Multiculturalism sprung up from nationalism, as it’s opposite. There is nothing wrong with the concept, but it is too often misused and abused in practice.

In practice the culture of “Other” is often taken as an excuse for our indifference and our inverted chauvinism.

The “Other” is no better in this respect either: he often uses his “culture” as an excuse to perpetuate rigidness, unwillingness to change and accept different standards.

via Dubravka Ugresic On The Danube.

I’m beginning to wonder about how big of a community can be meaningfully maintained online and how this affects news organizations. For example, many early Twitter adopters such as myself report that their rate of responses, retweets and click-thrus have declined over time.

I suspect this may have less to do with any change in behavior on our parts or that of our followers and more to do with the fact that the Twitter universe is now so large. Already overflowing streams are flooding. The likelihood that even your most interested followers will even see a tweet is ever lower.

In order to develop engaged and loyal communities on social media, news organizations are going to have to work harder and smarter and try to find solutions to Shirky’s “filter failure” problem.

via Nieman Journalism Lab.

Karaoke reinforces the democratic idea that anyone can, if s/he wants to, but also that everyone wants to, if s/he can.

The idea of karaoke basically derives from old fairground mock-up photographs. An anonymous person sticks his/her head into the opening in a photograph and then, for a few pennies, buys the joy provided by a picture in the company of a famous person, wearing the costume of a historical figure or being in famous scenery.

What is the basis of the attraction of karaoke? Presumably, what makes it so attractive is its simplicity and stupidity as well as the ambiguity of its participants’ situation: by singing someone else’s song the amateur honours the original Sinatra or Madonna while, at the same time, debunking its musical authority through his/her amateur rendition, which makes the original appear ridiculous. The theft of the star aura or, in other words, the overthrowing of hierarchy, never goes beyond harmless entertainment. The performer is anonymous.

Karaoke is the entertainment of anonymous people, whereby the guise of anonymity enables them to fulfil their secret desires within existing codes (of technology, genre etc). People practising karaoke are anything but revolutionaries, innovators or people who will change the world.

Karaoke culture is based on the idea of exorcising the anonymous ego by means of a game of simulation. It is as if people were more interested in escaping from themselves than in trying to understand their own authentic I. I has become boring. It is more interesting to transform oneself into someone else than to rummage in one’s own soul. The culture of narcissism has undergone a mutation, creating the culture of karaoke.

via Salon.

 It is meaningful if I tell you that I really like the avant-garde music by Olivier Messiaen. It’s also meaningful to confess that I sometimes relax by listening to Pink Floyd. But if this kind of communication is replaced by a constant pipeline of what’s queued up in Spotify, it all becomes meaningless. There’s no “sharing” at all.

Friction required

Frictionless sharing isn’t better sharing; it’s the absence of sharing. There’s something about the friction, the need to work, the one-on-one contact, that makes the sharing real, not just some cyber phenomenon. If you want to tell me what you listen to, I care. But if it’s just a feed in some social application that’s constantly updated without your volition, why do I care? It’s just another form of spam, particularly if I’m also receiving thousands of updates every day from hundreds of other friends.

Effort as friction

So, what we’re seeing isn’t the expansion of our social network; it’s the shrinking of what and who we care about. My Facebook feed is full of what friends are listening to, what friends are reading, etc. And frankly, I don’t give a damn. I would care if they told me personally; I’d even care if they used a medium as semi-personal as Twitter. The effort required to tweet tells me that someone thought it was important. And I do care about that.

The truth behind automated sharing

[It] is giving Facebook a treasure-trove of data, regardless of whether anyone cares. And Facebook will certainly find ways to monetize that data.

via The end of social [inserts are mine]

Journalists reporting on the campaign are required to understand basic facts. Having nice hair, smooth diction and a winning smile does not exempt them from this demand.

via Quote and Comment.

¿A cuánta gente estamos dejando de conocer ahora que tenemos a todo el mundo al alcance de un clic? Nunca hemos estado más conectados, y desconectados. Nunca hemos tenido más amigos, y menos. Nunca hemos sabido de tantas personas, tan poco.

En el mundo virtual que he creado soy simpático, me lo paso en grande, viajo a lugares fascinantes y tengo cientos de amigos a quienes al parecer gusta lo que hago, quizá porque ya no tienen que hacer el esfuerzo de decírmelo. Basta con un clic.

Internet nos permite presentar una versión mejorada de nosotros mismos. La cuidamos cada día, la exponemos en el escaparate virtual y esperamos que se paren a admirarla. ¿Por qué arriesgarse a ponerla bajo la prueba del contacto directo y real?

Nunca estuvimos más acompañados. Ni más solos.

via davidjimenezblog.

In an earlier post, Mali talks about what teachers make.

“People who fondly imagine themselves the subjects of their ‘own’ choices entirely will, in reality, be the most manipulated subjects, and the most incapable of being influenced by goodness and beauty. This is why, in the affluent Anglo-Saxon West today, there is so much pervasively monotonous ugliness and tawdriness that belies its wealth, as well as why there are so many people adopting (literally) the sing-song accent of self-righteous complacency and vacuous uniformity, with its rising lilt of a feigned questioning at the end of every phrase. This intonation implies that any overassertion is a polite infringement of the freedom of the other, and yet at the same time its merely rhetorical interrogation suggests that the personal preference it conveys is unchallengeable, since it belongs within the total set of formally correct exchange transactions. Pure liberty is pure power – whose other name is evil.”

via Peter J. Leithart.

Popular culture, TV shows, movies, books, games, the Internet, media, technology—these are our favorite toys. Vladimir Putin miserably singing “Blueberry Hill,” accompanied by the best American musicians and applauded by the best American actors, is one of the most grotesque recent images of life in our kindergarten.

via These Infantile Times.