Chris Anderson Laments Additudes About The Niche Consumer Products

In a brief post, Chris Anderson defends the Long Tail theory arguing the NYT critic John Pareles is wrong with the following statement pulled from the NYT here:

"The open question is whether those new, quirky, homemade filters will find better art than the old, crassly commercial ones. The most-played songs from unsigned bands on MySpace — some played two million or three million times — tend to be as sappy as anything on the radio; the most-viewed videos on YouTube are novelty bits, and proudly dorky. Mouse-clicking individuals can be as tasteless, in the aggregate, as entertainment professionals."

Anderson argues, quite poignantly, that people's individual interests are refined and have great quality but differ widely. When a majority of people find a similar interest, it is usually a tame one and equates to the 'lowest common denominator that is mass culture'. He argues there is inherently more value in niche interest and therefore the rise of internet proliferated (long Tail) consumption will lead to a better quality of media, art, music etc.

It end's with a rather scathing quote directed at the common likes and dislikes of TV audiences from David Foster Wallace:

"TV is not vulgar and prurient and dumb because the people who compose the audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests."