Rattle wrote:

Let me ask a question here..that I hope gets answered. I am on myspace, and I run some bigger accounts, and am getting involved in some media issues. Censorship is a big deal to me.

What exactly do you mean by running some bigger accounts? Some of the key factors when it comes to media and information resource manipulation are identity, trustability of sources, and using multiple (fake) sources to make something look like it has more people power behind it than it actually does.

Well...my approach towards media is a bit different. But to answer directly, I run bigger accounts like band accounts with 10k+ friends, located in key markets where we plan on touring. We tried it locally with decent sucess with little time put in. Myspace has many shortcomings, especially the fact that it is powered by advertisement, but it does work really well for things like music.

I can see what you mean that it is detrimental to be able to overhype an issue--but that is the standard set for the public by the corporate press. I'm not into vanguard models for social change... i'm much more 'when in rome'.

So I do feel that taking my DV camera, and becoming the news media, this is the way to go. But it has to be done the way I see it for it to work. It's very much like chess. The claim to legitimacy is that the corporate press cannot--and I mean cannot ever, be trusted. I have played the political game long enough to understand that position is everything. I have position, and there is really no way--outside of censorship to shuffle me out of position.

This is all probably looking like babble, but essentially I am saying that that American politics is very simple. You have a bunch of corporations who use the government to rule. They presented everyone in the 20th century with a false image of reality because they controlled the systems used to spread information "the mass media". Now they are losing that control.

This works because it does the following things:

1. It absolves the apathetic public from blame. 2. It places all blame on the system, and following that, if any blame should be placed on discrete human beings, they are all a handful of powerful minorities that nobody will sympathize with.

3. It sets up the stage for people looking for change who have nothing to turn to. Once you can establish activist groups who are willing to commit little bits of time to small actions, they taste victory and feel empowered. They end up recruiting for the model on their own.

4. The dynamic of being able to emotionally connect is the single most crucial element. It is also the element that people who tend to think of themselves as 'intellectuals' can miss.

Emotions are everything. That's all I can tell you.. it's pointless explaining it most likely. But just understand if you don't already, that somebody showing passion conveys far more information than the didactic approach.

RE: Myspace stumbles