Foto 38 (street shot, Kentish Town) / Your opinion is worthless: the backlash against democratic speech

Foto 38, RTomens, 2018

Hey, remember when everyone's opinion was considered important as part of the revolutionary online democratic platform scenario, circa 2003? Yeah? 

What happened?

Now nobody cares to hear what an ordinary Joe(anna) thinks. We all got sick of comments everywhere, from YouTube to newspaper articles. It was all too easy to spout shit from a ready-made digital soapbox so everyone did!

Blogging became popular, heralded as the Great Democratic Liberation of The Individual - at last! - in opposition to the previous tyranny of inky professional opinion by experts in their field - hurrah!

Fast forward: no-one reads blogs. People, like The Prisoner, want information. It's the great infotainment scam, with nonsense masquerading as journalism, fake news and fucking vacuous subject matter pouring out of the screen to flood your eyeballs in candy sludge.

That and actual information, such as how many films did Agnes Varda (90 today - Happy Birthday, Agnes) make, or how far is it from Earth to Mars...you know, useful stuff.

Art opinion only gets read by those in the business and students dreaming of being in art magazines one day, presumably. The industry feeds itself. Art and advertising are wedded to such an extent in magazines that they can barely be differentiated. 

In Housmans bookshop I see that fat, glossy, 'high end' magazines seem to have made a comeback; the racks are bulging with them. Meanwhile, they do keep the faith with zines, at least, which tend towards scrappy little pages of nothing much but I'd rather them than the glossies. 

My opinions on art are worthless, even to me. You don't care. I only care intermittently, depending on what mood I'm in, you know? One day It's All Fine, even Photoshopped landscapes and digitally rendered Goth Porn. Another day I want to KILL THEM ALL BECAUSE IF YOU'RE NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!

What's 'the problem'? What am I rebelling against? What have you got? Kitsch digital art, bad painting, soft porn images of women and girls, portraits in oil, landscapes in oil, psuedo-Surrealism ('surreal', a word so misunderstood that footballers use it in interviews, as does any moron on TV), crafting, zines that look like they were made in craft workshops...etc

Now that the backlash against the opinions of us Nobodies is fully under way I feel even more like carrying on - not that I spout outrageous opinions too often (do I?) - because I've usually gone against the grain. I may be part of the New Pictures Generation but even then as a reluctant member. After all, pictures are part of the problem, or rather, the proliferation of them in the form of selfies, make-up shots...I dunno, whatever numbskulls follow on Instagram. I'm on Instagram...and to boost my Follower count I shall soon be conducting an all-out barrage of selfies in my new Hipster identity...drinking coffees in overpriced places...getting my moustache trimmed...whatever 'hipsters' do...you've been warned.

Footnote: I have noticed recently on Facebook that more and more people are taking less interest in what their friends post and using it purely as a platform to promote their own activity. I find this interesting. Yes, I know it's a common phenomenon but people I thought better seem to have succumbed to the lure of The Self. This may or may not relate to the backlash against the opinions/work of Nobodies...I don't know.

Footnote 2: it's quite possible that I'm just becoming a bore to these people...ha-ha-ha!

TTFN