The Age of Infotainment

I can't bring myself to write for anyone these days except a small, self-selected audience.

There's so much CRAP out there. So much writing that's a waste. People (and I'm "people", too) are tripping over themselves to rush out poorly written pieces - and for what? For nothing but to grab a small slice of Internet traffic for their own self-aggrandizement. We've concluded that, since disk space is a pittance, we can clog the Intertubes with our rantings and ravings as if they mattered. Who cares if 80% of what we excrete is redundant? Who cares if we're overstimulating the hapless surfer?

Sigh. Maybe this is just me. Maybe public, on-demand writing is too big of a draw on my ego's own selfish tendencies to flash its tits and shake its moneymaker. Okay, there's no doubt that that's true. But I also doubt I'm that atypical. And it doesn't alter the hard fact that we're awash in a sea of (mis)information, most of it unnecessary. Information has become entertainment. This is The Age of Infotainment. It's no wonder celebrity gossip is so popular when even our politics must be gussied up and re-served to us as smart-ass blog posts and YouTube remixes.

There are a lot of political and environmental writers out there producing unique, well-researched, intriguing pieces. And they share the same space as the garbage that seeks to bury them.