The Thomas Chronicles

This is the first day my blog is functional. Beginning in the morning some time last Friday, my server was hit with a Denial of Service cyber attack. This is what my web host had to say when I tried to find out just what in tar-nation is going on:

Box 52 was Under a major DDOS attack over the weekend from 6 million international IP’s we have had to stop large list of IP to keep the server running. The attack is over and we are allowing IPs in sets to prevent another major attack your site should be visible again over the next few hours.

Yes, Ladies and Gents, these cybernauts are Time Magazine’s People of the Year.

Call me cynical, but I’m not impressed.

Some bloggers dismissed Time Magazine’s populism as a mere “gimmick”. Other’s acknowledged the gimmick, but rolled with it anyway. And even though I enjoy reading La Shawn Barber’s blog, I will have to respectfully disagree with her almost unmitigated optimism on the “information reformation”. I think there are advantages as well as grave dangers in this new cyberworld of ours.

On La Shawn’s comment section of this post, I wrote:

To be honest, I am ambivalent to the “information reformation” despite the fact that I blog.

Yes, there is much more diversity in opinion. Yes, it hands the ability to mass communicate to just your average Joe. Yes, blogging can also pierce through some of the carefully orchestrated lies of the mainstream media.

All these positives are evidence that the monopoly of the MSM is loosening, and it is more difficult to concoct journalistic theatricals and present them as fact.

Or is it?

Along with this new diversified media comes a Greek chorus of the nonsensical and the blatantly false, standing to the side, fully dressed in their black garbs and wailing. Blogs and other online publishing platforms have so increased in number and scope that without a discerning eye or an extensive background in history or political science, a common passer-by surfing the wild seas of the net will have a lot of difficulty in deciphering what’s excrement and what’s not.

I think Peggy Noonan expressed this sentiment best in her Wall Street Journal Op-ed, “Media Anarchy Has Its Downside: We got freedom but lost standards”.

I cannot tell you how many people have come up to me excitedly telling me their newest discovery on the web. The conversation usually runs like this:

“Hey, man. I read somethin’ scandalous on the Internet yesterday.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“D’you know that the British crown still owns America? The reason why we get taxed so much is because we’re paying off the British crown! The United States is really still just another colony of the Brits!”

“Uh… Sir, where did you read this?”

“Off the net.”

“Oh.”

While blogging and online publishing can be very influential and serves the good of the public, the flip side of that coin is that this same medium can be the greatest promulgator of outright falsehoods and half-baked ideas. As Miss Noonan pointed out, there are no standards to veracity or integrity.

I think, what many a discerning blog-surfer would end up with is a list of a select few blogs managed by individuals (or groups) to whom they could give their trust. The rest would be relegated to curiosities and, for lack of a better word, digital fodder.

I don’t know if all of these unknowns warrant a place in this year’s “Person of the Year”. Even as I participate in this new medium, I am also trying to remain watchful at where all this is leading us.

Undiscovered countries, no doubt…

As Ayn Rand made clear in her novels and essays, you destroy the great by raising up the mediocre. While I think there are still great writers and thinkers of depth out there, most of them are buried under a mountain of mediocrity and inane incoherence.

For so much of the time we don’t exalt in the excellent. We castigate it.

We don’t waft the incipient flames of the intellect into a brilliant fire. We stamp it out.

We bring the level of conversation down to the lowest common denominator by flooding it with half-truths, superficial analysis, and popular thoughts expoused by the latest movie star, popstar or half-baked college professor… well, just about anyone who owns a computer.

If this is the criteria by which Time Magazine chooses the “Person of the Year”, then it’s utterly meaningless, and, moreover, it’s very patronizing. To my mind, there is nothing more insulting that giving undeserved praise that’s simultaneously meant to flatter and belittle.

See related posts:

The American Thinker: More on TIME’s Award to “You”
La Shawn Barber’s Corner: TIME Person of the Year: Me!
Atlas Shrugs: Time’s Non Starter
Michelle Malkin: Not everyone’s a winner
Jawa Report: Jawa Report Man/Men/Ladies of The Year.
Captain’s Quarters: A Limit To Media Bashing

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