grind yourself away (with the internet)

absis_minas

From Absis Minas's tumblr Free Proposals for Art World Art Critiques.

As a pre-native have been on both sides of this argument. In the early days of blogging the howls and jeers from print media made you adopt a pro-technology stance; what you could do with self-publishing (linking, choosing your own visuals, correcting-as-you-go) compared to the tyranny of magazine compartmentalization (and editors) was liberating. But gradually over the last ten years "media" has wrapped its tentacles back around expression, so that if you are talking about the revolutionary power of Facebook or Twitter you are just a dolt.

The infrastructure of, say, brand-name author blogs on major newspaper sites with "like" buttons allowing you to cycle the content within accepted social media channels is a giant interlocking engine designed to feed you to advertisers. Making a political statement on twitter adjacent to a promoted web consultant tweet in your timeline feels particularly futile. Controlling the tone and context of your utterances isn't essential to an artist's survival but you'd like to think you had a choice.