Isn’t the internet great? It’s 2022, a teenager can see more naked woman in a few minutes than most people who ever lived did in their entire lifetime, grown adults are addicted to the smartphones they were not so long ago trying to persuade their kids not to use so much, Logan Paul and KSI are selling lurid energy drinks to followers who buy it for no other reason than their name on the brand, and YouTube added a ‘Shorts’ section because let’s face it, who has an attention span longer than 30 seconds anymore. It’s true the internet grants us the luxury of information, if I get lost I can look at google maps, if I want to know something I can look it up, there is no doubting the power and expediency of the possibilities the internet provides. But what has it done to culture?
There are two illusions in this brave new world that underly our behaviour online. The first is that the internet democratises culture, and the second is that actions and speech are ‘free’. Paradoxically we all know these aren’t true, but somehow we convince ourselves to be the only exception.
In the not so recent past art and culture had ‘gatekeepers’. These are what we call institutions- publishers, record companies, production or theatre companies, and all of the forms of distribution that stand between a person making something and a person buying something. Many of these…
