• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, March 5, 2004

About the same time that comScore Networks' Media Metrix was announcing that the number of U.S. Internet users has exceeded 150 million, a Pew Internet & American Life Project revealed that nearly half of U.S. adult Internet users have published their thoughts, shared files, or created Web logs or diaries. It would be merciful if most of those were file sharers or site builders, but I suspect the worst--that they are bloggers or thought publishers.

It seems the Internet has become one gigantic vanity press, where people are thrilled to see their bylines. This has never happened before in history--at no cost (or pencil editing), people can disseminate their views or ideas to the entire wired world. Although I appreciate that it can be somehow therapeutic for some people to air their innermost thoughts (it is, after all, the basis for most 12-step programs and some overpriced psychotherapy), posting something to the Web presumes that what you have to say is worthwhile. The enormity of this collective egotism is breathtaking.

Although still in its relative infancy, I can say with some degree of confidence that the Internet has put to rest the notion that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Al Ries, maybe, but not Shakespeare. While I am compelled as a former journalist to presume that everyone has a story lurking inside them, they are stories I'd prefer never to read. I have a hard enough time getting through all the stuff written by people who HAVE a thought worth considering, without now feeling that every voice deserves an audience. It's really a game of odds, remembering of course that the house always wins.

Of every person who ever glanced anxiously sideways and began to speak to you on an airplane, how many of them had something to say that was more interesting than, say, an American Way Q & A with the guy who invented hand sanitizer? Or a nap? Or keeping an eye out the window to make sure the pilot wasn't steering into a mountain? How many hundreds of overheard cell phone conversations that you have been forced to be a party to provided even the tiniest appeal to your prurient interests? How many dinner parties have you suffered through where the well-oiled opined into the night, oblivious to your sagging eyelids?

Reading blogs is not unlike sifting through the remainder "Five Books for $1" bin, where you thumb desperately through dozens of the most poorly written books in publishing, only to walk out of the store empty-handed. It is the same reaction I have when I visit sites where people post nude photos of their wives, girlfriends, and strangers caught off guard in a locker room or beach. Thanks for sharing--now put your clothes back on. Some journalists are said to hang out in certain blogs in order to keep a pulse on public opinion.

The danger there, of course, is that users all too often mask their true identity, and I would think face-to-face or at least phone interviews would be a far more accurate way to gather information for reporters who care about their futures.

There was a time in our history when it was considered poor taste to make your houseguests sit through the slide show of your vacation to DisneyWorld or force your kid to read aloud his B+ essay, but according to PEW, in increasing numbers we think it's just great to spew for all to read. In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln said: "The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here." Unfortunately, the Internet enables thoughts of little note to be long remembered--or at least catalogued.