Stop Watching for a Second and Make Something of It

           Recently I’ve been feeling like I’ve been getting more and more of a media reality check than normal.  I used to be shocked at how ridiculous online media can be, but now I’m just kind of over it and I want to stop sitting on the sideline.  I mean you have television shows like Tosh.O which expound the ludicrous nature of how people act over the internet, but is it still a sideshow or the entire circus?  In the documentary we watched in class about that early web-guru Josh (something), he predicts that soon we will be yearning for 15 minutes of fame EVERY DAY.  I think we’ve passed that point a while ago with all the Facebooking and Twittering and all that stuff.  I think that what is happening is a revolution of incentive to express oneself through technology.  It used to be about getting your name out there, and for many it still is.  But I think people are starting to put themselves out there just for the hell of it.  Come to think of it, maybe that’s how it always was.  Anyways, in this remix culture we live in, more and more people are throwing stuff in for the hell of it.  I think music is the ultimate example of human expression in this way.  Anyone who creates new music these days knows that inevitably, their work will undergo a metamorphosis, an evolution.  In this way, new fans will arrive because the music will have been altered to suit their tastes.  And the process will continue to snowball.  One track will be glossed over, dissected, broken, re-assembled, twisted, spun, merged and combusted.  This is just inescapable at this point, just like the documentary we watched in class, Rip!: A Remix Manifesto, outlines.  But are people stopping making music? No.  Are people stopping downloading music?  Of course not. 

            I recently went to a large rave in L.A. where about fifteen different DJs were playing sets in the same night.  Each set was about an hour to an hour and a half long with many different mixes and mashups of songs.  I would see one artist play another’s songs right before that second artist played the first artist’s songs, each with a different take and expression of the other’s music.  At first it seemed complicated, troublesome even.  Won’t they get mad at each other for stealing beats?  Of course they won’t.  Why?  Mutual respect.  They know that their track was good enough for others to use and that in itself is worth putting it out there.  Today we see this exact phenomenon happening with everything that is put out there.  The globalization of information via the internet and online social media has made everyone who wants to play the game a player.  Although some of us obviously have superior resources and levels of experience as others, this is the most equalized our society has ever been since the cavemen days.  This homogenization of information is an inescapable facet of the progression of history and more and more people are becoming active participants in writing it.