July 2014

The current CPOTI (creative person on the internet) operates in a shifting, amorphous zone between the two extremes of

1. Theatrically quitting the Net (and then returning with a self-hosted site -- the Kevin Bewersdorf model)

and

2. Surrendering your entire practice to Mark Zuckerberg's advertising honey trap-cum-government surveillance apparatus, as described, not in those terms of course, in this extended Facebook infomercial on the Hyperallergic website (hat tip bill)

John Seed, the writer of the infomercial, was evidently born very recently and thus has no deja vu sensation that this entire "have virtual friends in your studio, listening to you moan about your creative trials and giving you self-serving advice" model was done ten years ago in the so-called blogosphere, and without all the conflicted issues of being grist for someone else's ad machine. (Issues of which Seed seems unaware.)
In fact, some denizens of that era never moved to Facebook. Painter Dennis Hollingsworth, am happy to see, is still maintaining an open studio on his Movable Type blog. How he is able to do this with no verifiable friend count is hard to fathom -- he must be crushingly lonely. Almost like painters were before the internet.
To be fair, Hollingsworth doesn't moan -- his studio diary spares you maudlin, unprofessional entries such as this:

John Seed's article about the above painter uses two words that should cause shivers to anyone who has read a word or two about Facebook's celebrated collusion with government and advertisers: trust ("the sense of trust this [transparency] engenders" "his candor generates trust") and confessions ("Mark’s Facebook posts strike me as brave and honest confessions around the challenges faced by the painter on a daily basis" "Facebook offers a public forum where doubts and confessions can be offered up and support can be offered").
Its true that "talking about some of the melancholy [you] go through in the studio" isn't the same as admitting a crime or peccadillo that John Law or Jane Employer might find intriguing. But post-Snowden, et al, this is probably a better time to be putting on your game face than letting it all hang out. One should be wary of "confession creep." Hyperallergic won't do this -- its ongoing mission is to make Facebook cool for artists. But others might note the example of how not to be, on the internet, at this particular moment. Your vulnerabilities can and will be used against you.

From the calm, unconflicted perspective on this old school blog, we continue to watch in amazement as the world crawls up Mark Zuckerberg's bum. OK, well maybe not so calm.
Naked Capitalism linked today to a new "cool stuff" blog under the Nick Denton/Gawker/Gizmodo brand called "Sploid." Heavy on animated GIFs and meme-hopefuls, it's just one cool thing after another.
Each post has a "join us on Facebook" link. Curious what that offered, other than access for Sploid to the vaunted social graph (you know, kids), we went to the Sploid Facebook page, as it appears to non-Zucks. It's a shortened version of the Sploid blog, but looks worse because it has to conform to Facebook's design scheme, and with new teaser copy that some poor SOB has to write (and no animated GIFs -- apparently Sploid opted not to convert them to Facebook's fake GIF format). The top of each Sploid Facebook post says "SPLOID shared a link," as if Sploid was your friend and wanted you to know about some cool thing, when it fact it's just mirroring its own daily content. There doesn't appear to be a Twitter clone yet.
Of course Denton is horrible and kind of desperate, but I wonder how many other publications have decided their survival depends on having crappier versions of their product surrendered into a competitor's private servers. They would essentially be admitting their work isn't strong enough to lure readers back to the "commons," where they can be found through ordinary search and word of mouth. Does the commons even exist, or is it just spam and crappy old sites -- please don't answer that.
A small anecdote from recent experience. A younger musician, let's call him DankCats, said he would follow my blog more but he can't deal with getting an RSS reader. A mutual friend offered to create a Tumblr that mirrors tommoody.us posts so DankCats could read it. Our editorial board convened and considered a motion that, in order for tommoody.us (and the artist who produces it) to survive as a going concern in the modern world, it was going to need a "tumblr version," a "twitter version," and a "facebook version." The motion failed. There are many ways to look at failure.