Who Knew?

“I have to say something about the cheaper, less useful senses of ‘active [engagement with media]’ that have come into vogue in the 21st century. Frequently, these uses involve squishing that word into the much-ballyhooed idea of the interactive. Thanks to interactive-ness, you can, for instance, respond directly to an online opinion you disagree with: Type ‘Your an idiot’ into the comments field, and you have just participated; you have interacted; you have been not-passive. In the realm of consumer culture it means, say, complaining via Twitter that you have lately received a very poor latte from a famous coffee chain. Fine. (I guess.) But passing this sort of thing off as empowerment, democratization, or progress, presents a few problems. It shamelessly misrepresents the world prior to comment fields and social networking sites and so on as a place where we all stared slack-jawed at Gilligan’s Island; nobody disagreed with whatever the evening news anchors had to say; everybody bought the products that were advertised on television, for the simple reason that this is what the advertisements told us to do. This not only suggests that nobody knew how to think, but that this sorry state of affairs has only been resolved because we are now ‘allowed’ to comment, ‘given’ interactive new techno tools, and ‘provided’ opportunities to express ourselves. In other words, even our newfound unpassiveness has been handed to us from without.”

- Rob Walker in the foreword to Ad Nauseum