Is Mediocrity Promoted By HubPages?
Yes, in my humble opinion, hub pages, and other online publishing sites do promote mediocrity, and that’s wonderful!
For the first time in human existence, the common, everyday Joe (me) can publish any bullshit he wants to, and you, the intelligent, discerning reader can choose who to read, what stimulates your mind, or whom to completely ignore. There are gems out there, hidden in the heaps of horse manure and regurgitated garbage. I often read “official” news organization's web sites and newspapers like, CNN and USA today and, frankly, their articles are often downright bad, worse then mediocre. Now, with the Internet and blogs we all have a voice, no matter how bad, ugly, incompetent or controversial. I believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every human being, and the Internet can be a megaphone for all of our quiet, screaming voices.
I love that my mediocre voice can be read, that I don’t have to go through an editor and be “approved” in order to publish an article. Let the people decide what to read! The internet is shrinking the world and connecting far away minds. We live in a time where there is a unique opportunity to connect with people from distant cultures with foreign ideas. We are now more powerful then ever!
What are the dangers to so many horrible, beautiful, deep, pornographic, uneducated, pointless, capitalistic, illegible, and thought-provoking articles that swim through the web? I do believe there are problems with so many voices spewing and regurgitating ideas and opinions and advertisements. The most dangerous, in my opinion, being anonymity. Anonymity on the web can be a catalyst of extremism, and that can be dangerous mechanism of hate, and, quite frankly, an innocent child, or someone with a child's mind, could mistake and be swayed by, crap, as news or truth.
I consider myself a cordial person. As a child, when I was discovering the Internet, I learned something about myself, an ugly truth. I remember it clearly, while surfing the web, visiting the first chat-room that I ever entered. The chat-room was a sort of trivia game, where four real live people entered the game and tried to answered television trivia questions correctly. Each real person was represented by a cartoon character sitting on a couch in front of a television. I was losing the game, got bored and started to type things that I would never say in real life to the other players. One by one the other people in the chat room, so annoyed by my sick, crazy, remarks that they left the chat. I was fascinated by the fact that these people would never know who I was. I could say awful things that nobody would ever trace back to the "real" me.
I played that horrible game for about two months. Sometimes I would start as a normal person and then say some random, crazy, even mean, remark, as if my cartoon character had tourettes syndrome. I thankfully grew out of this, but I discovered something about myself and something about anonymity. People’s real thoughts and opinions rarely come out in a public setting, but when published on the Internet anonymously, their real thoughts and opinions can be heard, and they can be ugly!
I am against any sort of Internet censorship, or even an Internet “finger print” but I can see why that appeals to a lot of people. Especially after reading some of the comments made on CNN article threads, or even on some of these hub articles. People can say some horribly racist, ignorant things on these feeds. But maybe this shows some sort of truth about people that otherwise would be hidden in the niceties of real life. A great revealer!
Education is the answer! Our kids can be fine and productive members of society if they are taught to sort through the bullshit. If they are taught to be discerning, critical thinkers, then all the mediocrity in the world has no effect. They can be taught about the ethical implications of the internet and that what one does when no one is looking is a more pure judge of character then anything else.
The benefits of so many voices outnumber the risks of a silently suffering public!Viva mediocrity and good luck shoveling through the muck to find your diamond in the rough.
Thanks for reading and if you like leave a comment!
A link to another interesting Hub: How To Be More Original In 4.78 Easy Steps
http://hubpages.com/hub/howtobemoreoriginalin4easysteps
