Lacking the poetic gravitas of the four equestrians, but cringe-worthy all the same: the second most widely purchased ring tone sold by a popular cell phone service in Croatia is called “Superfart”.
Unfortunately, I am not making this up.
Legendary Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert, decrying in his blog the vapid celebrity-stalking idiocy that’s slowly devouring the media:
As the CelebCult triumphs, major newspapers have been firing experienced film critics. They want to devote less of their space to considered prose, and more to ignorant gawking. What they require doesn’t need to be paid for out of their payrolls. Why does the biggest story about “Twilight” involve its fans? Do we need interviews with 16-year-old girls about Robert Pattinson? When was the last time they read a paper? Isn’t the movie obviously about sexual abstinence and the teen fascination with doomy Goth death-flirtation? …
A newspaper film critic should encourage critical thinking, introduce new developments, consider the local scene, look beyond the weekend fanboy specials, be a weatherman on social trends, bring in a larger context, teach, inform, amuse, inspire, be heartened, be outraged. At one time all newspapers by definition did those things on every page. Now they are lascivious gossips, covering invented beats. …
The celebrity culture is infantilizing us. We are being trained not to think. It is not about the disappearance of film critics. We are the canaries. It is about the death of an intelligent and curious, readership, interested in significant things and able to think critically. It is about the failure of our educational system. It is not about dumbing-down. It is about snuffing out.
The news is still big. It’s the newspapers that got small.
I couldn’t agree more.
Last Friday, I delivered my keynote at DeepSec ‘08 in Vienna. Anton Chuvakin from Qualys posted some thoughts on my talk, and ORF has a more detailed interview with me in German.
Feed available for your pleasure.
