Join ’em

The Culture Snob

I tried to read a book called, “The Cult of the Amateur” by Andrew Keen, because I thought it would explain how we can recognize the Good Stuff in a world where Everyone can display Everything.  But I should have paid more attention to the subtitle: “How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today’s user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values.”  He is talking about me, and you and about everything I love about blogging – he says we are destroying HIGH ART.  I couldn’t get past the first chapter before I deleted it from my Kindle.  He didn’t answer my question, he just whined and moaned about how we are all drowning in a sea of vacuous crap. But the Great Artists are out there still, and they are creating Great Art. Instead of fighting against the surge, invent the method we need to bring the Good Stuff to the top.

The History Professor

“Kids these days have no attention span,”  he says to me over his third Yuengling while slumped in a lounger at a memorial day party.  I try to argue, without insulting him, that maybe he shouldn’t be so damn boring. Kids have never had an attention span.  But back when we were the students, we had to fake it. The punishment for not paying attention would ‘go on our permanent record.’  And when our parents were kids, the punishment was a swift and painful slap of the ruler on the knuckles, or worse.  Kids these days aren’t afraid of you, so you can’t be lazy anymore.  You gotta work, hard, to keep them interested.   Even the most distracted kid will focus for a long time on something fascinating.  You are a brilliant man, make history Fascinating!

The Luddite Mother

“My son used to enjoy building with legos and now all he wants to do is play minecraft.  So I took his computer away.”  What an idiotic thing to do.  Instead of taking away the thing you don’t understand, because it is unfamiliar and not what you did for fun as a kid, learn to play the game.  You will be amazed at the brain stimulation you get yourself, and it will be something you can do with your kid – seriously good bonding time with someone who is going to start hating you very, very soon if you continue to take away the things he loves.

There is wisdom in the old adage, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

Change is inevitable.  Fight against it all you want, but all you will do is make yourself irrelevant, and the world will simply delete you to make room for something new.