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* CYBERSPACE *
* A biweekly column on net culture appearing *
* in the Toronto Sunday Sun *
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* Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer *
* Free for online distribution *
* All Rights Reserved *
* Direct comments and questions to: *
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A number of years ago I was trying to calm the fears of a
parent who's child was interested in the net. He had heard
stories about kidney stealing sex fiends who want to teach your
kids to crack into Area 51's computers to steal the Roswell
secret. I told him those cases were rare. The net is text
based. That kids were willing to spend money to read was
unquestionably a Good Thing. The net is a library card with a
sugar coating. As a recent study suggests, as long as you keep
your kids away from the music of the Spice Girls, they should
do okay.
Fast forward to 1998. I take it all back. Random House, Western
civilization's sole remaining publisher of books, has posted on
its web site (www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best) a poll
of the century's 100 best novels. Actually, the site has two
polls. One is the top 100 books selected by an esteemed panel
of judges. Random House's panel included Arthur Schlesinger and
Gore Vidal. Curiously, none of the judges placed William
Shatner's Tek Lords in the top 100.
The same cannot be said for the reader's choice poll. Netizens
were free to vote for their own favorites. Netizens slotted
Captain Kirk in at 55. Readers actually placed Shatner above
Henry James, Virginia Woolf, and James Joyce. Vidal and company
put Joyce's Ulysses at number 1. Readers put Ayn Rand at number
1. I can only assume Random House threw a vote Rand's way
whenever some joker voted for Mein Kampf.
Are people stupid? Most certainly. But consider their reasoning
for putting Shatner ahead of Joyce: Did Joyce ever publish a
book that was turned into a TV series? Are there any web pages
devoted to Joyce singing "Mr. Tambourine Man" (see
www.fastlane.net/homepages/hattan)? Does Joyce have a building
named after him on the McGill campus? One can see how netizens
felt Shatner's place in literary history was in need of
reconsideration.
The beauty of the net is we're no longer tied to media
controlled by gatekeepers. Printing and broadcasting are such
horribly expensive endeavors that it's not often we let
Everyman have his say. He might only manage a mumbled "hi mom!"
So, traditional media organizations tend to solicit the
opinions of so-called experts.
Netizens can occasionally be surprising when the gatekeepers
open the sluice. My friend Terry Brown, who's quite a bit
smarter than me and normally gets a lot more bothered by
civilization's decline, managed to find some comfort in the
Random House poll. He was surprised to see the lesser known The
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and William Gaddis' The
Recognitions making the reader's choice cut.
A surprising move by a few netizens can sometimes turn into a
full-blown movement. People Magazine (www.people.com), to
promote its 50 Most Beautiful People issue, let netizens vote
for the sexiest things on two legs. Leonardo DiCaprio, the
early leader, found himself losing badly to a Howard Stern show
character known as Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf. Netizens
spread the word via email and newsgroups to go to the People
site and vote for the dwarf. In the final tally, Hank polled
230,169 votes; Leo could only muster 14,471 fans.
If you believe there's no such thing as bad publicity, People
magazine did well. For a few weeks, adding another vote for ol'
Hank was a popular morning ritual among programmers and
engineers who wouldn't normally patronize the People site or
read its banner ads. I can see People running a similar contest
next year and selling a lot of ads for laptops and network
servers instead of haircare products and home study courses in
small engine repair.
If you believe even People magazine must be run by reasonably
intelligent human beings, the poll helped serve notice that
what plays to the masses in the real world doesn't necessarily
play to the digerati. Lifeforms that buy magazines in grocery
stores are not the beautiful people. They, however, honestly
imagine a nose job and a new pair of track pants would easily
land them in the bottom half of the list. People who are on the
net are not the beautiful people either. They at least know
they're ugly and don't need to be told how badly they lost out
in the genetic lottery.
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