In his article, Keen made many arguments highlighting his distaste for uneducated and opinionated communicators who generally have little credibility on the subject of which they are speaking of. This concept can be equated to a kind of Social Darwinism: Survival of the loudest and most opinionated. Keen argues that the internet is full of these types, tainting the credibility and tastefulness of the internet.
Brandon Griggs from CNN highlights these annoying types of people. He states there are twelve to be exact, and he hones in on the social network site that is Facebook. He states that a recent study of Twitter found that 40% of tweets are pointless babble, and that Facebook, although different in design, it is similar in idea and is comparably obnoxious. The article simply lists Griggs perspectives of the 12 most annoying types of Facebookers.
Keen's argument is legitimate; I completely agree that there are at least thousands of asinine comments and communications on the internet that occur daily, but I disagree that there is a problem with experts not expressing quality work. Yeah Twitter and Facebook is infiltrated with these lame communications, but it doesn't take away from the experts' credibility as a whole. It should be up to the user to find credible information for themselves. The great thing about the internet is that you don't have to look at something you don't want to look at. If the user believes a certain type correspondence is irrelevant and pointless, then open up a new tab and set your browser to a source which you think is worth your time.
Griggs argument makes sense, yeah. But 1) how can you lump the 250 million users of Facebook into 12 simple categories of annoyance? and 2) His whole article sounds as though it is one long complaint. Which only further proves Keen's point. Not to mention, I found this article on what I think is a credible website; CNN.com. Which goes to say that even legitimate websites are jumping on this democratic Web 2.0 bandwagon (bandwidth?).
This goes to show us that the internet really is turning into an open-ended form of expression. The expression may be asinine, it may be interesting, it may even be awe-inspiring; either way, users like the spotlight and see it as an opportunity to share what is on their mind. Personally, I don't see this as a bad thing, it just makes it more difficult to decipher what is worth the reader's time and what simply a waste.
I wish I weren't the sympathy baiter..but I so am. Great blog entry, really helped my understand the article in another light.
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