3.20.2010

O Caesar! These things are beyond all use, and I do fear them

I haven't spent a lot of time on Youtube. Usually I watch videos people send me but I don't go there looking for videos. And actually I don't even watch the videos people send me half the time because I'm at work.

But for some reason tonight I went to YouTube and searched for boxer. One of the first videos I found made me laugh out loud repeatedly (boxers. f---ng awesome.), so I kept going. Boxer videos led me to baby videos which led me to ... vaguely horrified. Not flat-out horrified, just vaguely. Like this. So, it's not abuse to videotape (what is the verb when it's digital video?) your baby nodding like that instead of laying him down so he can get the sleep he clearly wants. But it's still pretty disturbing. It's a baby, for crissake. A kid, maybe it would be funny. Not a baby. You don't f--k with babies.

I guess if I spent more time on YouTube (blogger's spellcheck recognizes that the "T" in "YouTube" must be capitalized. Creepy.) I might already know that it is a window on humanity and all it's inevitable horrors. But I don't, so I didn't, and, ... shudder. And all I found was people letting their babies nod! No beating up on homeless people or ... well, I don't know what else these kids get up to on YouTube. I only know about the beating up on homeless people from Law & Order. (F**k I'm old. And naive, I suspect.) (Ok, definitely naive.)

I'm sort of hazy on this, but I think there is some critical/scholarly recognition that the dominance of "high-brow" culture in days gone by resulted from the limited control and consumption of culture by small--wealthy, white, male, etc.--segments of the population. So the rise of "low-brow" culture is a result of democratization. Which is a good thing. Right? Right?!!

Is there a counterargument? Because I don't really like much reality TV, and I would really like to know what the counterargument is.

p.s. Is it elitist to be smart and desire smart culture?

p.p.s. This is my 100th post!

1 comment:

Trent said...

Whatever you do, don't read the comments on YouTube. They are an extremely depressing look at the lows of humanity.

Undoubtedly Blogger cares about the capitalization of YouTube because they are both owned by Google.

Congrats!