User Generated Content Is Rubbish

One of the ongoing debates about 2.0 and a user-generated world is what the mountains and oceans of material created by everyday folk actually is.  At one end of the debate are a group of people who think that it's basically all rubbish.  This view is sometimes illustrated by comments such as, "well it's not exactly Steven Spielberg is it ?"  Anthony Lilley of Magic Lantern appeared to be taking this view in the Guardian last week when he compared user generated content (slightly bizarrely) to his experiences on a Norwegian cruise.  He felt that the chatter around his table was 'trivial', that a loud American was somehow like a blogger, that the karaoke was painful and the only worthwhile experience was, "the professional people with special skills at telling jokes".  IMHO, this is incredibly wide of the mark.  It's the equivalent of going into a pub and...

...demanding that everyone put down their beers, stop their claptrap (aka fun) and listen only to the professional people with special skills at talking. It completely misses the point of massive, online, social interaction - the real 2.0 phenomenon.   I suspect this arguement is because professional people with special skills at creating content feel threatened by what they see as the riff-raff trying to get in on their act.  (It also often seems to be a view held by people who don't participate online).  The reality is that user generated content on the 2.0 scale is just new.  And different.  And nothing to do with Steven Spielberg.

Comments

[ed]

one man's trash is another man's treasure, or so it has been said.

[Paul Drago]

An interesting blog, I am sure a lot of them do feel threatened.

[john ounpuu]

I couldn't agree more. I was at a Web 2.0 conference recently and heard the "most of it is crap" line all the time, even from folks who should theoretically know better (bloggers, web entrepeneurs).

I think your pub analogy really nails it. It's apples and oranges. Better than my usual response, which is that most "professionally generated" content is crap too. I mean, anyone who spends an hour flipping through TV channels knows that much.