Entertainment

Going back to my previous statement, I read this morning that Nokia claim that over the next five years up to 25% of all entertainment will be created, distributed & shared amongst consumers. So this would mean that by writing a blog I am directly contributing to Nokia's predictions. If I where to stop writing this now would that be a mini revolution against their corporate prediction? Or is this a seemingly worthless statement in the face of a more 'democratic' approach towards the output we consume. Time will tell...

One element of this self created entertainment is the growth in trend of online subculture. Now it seems Myspace and its contemporaries are dominated by individuals & groups setting up their own busineses, whether it's selling T shirts, band cd's, or selling tickets to specialist club nights. There's a whole load of youngsters out there making money from the internet. For example there's a whole world of underground poetry events and publishers, as well as online zines, and all this sudden activity begs the question, where did all these people come from? Have we always as a nation set up and promoted our own niche groups on a mass level? I suppose the old way was through word of mouth, distribution of flyers, meeting dates stapled to laundrette notice boards and now evolution has dictated that these events are to be promoted digitally.

This, on one level is fantastic as it breathes & breeds creative expression and a self motivated desire to make something happen. On the other hand though, it becomes hard to really work out if a 'scene' of some description actually exists. As with most art forms today, there is pratically every form ever created available to view or experience, and this in turn begs the question where and when will the next big innovation come from? The abundance of prolific creative events and partakings on offer make it hard to decide what the follow and actually 'believe'. Overall this could lead to such a great diversity of subcultural trends that the classification of such a concept even existing becomes impossible.

I'm sure this is a good thing, but on the flipside the diary takes a bit of a bashing when theres upteen events going on in a single night and you, like me, want to go to them all.

Here's a link to an acticle on Guardian Unlimited that dicusses the trend on Myspace subgroups.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/07/myspace.digitalmedia