For the first experimental half of this GNED 101 course, I've been taking you through some critical attitudes to media consumption in the late 20th and early 21st century. Most of these views are fairly "dystopian" -- worrying about how our media and our overconsumption of media could cause personal or societal problems and be taking the human race in unhealthy directions, including further away from a clear sense of what is real, increasing our individual isolation and social alienation, making us vulnerable to new forms of exploitation, and making our actual animal existence in a fragile ecosphere of life seem unreal or irrelevant.
Some key worries about media that I explored:
For the last class, I invited you to reflect on what is great and positive about 21st century media and digital/networked culture, and I came up with the three top things that I love about it. As perhaps the only person in the room who actually experienced the shift from corporate broadcast media to social media I thought my perspectives might be of interest. These could be on the test!
At the top of my list is the way the Internet tore electronic media out of the hands of the corporate and political gatekeepers and put media creation within the reach of many "ordinary people." This was unprecedented, and seemed to be making true the prophecy of cultural theorist Hans Magnus Enzensberger in his 1974 essay The Consciousness Industry. Enzenberger saw the broadcast media of his day (before the Internet became available to orginary people) as a means by which the powerful could "colonize the consciousness" of the rest of us. TV and radio were one-way media; viewers were passive receivers. Enzenburger speculated that "The media, once democratized and made 'two-way,' offer a huge emancipatory potential." This seemed to be what happened later, when the Internet became an important medium in the 1990s and beyond.
When ordinary people started to share and create media online, they were doing so largely out of the joy of sharing and creating, not because they hoped to monetize their work and play. As I watched this happening and gradually joined in myself, I was heartened by the rebirth of many things that seemed to have been lost in 20th century corporate mass media that the Situationists, Neil Postman, and others had been criticizing: participation, the idea of sharing with others as a gift or something you are doing for the good of the world (or at least to show off and get your voice into the mix), and arguably love.
A Gift Economy is a system of exchange where goods, services, and knowledge are given without any explicit agreement for immediate or future reward. Instead of relying on monetary profit or strict bartering, this economic model builds social cohesion, feelings of love and safety, trust, mutual obligations, and human interdependence. Such econmies have existed in human societies, though they have largely been among indigenous peoples. The more built-up, systematized, and hierarchical a society gets, the less common a gift economy may be. We have a capitalist economy in contemporary Canada.
The Internet 30 years ago, however, seemed much more like a gift economy. Shareware, freeware, open source software, file sharing, what I call "craft media." People helping each other, people making culture more available and "open source," without the gatekeepers and predatory capitalism of corporate media.
Even today many – probably most - people still don't try to monetize their online media - or they are satisfied with a modest supplemental income from things like ad revenue or Patreon donations. Most of us share because we want to participate in the world of media and be seen, maybe also because we have something we want to give to strangers (the opposite of capitalism).
When I talked about the Situationists, I mentioned how most people's culture before the 20th century was largely participatory and social. They made music for themselves, live. They danced together to the music. They told stories to each other. For the most part they couldn't read, couldn't afford to go to plays or operas, and they was no tv or radio, let alone Internet. The Situationists thought this had been a healthier, more "human," more deomcratic, more healthily social way of producing culture. With the advent of electronic media in the 20th century, most people moved from making folk culture themselves to consuming pop culture manufactured by professionals for corporations that were above all focused on selling their eyeballs on advertisements. This was the business model of consumer culture.
Before the Internet, if an ordinary person wanted to participate in culture they either had to work their way up in a corporate structure or convince a company to, for instance, publish their book. Without the corporate systems you could try to do grassroots stuff like mimeograph a few copies of your zine and take them down to see if the comic book store would be willing to display them, but reach would be next to impossible. With the Internet people could cut out the corporate middleman and suddenly there was the potential to reach millions of people.
A lot of people started sharing their digital files with each other on platforms like Napster. This was considered illegal, but it proved impossible to police successfully. Pirate media allowed people who couldn't afford to buy DVDs and CDs to access the media. This was done largely for the joy of sharing, not as a money-making game. It was explicitly anti-capitalist.
People started to create their own media and streaming platforms like MySpace, YouTube, and Facebook arose, again initially more as experiments than money-making enterprises.
“Pop culture” was and largely still is manufactured by corporations. The Internet provides an alternative channel for media production and consumption. I like to think of the Internet and social media at their best as a kind of “Digital Folk Culture,” created by and for the people.
In class, I discussed the difference between manufactured goods and craft goods. Manufactured goods are made in an automated way in mass quatities; they tend to be uniform, interchangeable, and comparatively affordable. Craft goods tend to be hand made by human beings, often unique or put out in small batches. Compare a table you buy at Ikea for $40 with a hand-carved table made by craftspeople and that might cost hundreds of dollars. The Ikea table is predictable, reliable, easily replaceable, affordable. And it bears the stamp of the machines that assembled it. The craft table is unique, irreplaceable, expensive and rare. And it bears the stamp of the human hands that made it.
Manufactured beer vs craft beer. The manufactured beer is made by giant multinational corporations. Every can of Molson Canadian tastes exactly the same. They are churned out in the millions, largely produced with industrialized machinery. They are cheaper than craft beer. Craft beer is produced by small local breweries, with perhaps only one or two people responsible for the brewing process. Probably brewed in more traditional ways, and generally more experimental. Also generally more expensive than manufactured beer.
The manufactured beer is predicatable, cheap, easy to get. The craft beer is wild, unpredictable, interesting. Closer to a human creator. Harder to get and a bit more expensive. Manufactured beer is easy but boring. Craft beer may be challenging and inconsistent, but it is interesting. I think it is well worth it, but then I now make "craft beer money."
Now consider the media. The manufactured media (television, pop music, streaming shows, etc) tends to be slick and have great production values. It may feature celebrities and other things people like to "consume." One way or another, though, you have to pay for it.
The videos on YouTube are examples of what I call craft media. Media made or shared by ordinary people, generally with little expectation of profit or maybe even fame. Unlike the situation with manufactured vs crafted physical goods (tables, DVDs), craft media is generally more or less free, though YouTube or the creator may try to make ad revenue out of it now. (This wasn't originally the case.)
Personally, I don't subscribe to any streaming services, I don't have cable tv, and I don't buy stuff like DVDs and CDs anymore (I'm sure you don't do that either). This isn't because I'm cheap. It's because the stuff put out by the manufactured media producers, though it may be impeccably produced, largely seems like consumer slop to me and doesn't speak to my interests and values.
I do, however, pay YouTube $25 a month for an ad-free experience. I do most of my video and audio "consumption" (exploration, learning, entertainment) on YouTube now. This tends to be "channel surfing" for intriguing content, listening to new music (or obscure old music), watching commentators whose takes I find interesting, watching old movies (including obscure foreign and silent films) that may not be available on any commercial streaming service, and watching original content, be it compilations of dank memes, film of experimental dance, or deep dives into whacky subjects by learned amateur scholars (for instance, Plantrum's recent wild ride through the history of domesticated bananas.
A few years ago, I made a little PowerPoint presentation for my Remix Culture class, in which I tried to convey my joy at the rich gift of YouTube media. Here's a video version if you feel like a break from reading.
Why would anyone still watch tv when there is such a treasure house of alternative media even on a mainstream platform like YouTube?
CAUTIONS. As part of the "enshittification" of our platforms, many creators who started making content for the love of it and embraced the freedom of the gift economy have “advanced” to a stage where they can (at least in rare cases) support themselves or even become wealthy or influential celebrities. In this move toward reshaping the craft media commons of the Internet into a business based on corporate 20th century consumer-revenue media, some of us feel that something may be lost, in terms of authenticity, freedom and impartiality, or even originality. Monetized slop is gradually seeping into the landscape of genuine creativity and sharing without ulterior motives that I loved in the nineties and naughties.
Even with all the capitalists and technocrats trying to control and manipulate us, there is still more freedom and diversity in social and craft media than there has ever been in electronic media up till now. More people’s stories are being told. More kinds of people are represented in media and this representation leads to normalization of diverse, once marginalized perspectives and identities. It allows more kinds of people to feel seen, and more understanding and “acceptance” of others, as they get the cultural stamp of approval of our times: they appear in media.
The manufactured media of Hollywood and streaming services are learning/stealing from social media and independent creators and trying to become more inclusive. At least when they can profit from it. True capitalists have no value except profit, and thus they don't care much what colour you are or whether you are a lesbian as long as they can capitalize on that. Twenty years ago, no one could have foreseen Disney (the bastion of heteronormative and indeed reactionary gender politics) making a series about the New York ballroom scene of the late 1980s and early 90s. Perhaps the success of mainstream shows like RuPaul's Drag Race made Disney see that there was a market in queer and trans drama. This is a positive side to the capitalist culture industry, it seems to me.
Before the Internet, the media we consumed was tightly controlled by the corporations that made it. Hollywood, tv channels and production companies, record labels etc. A corporate superpower like Disney generally focused on and reproduced in its output the attitudes and "myths" of the power-holders in America: Corporate power, White Privilege, Male Privilege, etc. In the 1950s, whoever you were if you turned on the tv, you were probably watching a show featuring white people. A sitcome like Father Knows Best, while it might be entertaining and promote good values in some ways, was also silently promoting and reproducing norms: white, middle class, heterosexual, nuclear family, man in charge. Many argued that television "colonized our consciousness" in a way that was ironically connected to colonialism in the real world. They would argue that capitalism, partriarchy (the idea that men should made the decisions and be catered to), white supremacy were all part of what we now call the colonialist project of Europeans to take over the whole world with their values, and to exploit the people and and extract the resources from parts of the world that weren't white, weren't capitalist, and might not even be patriarchal. (Many indigenous peoples have not had the Western gender bias in which males are the top dogs).
I think of a black woman watching Father Knows Best on tv in 1958, the year I was born. She doesn't see herself there. She sees that the world that is real and ideal is a white, male-dominated world. Throughout my life this has changed. In the 1970s there started to be many shows and movies in which black Americans were the major characters. In the 1990s gay characters started to become common. This helped normalize homosexuality in reality, as our consciousnesses were colonized by the new gay characters in sitcoms.
Nowadays there are shows about Korean and Indigenous Canadians, trans people, and more even on television. I think social media and craft media did as much to make that happen as action in the real world. Social media made Black Lives Matter a staying force in the world by making it a staying force in the media. The reality of human diversity (race, sex, gender, orientations, abilities, neurodiversities, and even class have never been more fully represented in media than they are now.
CAUTIONS. Corporate media remains devoted to capitalism and control, and serving the interests of the privileged. Its goal is still to seduce you for profit. It may even make deals with other power holders for their mutual benefit, as it used to do in more unconscious ways when it was all about males, whites, and the privileged. Imagine if Trump told CBS to get rid of queer content and promote the values of MAGA. They might need to do that to guard their bottom line and their ties to (or safety with) polical power. They probably don't, as a company, have any commitment to progress and inclusivity. They have a commitment to their shareholders, and to remaining part of the privileged elites themselves.
Another concern people sometimes have is that the media technocrats may be happy to provde a fantasy of inclusivity on tv as a substute for change in the real world.
I don't need to spend much time on this one, as this is something most of you already understand intimately and are more immersed in than I am.
In chatrooms, multiplayer games, discussion boards, etc the media we have now make it possible to connect with people virtually yet profoundly. Often, it would seem, more profoundly than in real life. People can "spend time with" their families on the other side of the world, for instance. They can be intimate and even "have sex" with their partners when they are stuck in a long distance relationship. People sometimes help absolute strangers from miles or continents away, people they probably will never meet. Human connection has been given a new and powerful extension.
Gaming and fan communities can make media itself the centre of new "live" socialzing between real people.
Virtual worlds like VRChat may make a kind of socializing available to people who struggle with or avoid socializing in the real world for a variety of reasons. One can learn socialization skills online. One can make serious connections.
CAUTIONS. Connecting through a screen, especially with people you've never connected with in the real world, can be a different experience from real-life connection. It brings obvious risks. New forms of fraud and fakery, distance and objectification. The cool feeling of connection with someone you can't touch, smell or even see the full body of. For the time being you're only getting the sound and a two-dimensional simulation of the other person. Real life is three dimensional and experienced through at least five senses. You’re missing out on the smell taste and touch of the other, the experience of a shared ambiance. Shared experienced without mediation.
Increasingly there is the possibility that someone you have only met online is actually a bot (an AI agent simulating a person).
A virtual friend may not be who they say they are. True in real life too, but much easier to fake online.
Online socializing may not be as challenging and rewarding as real-world socializing. Being vulnerable and at risk in three dimensions may be good for us - our mental health, our reslience, our human qualities, our value to others.
Thanks for reading!