I had originally planned on letting the discussion over Andrew Keen’s new book; The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture, slide on by. I was even going to pass on pointing out how an article on the Globe and Mail website about Andrew and his book was willing to name those who have come out against Andrew but fail to follow even the most basic blogging etiquette by linking back to them; but then I guess when you’re a newspaper pretending to be bloggers you don’t need to follow etiquette.
I was even going to pass it by when it so pointedly made obvious some basic truths about the blogging world. After all how do you argue against a truth like
Internet culture, often portrayed as the vanguard of progress, is actually a jungle peopled by intellectual yahoos and digital thieves, according to a Silicon Valley entrepreneur-turned-dissenter.
Where I couldn’t turn back though was when I read a post by Stowe Boyd today on the matter and his opinion of Andrew. Sure the post that started by calling Andrew Keen an elitist was largely a cut and paste (with link back of course) of another blogger’s; Kevin Marks, opinion but it was the last paragraph that got my attention
Meanwhile, I have found myself softening to trolls like Keen, Dvorak, and Carr. Perhaps because I believe that they increasingly don’t matter, and that the majority of people have no time for them: even the extremely literate and wired.
It amazed me the audacity to call another person elitist and yet in the same breath declare them as not being important. To assume that just because one person’s viewpoint has no value because you consider them nothing more than a troublesome waste of space is nothing more than a glorification of your own value.
Who really is the elitist?
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