you edge back to the right emotional shape, or the right physical shape.

And vanity in our time - is about pleasing yourself. It's about making yourself feel better about yourself. We live within our selves. We should find a way of escaping it, but the program makers don't have the imagination or the confidence.


really chimed with me, cos its something iv've been writing about and been preoccupied by for the last few years.
i think its a fascinating interview and ilike his tv shows too.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I like his tv shows and there are some interesting points in that interview but a load of it is just bollocks. I think when someone says something so general as this

"First of all, the people who do blogging, for example, are self-selecting. Quite frankly it's quite clear that what bloggers are is bullies. The internet has removed a lot of constraints on them. You know what they're like: they're deeply emotional, they're bullies, and they often don't get out enough."
it undermines the whole thing. I mean, yes, almost by definition, they are self-selecting but are they all bullies, are they all deeply emotional (and if they are is that a bad thing?) and how the fuck does he know which ones get out enough? And this is even worse

"What blogging lacks is an enthusiasm about finding out about the world."
Does it? All of it?
The whole rant is very bbc centric, what the bbc should be doing etc It starts with an assumption that that somehow matters or ought to matter. Obviously if you start from tha position then you are going to see bloggers as the enemy and in the end he comes across as simply another out of touch guy who doesn't like the democratisation of ideas that blogging can give and is trying to find reasons to justify his prejudice. The picture that he paints is one that certainly could be the case, or it could be completely wrong; there is no inherent problem with blogging, just like tv it's as good as its content. There must be millions of bad blogs and they may well have an effect on the mainstream media (but isn't that the mainstream's fault for caring?) but surely there are good blogs as well?
Of course he's right about people getting overexcited about the technology at the expense of content but I've heard that so many times before.
 

swears

preppy-kei
Of course he's right about people getting overexcited about the technology at the expense of content but I've heard that so many times before.

I don't think this can be stated enough, though. And I think he's right about blogs being part of the cult of the self so prevalent now, even if there are some very good ones. Blogs tend toward overstatement and the sensational to be noticed.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"Blogs tend toward overstatement and the sensational to be noticed."
But isn't he making the exact same mistake he rightly criticised - blaming the format rather than the individual blogger? There's no inherent reason why they need to be that way any more than there is a reason that tv has to be so shit.
 

luka

Well-known member
well no, he does recognise the potential. just bemoans the current state of play.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
You mean I was bullying myself??

Do you mean you didn't appreciate my defence of Shilpa Shetty?

You what???
 
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