For Your Consideration

A link, for your consideration.  It's rather long, so I've quoted an area of particular focus below.

Trichordist: Letter to Emily White

"The existential questions that your generation gets to answer are these:

Why do we value the network and hardware that delivers music but not the music itself?

Why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself?

Why do we gladly give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not the companies and individuals who create and sell music?"

Probably not.

Well, I guess the sad truth is we pay for those things because we don't know how to not pay for them.  Music can be made intangible, digital, and thus easily distributed.  The music player we keep in our pockets...not quite so intangible.  Aside from that, I find some level of value in the notion that we should, by default, be encouraged to spread wealth to independents and smaller companies since we are essentially forced to give it to already-rich behemoths.

Perhaps that sounds strange, but when we pirate music (where payment is perceived as optional) in reaction to money we're practically (and often literally) under contract to extinguish I imagine a sort of imbalance would be created.  Robbing from the poor to give to the rich, in a way.  For most of us the idea of deleting piracy entirely from our lives probably sounds a bit extreme, but for the sake of good health for the industry I hope we all at least consider the financial conditions of individual artists.

Not all music we listen to goes AAA Super Platinum in sales.  Throw some bones their way.

That's more like it.

Concerning this article as a whole, there are certainly a few points that make me uneasy.  There's a high amount of aggression towards file-sharing sites, for one, without consideration paid to non-piracy uses.  However, that may be why I enjoyed reading this piece: despite presenting several opinions I disagree with, there were enough agreeable nuggets and a calm enough tone that I found it overall thoughtful and worthwhile.  Any music fan should read for the sake of getting their cogs turning, at least.

Thoughts and comments always welcome!

And this is how we start.

Hi, my name is Justin and this is what I look like.  Is blog get and do happy.

Oh, and layout and design suggestions are absolutely welcome.  Gotta look hip and sassy!  And, more importantly, easy on the eyes.  Isn't that right, mutant me? ^

Intro

Welcome to Congraturations, my desperate attempt at organizing an outlet for my own creativity and personal opinions.  I'm hoping I can arrange this into a hub of sorts, but as of this writing I've yet to actually explore the possibilities for visual presentation made possible by blogger.  Certainly seems more versatile than when I last visited seven years ago, so I'm hopeful!

In this age of twitters and facebooks and google pluses (hah!), I'm really not sure how to grab reader attention with a personal blog.  Blogs exist in some lost, foreign orbit outside of the interests my general age group frequents.  Frankly, much of what can be done on a personal blog is executed by Facebook, with the added bonus of being shoved directly in friends' faces.  But Facebook has its flaws, one being its wholly casual atmosphere and another being their overbearing policies on original content posted within its bounds.  If I posted one of my drawings on Facebook I'd really rather it stay within my personal ownership and individual use!

So I'm here, at blogger, dreaming of a plan to attract some level of readership.  But that's not important to whoever-you-are!  What's important is the end goal: A daily-updated one-stop for all of my short stories (there are none), drawings (none lately), and musings on individual games and the industry (there have been some of these lately), and the potential creation of a community to share their own creativity and passions in turn.  Most likely a message board would be created to accommodate community needs, but with that solution we run into the same problem -- nobody uses those things anymore!  They're old hat, a slow-paced tradition left in the dust of self-gratifying twitterers.  They're a great tool for sharing ideas and good ol' fashioned semi-symmetrical communication, but I imagine a tough road in encouraging people to take part in one.

What I ask is that you join me in confronting the unlikelihood of success.  I want you to know what I think, I want to know what you think of what I think, and I even want to know what you think of matters mostly unrelated to what I think.  We can create a hub for games, books, comics, and all sorts of other cool shit without being harassed by Farmville invites.  We just gotta believe.  Oh, and write.  Gotta do that too.


Gimme advice, tell me how to do this.  Let's be heroes.
-Dunk