15 February 2009: "The Future of Music Journalism means we all have access 2 our fave bands"

This post is about the crisis in commercial media and the corresponding collapse in authorized modes of spectatorship. The hegemony once enjoyed by the commercial media by virtue of its monopoly of the means of information distribution has become unexpectedly jeopardized. Technological innovation has sparked a border war between old media and new media; caught in the crossfire are dutifully disciplined audiences who have come to rely on the culture industry to mediate their relation to those manufactured idols through which they can experience their fantasies vicariously.
We are burdened suddenly with crushing responsibility: "It’s kinda weird how we’re all just ‘one man’ but we all have the power to do a lot–at least since the internet took over the world." We can no longer consume passively, but without a bounded field within which to chart our self-fashioned cultural articulations, our praxis tilts toward the grandiose. We have to "do a lot" without having a means to quantify our accomplishments, such as they are.

Now, as Carles points out, we must fashion our own mediations. We are driven to go beyond the former audience-performer dialectic and become "‘more than just a fan.’" But this demands we find an excess of signification in the culture we confront; overdetermination must be inverted, transformed into an a near-obscene profusion, a promiscuous prolificity. We must "wear a zany hat," by which Carles may mean that we must adopt a subjectivity that is radically other.

With the collapse of the stable mediations of culture comes the imperative to consume culture competitively. "we will use a pen/keyboard/video camera to make sure that ppl know that we are CLOSER to the music than they are, and that our concert experience was the most authentic, because we understand ‘the big picture’ when it comes to an artist’s history." But the asymptotic approach to "the music" and to the Archimedian vantage point from which the "big picture" could be seen precludes the possibility of ever achieving a state in which we could subjectively grasp our own authenticity. Instead we spiral toward ever-worsening stages of alienation, a St. Vitus dance set to the unforgiving and unforgiven bleatings of "our fave altCelebs."