I wanted to highlight some paragraphs from a recent article posted over on TheAwl.com, an excellent example of the future of popular culture blogging in the United States. While the article deals with what the author describes as the “Museum Instinct,” whereby savvy and perhaps bored web users troll for detritus and leap into the arcana to make jokes and expeditionary humor, there is also something clear to be learned here about online behavior, how trends are created, and the unclear meaning of these movements once they reach a tipping point.
The longer the web fractalizes, the more layers and detritus and dead ends it accrues, the more we trip over what amount to bizarre archaeological finds. Though it won’t matter later, we’d prefer to do the initial unearthing or be among the first on the scene when such a discovery occurs. We can then point others toward it, hoping to hear joyous disbelief. (…)
Calling attention to a surreal life-fragment is not quite like force-loaning a DVD or gushing about a restaurant. In either case we shepherd opinion, flagging an object that shouldn’t get lost in the shuffle. Yet the Internet’s entropy overshadows the proliferation of art, insists that ever more sublime accidents go unnoticed in its hyperchurned muck. When we link to Anne Sellor’s IMDb page, we fight for its ascendance to the planes of conversation and preservation. It’s no big deal if your buddy isn’t into the mixtape you love (it will survive as private bliss), but Anne Sellors’ career must be acknowledged as shattering fact; she must be saved from—and by—her anti-legacy; people must confirm that real life is realer than they guessed. And they must draw wisdom from it all.
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