People reading this then see that the “experts” aren’t that expert after all, eroding their authority. That’s why they’re so pissed off, and try to denigrate these “amateurs” whenever they can.

I concede that there is a lot of erroneous information out there on the web but it doesn’t just come from amateurs. It’s nothing new. What about tabloid journalism, or hundreds of popular magazines, often so full of garbage and misleading crap written by “professionals”? The global warming hysteria is just one subject that has been fueled by the mainstream media, often based on little in the way of hard facts. Sure, everyone has jumped on that bandwagon, from the qualified to the plain lunatic, but the professionals can hardly claim to know everything about everything, in the same way that we can’t.

I get pretty steamed when I see journalists pontificating about their lofty standards and so called professional ethics. They hate change, they hate anything that is a threat to existing cozy media relationships and the status quo. There are plenty of amateur writers and bloggers who put some paid ‘word smiths’ to shame and plenty of eminently qualified people in a huge diversity of subjects who also happen to blog.

I would have to agree that the teen culture of places like MySpace are pretty nauseating and as one commentator over at the quoted post said, seem to be a contributing factor in the whole “dumbing down” of some younger people. Having seen a thread yesterday at a “teen celeb gossip” site, I wonder how any of the participants even managed to learn how to turn on a phone or computer, so appalling were their attempts at writing and social interaction.

On the whole though, it’s just another “expert” plugging himself and his opinions to sell product. Good luck to him; I’m sure our amateur and stupid conversations are far beneath such as he