Thursday, March 20, 2014

Gatekeepers Are Lazy

Vox Day put a post on his blog recently about the gatekeeping children's book editors at The Guardian. They have decided they have a preference for which children's books their readers should know about, and are going to throw away any books that don't fit that mold. In their case, they apparently don't believe books for boys should be all about boy characters, and books for girls shouldn't be girl characters. So even though their job is to review children's books, they're only going to review the ones they personally approve of, and throw the rest away.

Hell, I'm a hobbyist. I don't get paid for this at all, and even I have reviewed several books I don't approve of. I've taken the time to read and write reviews of a few books I don't even like. I'm far better at this than The Guardian's children's book reviewers.

I figured out long ago that gatekeepers are not that bright, and most are really lazy. Especially among the "mainstream", they tend to be elitists, who think they know what's best for the world. Coincidentally, it's what they think is best for them. I take few, if any, recommendations from them. Most of the really good books I've read lately come from recommendations of people I trust and respect, such as Vox Day, Aaron Cleary, and Matt Forney, among many others.

Fortunately, the Internet has greatly reduced the power of  (and need for) gatekeepers. Now, content producers can go straight to the people who want their content. Thanks to YouTube, people can make videos that others can find and watch. Thanks to self-publishing, good books that would be rejected by gatekeeping publishers can go straight to market. Thanks to services like Noisetrade, good music can get out there. I wish I could remember the name of the person I heard talking about the music industry. I used to listen to Leo LaPorte's tech podcasts. One of the journalists on his TWIT roundtable one day said he used to work in the music industry, and about 80% of the bands who get into that system are chewed up and spit back out. It doesn't have to happen anymore.

Heck, I don't even need radio anymore. I almost never listen to the radio. And I still get great music when I want it. I don't have to waste my time with neocon talk shows. I can download podcasts to listen to. Most don't even have commercials, but I can skip through those that do.

I dream of the day when gatekeepers are no longer needed. I wonder when they'll figure it out.

Gatekeepers often don't make sense, unless you realize they act only in their own direct interest. For all leftists bitch about pollution and "global warming", whenever an alternative comes up, they kill it. Remember the Saturn EV1? That thing was really popular. You'd think "greentards" would have loved it. Nope, it got killed. All of them were taken back at the end of the lease (you had to lease them) and destroyed.

Now we have Tesla. Tesla wants to sell direct to consumers. But several states, including my former residence The People's Republic of New F'ing Jersey, are trying to block Tesla. They're trying to protect the car dealers, who have far more money with which to pay corrupt politicians than Tesla does. (I'm not a fan of the government money Tesla took). And people say there's no such thing as conspiracies.

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