The devil wears Hermes and is a blogger

What is the connection between the fashion industry and the Internet? Both, it would seem, are being transformed by a radical democratization which is undermining real quality and enriching smart marketing companies.  Just as "democratization" of media is undermining the value of high quality news reporting, so the "democratization" of fashion is undermining the value of style.

In Wednesday's NY Times, Michiko Kakutani reviews How Luxury Lost its Lustre, a fascinating new book by Newsweek fashion correspondent Dana Thomas. It seems like the fashion business is experiencing a similar dumbing down of quality to the Internet. Kakutani describes this as a "shift from exclusivity to accessibility, from an emphasis on tradition and quality to an emphasis on growth and branding and profits." She goes on:

But her focus remains on how a business that once catered to the wealthy elite has gone mass-market and the effects that democratization has had on the way ordinary people shop today, as conspicuous consumption and wretched excess have spread around the world. Labels, once discreetly stitched into couture clothes, have become logos adorning everything from baseball hats to supersized gold chains. Perfumes, once dreamed up by designers with an idea about a particular scent, are now concocted from briefs written by marketing executives brandishing polls and surveys and sales figures.

There are all sorts of parallels between the contemporary history of media and fashion. Both are seducing all of us. Wearing Hermes makes us feel exclusive; authoring a blog makes us feel powerful. But the consequence of each is the stripping away of quality. As Dana Thomas argues:

“The luxury industry has changed the way people dress. It has realigned our economic class system. It has changed the way we interact with others. It has become part of our social fabric. To achieve this, it has sacrificed its integrity, undermined its products, tarnished its history and hoodwinked its consumers. In order to make luxury ‘accessible,’ tycoons have stripped away all that has made it special. Luxury has lost its luster.”

Replace "luxury" with "truth" and you've could be describing the blogosphere:

In order to make truth ‘accessible,’ the Internet has stripped away all that has made it special. Truth has lost its luster.

 

Comments

[Michael Chui]

Surely you are not suggesting that truth is a luxury.

[Robert Crandall]

Well this is interesting. Apparently we will soon need to hope for a 'rise' to the level of amateur.

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=297191

[Stephen Smoliar]

I'm not sure that this is a matter of "democratization;" but I WOULD agree that the "shift from exclusivity to accessibility" is the determining factor. This whole state of affairs has led me to look back on the deterioration of Usenet as an information resource. I have now posted my analysis for those who are interested:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2007/08/confused-about-communities.html

[djlightning]

you extrapole your famous case ?

[Adam Gresty]

What I think Andrew is saying, is that with the potential power of reach and audience the internet now puts at the mouse mat of anyone who wants to publish a blog, add something to wikipedia or upload a video to YouTube etc, is that with that power comes (or should come) responsibility. A responsibility to the truth and a responsibility to quality.

Andrew has started a long overdue discussion about the lack of responsibility the majority of people take (and are permitted to take particularly because of anonymity) when they click 'upload'.

I applaud Andrew for so brilliantly firing up such a fierce, web wide debate, but I can't help wishing he wasn't quite so on the money.

One scan through the vast majority of comments made on this and many other forums discussing Andrew and his book makes for really disappointing reading.

Not even because most people don't seem to get what Andrew is saying, but becuase of the lack of responsiblity being taken for the WAY in which they are saying it.

I haven't read the book (yet) but I understand a polemic when I read and hear one.

So far, I'm not sure I've read more than two or three comments on Andrew's blog that even come close to recognising Andrew's sense of irony or the tongue wedged firmly in his cheek.

"HYPOCRITE!!", "HOW CAN YOU SAY THE INTERNET IS EVIL", "THE INTERNET IS OUR FRIEND!", "BLASPHEMY!!", "GRAB THE TORCHES AND PITCH FORKS!!", "THE BETRAYER!"

It actually reveals what a dishearteningly poor contribution alot of (and no, sigh.. I didn't say ALL of) the internet is making to the zeitgiest as a whole.

Online, it seems simply referring to someone as "Sir" before launching into something approaching a hate crime in the defence of Web 2.0 is the only act of gracious responsibility you need to qualify as a good 21st century net-izen.

Is there any other environment on the planet where that would be deemed responsible and appropriate?

Discussion on the internet can feel a bit like the early days of the Wild West frontier. Lawlessness with a strong flavour of mob mentality. There is something a little bit sinister about the evangelical way in which some people refuse to ackowledge the internet could be improved, and that it certainly isn't (and may never be) the digital utopia that many people seem desperate to believe it is. I think that kind of delusional thinking is the 'seduction' that Andrew is talking about.

What I think Andrew is trying to do is to help accelerate the development of the web, to help it grow up and out of this rather obnoxious, beligerent and irresponsible teenage phase it is going through.

[josh]

Andrew Keen....I saw you interview online...and let me tell you what i think. I think you are a dumb ass. I make thousands of dollars every year from the internet. you are nothing but a peice of shit. I hope you get hit by a car while searching for porn.

your true fan...
Josh

[Justin Bradley]

Once again you insist that only the elite upper class are entitled to certain privileges. It seems the only thing that has changed is that it's harder for the snobs of the world to use something as trivial as a brand name to assert their dominance over the common folk. It simply amazes me how dedicated you are to the oppression of the average human being.

[Alecos Papadopoulos]

Who said that, before Internet and the Blogosphere, "quality" existed in greater quantities or percentages? Democratization of anything had always the same main consequence: by putting this "anything" into the hands of the many and out of the hands of the few, it cancels the old rules by which the offering of the few was previously judged, and it creates a transitory period where guidelines to judge the offering of the many are being formated - and so they don't really exist. This is what we call "change". Internet and the Blogosphere are among the drivers of fundamental change that global society experiences. And change, should be judged by the creative opportunities it creates or destroys, -the criterion of "quality" is simply irrelevant.

[Kirsten]

In response to the actual content of this post, I'd suggest looking at what's happening with non-mainstream fashion - DIY, reuse, and green trends, for example. While I agree that the mainstream industries are being challenged to water down their products to reach a market with the lowest common denominator, I would argue that individuals have the opportunity to develop their own unique styles. In my opinion, the proliferation of these trends on the Internet encourages more people to be creative and expressive, as well as economically and environmentally responsible. Individuals who innovatively use their available resources (rather than the entities who simply have the most resources) should emerge as the elite. Granted, it's frightening to think about what thirteen year old girls might invent on their own, but I think thirteen year old girls should be challenging each other to *make* the coolest stuff, not *buy* the coolest stuff.

In regards to the content of these comments, I'd like to hope that Keen's book challenges the participants - both contributors and consumers of content - on the Internet to raise the bar for themselves and others. The only way for us to 'improve the Internet' is for us (peers) to hold each other accountable. Ask lots of questions. Share relevant information. Be thought provoking. Be skeptical. Most importantly, behave like civilized human beings. This, of course, is coming from a woman who openly refers to Keen as an ass on her very own blog, but what can I say? Facts is facts, right? It's difficult to defend a guy who compares luxury to truth, no matter how firmly his tongue may be planted in his cheek.

[Jon Husband]

"and you've could be describing the blogosphere"

You need an editor.

[Fred Flintstone]

Just finished Cult of the Amateur. You give too much credit to the internet for today's ill.

As an untrained amateur, I see the music industry dying as a result of the poor music they produced. Having a full CD price for maybe one decent song, makes no sense except those stuck in backward technologies. Also, if one believes the bloated figures from industry lobbying groups or companies hired by the industry, the industry would already be gone. But, alas, I do not understand business or statistics or even economics as I am an ignorant amateur of non-professional standing.

The untrained eye also see the movie industry attempting to live in the modern world with DVD releases much sooner. I will not delve into the DVD as a dying industry as there is still a strong following of VHS tapes. What I, an uneducated peon, would see is the movie industry embracing the current digital revolution. On-line movies on demand, for uneducated masses who do not wish to pay outrageous prices to movie palaces of capitalistic worship, are finding that watching a movie online, in the comfort of one's own cabin, is a far better choice of family entertainment. The baby can cry, cheap food for the children, and snuggling on your own sofa; is a business model that will make someone very rich.

The blogosphere does not matter to the uneducated, untrained, non-professional masses. We are just too stupid to find these obscure people who apparently speak for us. One one has ever asked me an opinion for an opinion poll nor talked to me from a phone bank. However, for the most part, people get elected just as I voted for and life goes on.

If someone would ask me an opinion of a certain author. I would say he was self promoting and an elitist. He has an overwhelming sense of self worth in his opinion while being so proud of his professional education, he can hardly write a paragraph with using the words "amateur, uneducated, untrained" while describing the average person. His ego is only foreshadowed by his lack of words to describe the little people.

As to his writing content, at least he didn't double space the sentences. This would have made the book 30 pages longer. Everything was reviewed in the first 30 pages, but then expanded to utter nonsense and poor examples. It is nice to know that the education system is putting out formally educated, published, and trained authors who can establish a thought process and then expound upon it so the average person of limited intellect can understand. While performing this action in under the normal size of two J.K. Rowlings chapters of her children's book series. GOOD JOB!

[jordi martinez]

If your point is that even though everyone can write a blog not everyone should do it, because not everyone has something interesting to say in order to add up some value in our knowledge, I would agree with you.

I also think that you are not a fool, nor a Nazi. I think you are not claimming for a general cutting-off operation against bloggers, I think you are only observing web 2.0 and telling us what you see.

But I think you should also say something about the reasons why people puts more confidence on wikipedia than in the Britannica. Maybe most younger people does not even know that Britannica exists, or maybe they feel the wikipedia is cooler. But maybe it is also because the "establishment" always tried to use knowledge as a social distinction mark?

[Mike]

Its frustrating that you make such good arguments, but by their very nature it either offends everyone on the internet, and makes famous people like Stephen Colbert not want to agree with you for fear of alienating their fans. As a man hes flattered by his clips being put on youtube, and sneers at who gives him the bread on his table(adverisers). Its tough. I got your book because of that interview though, because it was something I was grasping at for a long time.

I had previously read in The Areas of My Expertise by John Hogdman(a graduate of Yale university, the elite) that "those who find it easy to convince themselves people care what they have to say are probably not good writers....and are assholes". You've written a whole book on that sort of concept in the modern era with the internet. As an aspiring artist I will definitely go to school, be vetted.

Like the films of Brad Bird say, not everyone is special. Some people call him a fascist.

[Frances Grimble]

No offense, Andrew; but as someone who has studied fashion history, fashion design, and social history for about 30 years, I can safely say you don't have a clue what you're talking about.

The display of luxury—or to put it more accurately, socioeconomic status—in fashion has always been an important motivating factor, in every culture and every time above the basic subsistence level, and often even there. Have you ever examined any portraits of any member of the British or European upper or merchant classes painted in the Renaissance or later? (Luxury dressing of course existed much earlier and in many other places. However, the farther you go back or afield, the harder it is for people who have not studied the subject to understand what constituted luxury at that time and place; that is, to understand that culture.) And people at every socioeconomic level have always followed trends as far as their economic means and social knowledge (association with fashionable people, which was how most fashion information was disseminated before the 19th century) permitted. History is rife with sumptuary laws—attempts to keep the different social classes visually in their place—which, BTW, were frequently ignored.

Modern society is far more visually democratic than that of many times and places. Throughout much of European and English history, you could tell someone’s social status at a glance, by what they wore and how they moved (upper-class and middle-class people were formally taught exactly how to walk, how to move their arms, etc.).

Besides that, in every (non-frontier) community and social circle, everyone knew exactly what everyone else’s social status was: Even though it was a complicated combination of titles, family ties, income, any profession followed, age, gender, order of birth in a family; and for women, marital status in addition. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, in the form of the dance called the “country dance”—which was, BTW, considered more informal and democratic than any other kind of social dance—the couples were always arranged in a line down the room in order of the man’s social status. For the Victorians, and in many other times, the order in which people entered and left a room at a party was dictated by social status. Social status dictated who spoke first in a conversation, who “gave the wall” when passing by in the street, and whether you wrapped someone’s gift with a ribbon or only in paper: In short, the common forms of daily life, for the middle and upper classes, were strictly regulated by social status.

Speaking as someone who has grown up in the modern era, and not as a historian, I’m glad a major outlet for modern status display is nothing more than a tag on a handbag.

About the quality of luxury clothing: There are two issues. One is style, and one is the quality of construction. Whether a style is “beautiful” is a very arbitrary consideration; depending not only on the time and place (culture) but on the individual’s selection from available fashions; or sometimes their defiance of said fashions. For example, both modern and antique fashion magazines and individuals often deplore the ugliness of the clothes they praised and wore only a few years earlier.

Given all that, the tendency of “high” fashion is to run to extremes. In most cultures, the people with the most money are ever-anxious to wear fashions not only expensive enough but new enough to distinguish them from the mob—and competitors in their own social class. This is how Marie Antoinette—the fashion icon of her day—and other women of her social class, evolved hairstyles three feet high, full of false hair and extraneous objects such as decent-sized models of ships in full sail, plastered together with pomade and flour, which were only “opened,” that is fully taken down, every few months. This is how Elizabeth I and her court evolved gowns so stiff, heavy, and loaded with jewels (often fake but they still made a show) that their wearers could hardly support the weight. In a famous quote, aristocratic Elizabethan males were advised “to turn five hundred acres of your best land into two or three trunks of apparel” before going to court.

Again, speaking as a modern woman and not as a historian, I’m relieved not to have to follow such extreme fashions on a daily basis.

In college I studied both couture and ready-to-wear clothing design. I took my couture courses from an elderly lady who for many years had worked at the couture department of a major department store, before they closed it. We had to call her “Madame,” even though she wasn’t French. I spent most of the first semester endlessly practicing hand stitches and seams, including six or seven kinds of basting stitches alone. We each had to produce a “sample book,” containing absolutely perfect examples of all of the above. One exercise, for example, was to work a hem in white thread on black fabric, in such a way that not a single stitch showed on the right side (we were allowed to use napped woolen fabric, with a little bit of pile to hide the white threads). At the end of the first semester we were allowed to make a—machine sewn!—dress, but only because the students insisted on being allowed to sew something they could actually wear. It was not in the couture tradition to move to making a whole garment so fast.

All this was very useful training. But:

First, for garments other than linen and cotton underwear, which had to withstand vigorous scrubbing, the above tradition of “couture” hand sewing dates from the late 19th century. For example, 18th-century brocade court dresses were merely basted together with large stitches, because their important feature was an impressive display of expensive and fashionable material, not invisible interior seams. Also, then (and for centuries earlier) all social classes, even the richest, either recycled material until it wore out, or passed the garment on to someone else who recycled it. The larger the stitches, the easier it was to take the garment apart and make it into something else, cutting around the stains and worn parts. (Overall dry cleaning had not been invented, so silks and woolens were merely spot-cleaned; or if they had no multicoloured patterns, were redyed.) So, it can hardly be argued that there is an extremely long tradition of fine construction that is now disappearing.

Second, mass manufacturing of garments is a recent development, beginning around the early 19th century with such things as government-issued military uniforms, clothing for sailors (who didn’t spend enough time in port to have clothes custom made), and outfits for people emigrating to remote colonies. For thousands of years, much fabric and garment construction—spinning, weaving, sewing, and now-obsolete methods such as nailbinding—was in the hands of amateurs, mostly women and girls.

After machine weaving and spinning were developed, except in remote communities such as frontier areas of America, amateurs now freed from these tasks—but still socially required and expected to perform “women’s work”—shifted their emphasis to sewing. In a popular 19th-century etiquette book, the _Young Lady’s Instructor_, its girlish and teenage audience was admonished with the standard moral maxim that females should continually be employed in useful labor, and that “the needle is always at hand.” Even if the highest-status clothes, such as men’s suits and women’s dresses for outside the home, were made professionally, the women and female children of the household sewed everything else. This included massive quantities of underwear and household linens—in the early 19th century household laundry was typically done anywhere from one, to three or four times a year—plus all the infants’ and children’s clothes, informal indoor dresses and men’s garments, and garments for both genders made of recycled fabric. Women and girls also spent a great deal of time doing mending and alterations.

Once the sewing machine was adopted in the 1850s, Victorian and Edwardian middle- and upper-class women had time to do more fancy dressmaking--despite the fact that from the mid-1870s on, garment construction became increasingly complex. The numerous fashion magazines published for amateur needlewomen in the second half of the 19th century provided hundreds of patterns for ball gowns, corsets, and elaborate multilayered bustle dresses. The same magazines provided thousand of patterns for painstaking fancy handwork—knitting, crocheting, tatting, embroidery of many kinds, appliqué, making needle lace and bobbin lace, netting, beading, and making tassels and fringes. It is the more astonishing that many amateur needleworkers knew how to do all or most of these kinds of handwork. They tirelessly produced fancy layettes for their babies; embroidered cushions and fire-screens for their homes; colourfully embroidered smoking caps and beaded money-purses for their husbands; fancy pin-cushions and mitts as gifts for female friends; and full-length dresses in Irish crochet lace for themselves; plus many less obvious articles, such as bell-pulls, braided riding whips, and even (I have patterns for them) crocheted dog muzzles and netted fish boilers.

The superb quality, and the sheer exuberant variety, of the items produced by Victorian and Edwardian amateur needleworkers has overall never been equalled, then or since, by even the finest and most expensive machine manufacture.

And, the only affordable way most people can obtain such articles these days, is to make them themselves. Yes, there are some people producing high-end handmade quilts, pictorial knitted sweaters, and the like for the juried-show crafts market—many of whom started out as amateurs and are hoping to finally make some money doing what they love. Although I certainly support their right to charge many hundreds or thousands of dollars for spending so many hours of their time producing beautiful wearable art, the average middle-class woman simply can’t afford to buy such items. But she _can_ afford to buy yarn, and learn to knit. She can buy polished cotton thread, and learn to crochet lace. She can buy embroidery thread, and learn to embroider. She can buy remnants of cotton prints, and learn to quilt. She can buy used cashmere sweaters at thrift stores, and decorate them with lace and embroidery. Because most women work outside the home today, few have as many hours to spend learning as many crafts as the middle-class Victorians and Edwardians. Just the same, most of the hand-spinning and hand-weaving, hand-knitting and hand-crocheting, hand-embroidery and hand-sewing, being done in industrialized countries today is being done by amateurs: Not only because they enjoy needlework, but because modern labor costs mean they can’t possibly buy such things.

Turning to clothing—the clothing that people really _must_ wear, rather than wearable art—since highly fitted clothing came into fashion in the Renaissance, really fine-quality clothing has always been associated with personalized fit. The ready-to-wear industry has been struggling with the problem of how to mass-manufacture good fit since the early 19th century. The solutions that have evolved consist of, first, a range of “standard” sizes that supposedly fit the “average” person. Since in fact standard sizes do not provide a good fit for most people, fitting standards have been relaxed. It is not a coincidence that the sack-like dresses and voluminous capes of the 1920s came into fashion exactly when buying ready-to-wear became the dominant method for women to obtain clothing. Another relaxation of fitting standards is the “anything goes this season” skirt hemline. Right now, for example, it is acceptable for a woman to wear anything from a mid-thigh mini (if she has the figure for it!), to knee length (the conservative business look), to mid-calf or even ankle-length (the look for those with “boho” tastes, and/or plumpish older figures). The third and most modern solution is knits including extremely elastic plastic fibers—which deteriorate and lose their elasticity, and therefore the garment’s fit, within a few months.

While comparatively loose clothing is comfortable, and a wide selection of styles benefits the consumer, the fact is that “standard sizes” don’t really fit anyone except garment industry fit models. Sewing classes (and b-boards) are full of women who are too short, too tall, too plump, too busty, too flat-chested, too large-hipped, too broad-shouldered, or too otherwise “badly proportioned” to fit into standard sizes. There are also many women who need garments that are not readily available mass-manufactured, such as historic costumes for re-enactment; “modest” Christian, Jewish, or Moslem styles; business-appropriate maternity wear; garments that accommodate physical handicaps; special professional outfits like women’s chef’s uniforms; and so on.

And—because modern sewing patterns, like ready-to-wear, are also manufactured only in “standard” sizes—modern sewing manuals and classes are filled with information to help amateur dressmakers shorten bodice patterns, take up the shoulders, move the darts, redraw the hip curves on skirts, and dozens of other pattern alterations. Manuals and classes are also full of information to help women, regardless of their proportions, make clothing in exactly the styles they want, in exactly the materials and colors they choose for themselves, with the very best construction achievable. None of that is available in ready-to-wear. Even for teenagers who don’t want to learn to sew from scratch, there is a plethora of books on decorating and altering ready-to-wear (especially T-shirts). The key theme is “personalization”: Mass-produced items, whether high-quality and expensive or not, do not necessarily give the individual what they personally happen to want or need.

In short, I agree with you that modern ready-to-wear is not of couture quality. However, it is merely a fantasy that the alternative for the vast majority of women has ever, at any time, been “haute couture.” Although it could be argued that “haute couture” was invented in the late 18th century, with Marie Antoinette’s modiste Rose Bertin being the first “couturiere” (though in French this merely means “seamstress”), “haute couture” mostly dates from the mid 19th century into somewhere in the first half of the 20th, when it pretty much died as a viable industry. In its heyday, from the 1850s into the 1910s, haute couture was only for royalty, aristocracy, and captains of industry (or rather their wives and daughters). Even then, many wealthy women had all but their most formal clothing made by their maids: The lady’s maid spent most of her time not in hooking up her employer’s clothes, but in sewing them.

Besides the vast amount of needlework done in the home, there were, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, dressmakers who had served formal apprenticeships. However, since most middle-class women were badly educated in comparison to men, and “respectable” employment options for them were few (especially jobs that allowed women to work at home while caring for their children) , the transition between amateur and professional dressmaking was, for many, merely widowhood or orphanhood. Because the hardest part of professional dressmaking was “cutting out” a well-fitting garment, many tools were manufactured for this purpose, their marketing prose aiming them simultaneously at amateur dressmakers, women suddenly thrown on the job market, and those who wanted to prepare themselves for such an emergency. These devices included apportioning scales (see the books described on my website); tools that we would call multi-size “slopers” in the form of cardboard charts or adjustable metal frames; and drafting manuals with instructions for enlarging the patterns in them. Even armed with such tools, the newly-set-up community dressmaker often had little more skill than her neighbors, going into their homes to sew by the day for a pittance and meals. Women also did men’s tailoring—custom tailors farmed out poorly paid piecework to women and girls sewing in their homes. Although new technology and social mores increased employment options as the century went on, providing opportunities for shopgirls, telegraph operators, and typists, dressmaking remained a standard woman’s “fall-back” profession into the Edwardian era.

Today, while perhaps some women may fantasize about having all their clothing really well made and—what is an important part of that—custom fitted, hiring a dressmaker on any regular basis is seldom realistic. Most custom dressmakers subsist on doing simple alterations such as (usually machine!) hemming on ready-to-wear, and/or on sewing wedding gowns, one of the very few “fine” garments most women ever expect to own. However, since even alterations are not cheap, many amateurs--even if they don’t have the time or skill to sew entire wardrobes—regularly put up their hems, replace their buttons, add a little lace to their T-shirt necklines, take up their husbands’ pants and shirt cuffs, mend their children’s clothes, and so on.

You can argue that it would be a better, finer world if everyone could afford haute couture, or if they had a badly paid neighborhood seamstress to come in by the day every time they needed some sewing done. I, personally, think modern amateur sewing is a much more realistic, and in the latter case a more morally defensible alternative.

[Robert]

I think part of the problem (caused by the Internet) stems from lack of patience. The last decade has seen people able to get data of almost any kind on demand: news, email, movies, music. People don't want to wait for the news at 11. They would rather risk hearing a half-truth from some anonymous blogger or read it on a non-moderated social site.

Even worse is the propensity to prefer drivel over actual newsworthy events. I understand the war is trying, politics are depressing, but some random girl's dialog on YouTube is not exactly edifying when one could be poring over a good old fashioned newspaper written by someone with actually something to say.

Social dating sites, online chat rooms, instantly downloadable music, movies, and news breed impatience. I'm seeing it crop up everywhere. People no longer brainstorm, they consult Google. The Internet has largely taken humanity out of the equation. Our insatiable desire for EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW is causing jobs to be sent overseas, people to lose their "old fashioned" analog jobs, and a general decrying of anything that cannot be offered up on demand the instant a request is made. I like instant gratification as well as the next guy, but please...

I think within a reasonable amount of time, there is going to be a backlash of some magnitude with regard to this "splattercast" of data. I also see the literal cheapening of society due to the overload of information. Who or what can be trusted anymore?

When everyone is his own editor, author, purveyor of authority, pope, you name it, chaos ensues.

Some of the comments on this blog and others smack of accusing Andrew and others in agreement with him of fascism or of being a control freak. People need to understand the difference between actual freedom and permissiveness. The latter is what the majority of people are actually desiring. A society with no gatekeepers is an immoral, uneducated society. Look at history. Permissiveness killed off all of the so-called "great" societies.

[Cpt Duh]

Honestly, who gives a shit? "High fashion" has been trashy, bullshit clothes meant solely for runway display for years. Calvin Klein? What a fucking hack! His clothes look like shit and hold up like wet recycled cardboard. Todd Oldham, on the other hand, actually seems to understand fashion. He creates wonderful clothes that take classic styles into new and interesting domains, and (most importantly) are actually wearable. A fucking dress made of shredded paper and light bulbs is not fashion. Art? Yes. But not fashion.

To others, stop posting links to your blogs in your comments. No one gives a fuck, I assure you. And the irony of a blogger complaining about other bloggers being uninformed is purely priceless. I suggest you take a "personal inventory", Mr. Keen. Your dumbfuck drivel is the exact same that you rail against. Don't throw stones, glass houses, all that.

~ Cpt. Duh

[Jon Eng]

I personally wonder if the author of this blog actually does moderate or even read any of these comments to his various entries. It would be unfortunate, although seemingly likely, that Mr. Keen does not read comments to his blog. Unfortunate because entries like Ms. Grimble's response would be overlooked, and likely because several entries that are little more than vitriol have made their way to this page. I understand the heavy possibility for satire in allowing "all users to be free to express themselves", thus proving Mr. Keen's point. However, is also a dishonest practice to note that these entries will be moderated, and thus not do so.

Any lack of real feedback from Mr. Keen on the more relevant posts also does not aide in creating a dialog between himself, and his objectors. Again, the possibility for satire is obviously apparent, as Mr. Keen displays the same lack of contact, discourse, or moderation that he claims other bloggers to have. I would suggest, however, that if Mr. Keen does consider himself a member of the "elite" (if he is listening), to do what the elite do best: not resort to the same dishonest, underhanded, and dishonorable tactics that the vulgar use. I suggest that Mr. Keen does conduct his affairs in the manner in which he recommends, rather than satirize it in a deadpan and ambiguous way. Such a tactic only serves to polarize the community, and polarization is never the goal of a group in the minority, as I assume most on the internet support the "internet 2.0".

In closing, I suggest three things: #1 That Mr. Keen endeavor to create the internet he envisions by first doing so in his own practice. #2 That Mr. Keen starts conducting a real dialog between himself and his detractors. #3 That he either remains honest towards the moderating practices listed on this blog and excise all extraneous posts in regards to this issue, or clarify/remove those notes which state that he does moderate and read our posts.

The first 2 suggestions are straightforward, however the third is not so much insofar as it includes this very post I am writing. It will be the first time, I think, that anyone hopes not to have their opinion posted, however I believe that this will be a true test. If Mr. Keen does agree and does moderate and does listen and read the posts on his blog, he should not allow this extraneous issue to enter into the comments log. If he does not moderate, does not listen, does not edit, and does not read his posts first, viewers will see this post and will also note no public follow-up to its suggestions or opinions.

-Jon Eng

[anon]

Fuck you. If blogs are the coming appocalypse, yours is the antichirst.