One of the (and this can be a dumb word, but I happen to be fond of it) coolest side effects of the Internet, that I've seen, is that there is a more and more rapid breakdown between artist and consumer of art. If you're posting, you're doing something creative*, and this option is available to pretty much any semi-literate (despite our wishes, sometimes, that it were more restrictive). Likewise we have brilliant photographers, musicians, programmers and more, mixing together and forming a big soup of ideas, a suspension of stray knowledge and wisdom.
I'm waxing on this hippy-dippy notion because I like to read Warrenellis.com. I'm incredibly fond of Transmetropolitan and Global Frequency.
Anyway, over on that site Warren Ellis gives props to Joss Whedon for giving props to him.
Again, this kind of stuff seems very cool to me. I happen to like finding out the types of artist other artists enjoy (especially if I like them, too).
I suppose at the root of the matter is validation. Which is a big reason people do creative things and then share them.**
I'd be a right bastard if I didn't admit that 90% of this website is a quest for validation; It goes to feed the squatting, rancid ego-beast lurking in my neocortex, that self-aware, self-indulgent narcissist diva. And the 10% left over? That's my detached interest in talking over, around and through the subject of gaming and games and all-else.
This comes back to gaming, ostensibly.
I started this blog out of boredom and a desire to find a place to rant. Now, before I thought of the Internet as this place to be creative (back when I thought of it solely as a place that provided pornography, instead of just, y'know, mainly providing pornography), I might've written a few paragraphs in a journal file and just left it alone. There was very little impetus.
But having kicked at least one or two thoughts out there and had them punted back to me has given me more of a desire to continue this thankless, bewildering process known as blogging. Not long ago, in fact (and here is where I come to the crux my rambling), I was surprised to find that a few of the comments landing on my site were, what the fuck, actual people in the software/gaming industry. Like, professionals.
And not only did they comment on my site, but they commented on other gamestruck laypersons' sites.
Very egalitarian.
It is precisely this notion of the artist as some unreachable genius that is being destroyed (maybe it is mostly already) by all this bloody communication that's going on.
And videogames happen to be an artform that is coming into its own within this egalitarian atmosphere.
Keep in mind that I'm just speculating (Latin for "talking out of one's ass") here.
Ok, fuckall if I can come up with any significance at the moment.
Anything from the few sets of eyeballs that make their way here regularly?
*Even juvenile, obscenity-filled troll posts are creative outpourings, even if they occupy the niche at the bottom reserved for scatological paeans (what Freud would call the anal fixation).
**It could be that I've created an unnecessary valuation on creativity, and that all creativity stems from this anal fixation, this desire (taught to us by authority figures) to drop something into the porcelain bowl, stand up, look down and excitedly point at our leavings, yelling, "I made that!"
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