On Relevance
In response to Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year

"Irrelevant white rock."
-William White (a friend of mine from SC, after viewing a CD collection belonging to a couple of guys we knew, of which they were terribly proud and often bragged heavily)

With the above quote in mind, a remark I've never forgotten about, (more for its impact on the CD collection owners than the comment itself), the natural question is - irrelevant to what?
I think in this case, William was referring to the impact of the writing and style of the music on popular culture as a whole. I can't fathom how creative expression, regardless of its naivite' or the inexperience of its creator, can be irrlelevant in any way. Any creative expression will speak to someone, somewhere in some form or another. Expression does not take on positive or negative aspects until those aspects are inferred.
I mentioned in a recent blurb how affected I was by someone once stating that really, I didn't have anything to say. After reviewing that post, (self-absorbed action in itself, maybe, but I've never claimed I was otherwise), I had to question why else that might hit me so hard. The answer is painfully obvious: I'm terrified of being irrlelevant. Should that, in turn scare me again?
Why do we write these blogs? Why do we post our comments on others' blogs, or trailing news articles, or Youtube posts? We're carving our names in ice, so what does it matter? It matters because we want to matter.
Anyone who publishes a blog, MySpace profile or Youtube film is, in some way or another, making a mark, adding to their legacy. To them, it's all relevant. To us, it's another blog. We may take the time to read it if we're willing to emotoinally invest, or we may narrow our search fields to more quickly find whatever it was we were looking for, the thing that matttered to us at the time.
We seem more and more willing to comment, add, change, or rebuke what we read on the web, that it seems many of us are more willing to speak than listen. We're looking for a way to respond before we finish taking in and digesting whatever medium we're consuming. Isn't that inherently selfish? It's likely a bi-product of an instant messaging generation, but it does seem selfish none the less. We're downloading songs and not albums, never giving the band a chance to finish saying what it had to say. We're collectively becoming selective listeners.
And yet we often don't hesitate to add our view, in entirety, to whatever medium will accept it. Should that scare us?
Not very long ago, the collective voice of the internet was limited to those who could afford internet-ready computers and could afford a provider, and the excessive by-the-minute fee. Very quickly, the group widened as the technology became more affordable.Then the world changed. The internet now reaches, and is increasigly doing so every day, a wider demorgaphic, coming closer and closer all the time to truly representing the view of western culture, not just upper-class white culture.
The world, in a word, is shrinking faster than it ever has. Are we moving toward homoginization? Should that scare us?
Well, I would say no. Human beings are inherently individualistic. When the Individual is threatened with homoginization, (the desire to belong to a group notwithstanding), the Inidivdual adapts, grows, changes. It's inevitiable. It's that individualism that spawns blogs, comment pages that lead to ifascinating threads, it's that individualism that leads to the likes of Wikipedia. (Ever read a disputed comment thread there? You can often learn far more from that than a standard encyclopedia entry).
Is this inherently selfish? Okay, maybe. But perhaps in the newly found ease of expressive venting we can come closer to seeing our common grounds as a culture, balancing this homoginization with humanity.
We're all getting our fifteen minutes, but Warhol is likely rolling over in his grave as celebrety and heirarchy gives way to Time's 2006 Person of the Year.
This is a good thing, I think. It gives our selfish natures a place. It gives them relevance. I realize that I'm making some sweeping generalizations here, and that the web still represents a world minority. But exposure is growing, and at least in popular culture, the effects of the web and its balance of indulgent self-absorption and cold homogeny is starting to show its effects.
As a group, we're influencing everything from Big Hollywood box office earnings to elections. Our voice is louder. Now, if only our ears could get a little bigger.
People who would not otherwise take the time or the effort to speak, now find it easier, and are using more and more effort to do so, even as expression requires increasingly less effort.
What scares me these days is not people who feel the need to be relevant, but the people that don't.