R.A.G. New York

The principal idea and pinnacle of the web 2.0 movement is the ideology of content generated by the masses instead of the few. This line of thought has translated itself not only from how content is generated on the web, but how advertising, fashion, and all aspects of our lives are shifting towards this ‘user generated’ world. Marketing firms have taken a liking to letting normal people create advertisements in thousand dollar contests instead of paying ten-thousand dollars for a design firm to create something that the public might not enjoy. Newspaper companies have expanded their op-ed sections to let more and more common people post their own news in major publications. Even fashion companies such as Coach in the previous blog entry seem to prefer user-generated clothing designs instead of those done by a professional high-end designer. Though with all of the positives of web 2.0 and content by the people, it comes with three major draw backs:

1. Lots of “crap”
The main problem you run into with user generated content is a lot of people have amazing ideas, but they don’t possess the technical skills to illustrate them properly. Art, being the field that it is, relies on having both ‘good’ art and ‘bad’ art. The good and the bad being determined by a select, prestigious, and educated few. Though I am very much against established rules set by people I’ll never meet, I’m not too fond of wading through junk for a pearl.

2. Popular Demand

Another problem with user generated content is popular demand. Sometimes what everyone thinks is a great thing, isn’t. Only one person might know the real outcome of an event but popular demand would supersede this and possibly bring destruction, cataclysm, and all sorts of nasty things down upon themselves and those around them.

3. “Herd” Mentality
Human beings tend to clump around each other and the larger a group of people becomes, the more their common sense and IQ diminishes. Good ideas lose ground to bad ideas that sound better, safer, and more comfortable, in the case of clothing we can take a look at graphic tees and t shirts at places like Blank Generates, Threadless Tees, and Design by Humans. It’s great that their marketing strategy of letting their viewers make their shirts is working, but it diminishes the credibility of not only graphic t shirts, but the entire fashion world.