Week 4

     This week in class, we discussed important points out of "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky. I found some interesting points that I have never given any thought about before. The chapter 3 title pretty much sums it up: Everyone is a Media Outlet. Shirky talks about how professionals are specialized in a field, and the scarcity of the amount of people in that field are what makes them professionals. He described it as "In the same way you do not have to be a professional driver to drive, you no longer have to be a professional publisher to publish." He calls this "mass amateurization." Basically, the internet serves as an outlet for literally anyone to publish (although not necessarily professionally) anything they want to. For example, here I am publishing a blog, yet I have no background experience or specialization in the art of journalism or publishing. So now, you do not have to be a journalism to report or a publisher to publish. This is what makes the internet so full of junk. Millions of people are publishing works on the internet that nobody cares about. On occasion, however, you may come across something worth seeing. This brings us to chapter 4: "Publish, then Filter." Shirky's point here is that everyone is just throwing stuff out onto the internet without a second thought, and most of it is stuff that nobody cares about. So, all this stuff is being published constantly, and then the internet users (us) have to filter through it and decide what is important and what isn't. This is opposite of the traditional way of filtering, then publishing. Just to reiterate, this is the reason for the massive amounts of (for lack of a better word) crap on the internet. Shirky wrote "Surveying [the internet's] vast collection of personal postings, in-joke photographs, and poorly shot video, it's easy to conclude that, while the old world of scarcity may had some disadvantages, it spared us the worst of amateur publishing." I couldn't have said it better.
     Another point that was brought up that I found interesting was the amount of people who have become "famous" for their amateur publishing. For example, anyone can have a YouTube channel, where they can post just about anything they want. Ninety-nine times out of one-hundred, it is garbage. But maybe one of those posts is actually worth watching. It goes viral. Ellen Degeneres sees it and invites him or her on the show. Millions of people watch the show, search the guest on Instagram or Twitter, and follow them. Not that I consider that fame, but it is definitely more famous than I currently am! My favorite, by far, are the people who start working out to become healthier, and all of the sudden they become a fitness instructors and change their Instagram name to "Fitness-(insert name here)," and post photos of them eating healthy foods like avocados and pixilated videos of them doing crunches.
     Anyway, Shirky gave me a  new perspective on the way I look at this "mass amateurization." The word "famous" does not only include musicians, comedians, or actors and actresses. It also includes the "Instafamous" or "Youtube famous" people. I wonder if we will ever get to the point where fame does not mean anything anymore.