quirkalicious content!

vlogging, blogging, podcasting... One thing I notice about the aesthetic of the way these things tend to be is that there's a sort of down-to-earth-ness about the way people are presenting it all. When ordinary people make stuff and put it out there, it tends to not have the layer of gloss added to traditional mainstream content. What's interesting to me about this is that people who are into podcasts and blogging and what not seem to prefer it this way.

The timing couldn't be better for Adam Curry and Apple to start this recent push of awareness about RSS and all that. I don't mean because the technology is ready, or because on-demand and subscription-based audio and video content seem to be lining up to take over the way we get our entertainment. Obviously the technology makes it all possible but I mean in a cultural way, people seem to be ready HUNGRY for citizen-created content, with all its quirky, spunky, amateur "lo-fi," homegrown honesty.

I see it as a sort of backlash to decades of the shiny, advertisement-driven, mass-manipulation-based programming on TV and the radio. There's something going on in the collective unconscious that wants to not be lied to and to have more of a sense that the people we're listening to or watching are actually people. Flaws and all. People you feel like you can understand or people you might be friends with Etc. So the media super-hero thing like the traditional ultra-butch news anchor and the idyllic leave-it-to-beaver-family might be finally losing their appeal.

It's not just the RSS-related stuff that proves this. Look at the popularity of "reality" programming in the last decade. Look at the out-of-left-field sudden popularity of documentary films. Right? Isn't it all the same sort of appeal?

So when I'm clicking around on MySpace, seeing all these funky-ass, eye-straining HTML designs on people's profiles, complete with usually horrific music that all too often crashes my browser, I can't help it marvel at this fact: MySpace is a form of entertainment. Wait. But these are people. Just ordinary people, Putting themselves out there to be looked at... Telling the world what music they like, what movies, Their Dreams, aspirations, their secrets... But it is entertaining.

woe... It's like voyeurism. It reminds me quite a bit of reality programming actually.

Think about it. Add it all together and apply the equation to...

well...

How about less attendance at movie-theaters lately?

I mean half the teenagers I know can edit video. Kids can make 3-D animations on their computers at home! Why should we go and see the latest fat-budget Hollywood action movie? Isn't it fair to say that watching a documentary on how the latest spiderman movie's special effects were done would be just as entertaining [if not more] to a lot of us as watching the latest spiderman movie?? I guess Hollywood needs to pay closer attention to what young people like to spend their time doing. I bet if someone spied on their neighbors, filmed it all, and edited in to a feature, that would do very well at the box office right now. I think homemade films are going to become more and more popular.

When my parents, generation dies off, it will be interesting to see how politicians adapt to this cut-the-bullshit era.