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Loading ...The Cult of the Amateur?
This weekend’s unfortunate adventure at SXSW might be the event that forces me to borrow Andrew Keen’s “The Cult of the Amateur.” For those fortunate few who may have missed the story, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg participated in an on-stage interview this last Sunday with Sarah Lacy, an author, BusinessWeek columnist and co-host for Yahoo Finance. As you’ve probably heard, it didn’t go so well.
I listened to the interview and read the coverage yesterday. The interviewer asked poor questions and offered unsolicited commentary. The guest talked in circles. In the last few minutes, an audience member got bored and heckled the host. The audience took over with questions and more heckling. The host asked for feedback, got upset and responded on Twitter. The press got the story and promptly labeled the keynote a “train wreck.” Glass and acid flew everywhere. It all started to sound a little like kindergarten.
My friend, Bill, and I talk a lot about professional standards and their apparent absence in the digital age. He’s an English teacher and freelance writer who first told me about Keen’s book. Admittedly, we’re middle-aged, crotchety and opinionated, so you’ve been warned.
Despite the poor reviews of his book, the premise of Keen’s argument still intrigues me. In an article that predates his book, Keen criticizes the Web 2.0 movement, saying that “(it) suggests that everyone–even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us–can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves. Web 2.0 “empowers” our creativity, it “democratizes” media, it “levels the playing field” between experts and amateurs. The enemy of Web 2.0 is “elitist” traditional media.” Think this is harsh? Wait until he connects Web 2.0 thinking to Marxism. While I’m not sure whether I can endorse Keen’s arguments, I’d sure like to test them in the context of this key note.
The usual pundits have cited their reasons for Sunday’s SXSW keynote going sideways. Excuses range from Zuckerberg being a tough interview to a misanthropic audience disliking the woman journalist on-stage. Frankly, I think it’s a case of over-confidence, poor preparation and a lack of listening.
Let’s be honest about the partic
Zuckerberg is a young entrepreneur and a newly minted billionaire, but this interview suggests he’s not much of a thought leader. Compare it with this 2006 interview with Symantec’s John Thompson, CEO of one of the world’s largest software companies. Say what you will about Symantec and its products, Thompson responds to the Microsoft security question with a thoughtful, articulate message. He delivers his message clearly, directly and without hesitation. Zuckerburg could certainly be a genius, but he certainly doesn’t communicate that way.
So why would two evidently talented, but inexperienced, unprepared individuals get up on stage in front of such a large and demanding crowd? I think Keen has a point when he suggests that hubris is one of the cultural risks to living and working in digital media. This exaggerated sort of self confidence encourages people to do things they probably shouldn’t do (at least without some coaching). Unfortunately, the success and fame of Web 2.0 doesn’t guarantee that your commentary is worth an hour of key note time or the attention of more than 1,000 people.
So what does? It may be unfair to compare Lacy to Frum or Zuckerberg to Thompson, but these professionals demonstrate some important lessons from the old media world. Have intelligent questions prepared on behalf of your audience. Know your message and deliver it in a compelling manner. If it’s an interview, listen to your partner and to your audience.
I can load you the book Dave. You’ll generally find yourself thinking he’s on to something for 2-3 chapters, but by the end you’ll inevitably come to the conclusion that he’s an idiot, destroying any early point he may have had. Hope you had fun at SXSW. I had a blast last year and was sad I didn’t go this year. (Next year, company be damned, I’m sending myself).
First, I enjoyed this post and definitely feel it made some very good points. Second, I have to admit I’ve only seen excerpts from the interview in question, so I can’t give any true analysis of what went wrong or who may have been at fault. Up to now most of the comments I’ve read have been quite scathing in their criticism of the interviewer, Sarah Lacy. This post is the first I’ve read that has placed some of the blame on the interviewee, Mark Zuckerburg.
Having given hundreds of presentations (and also performed in several theatre pieces) before a wide variety of audiences, I know from sometimes painful experience that the audience can also contribute very significantly to the success or failure of an event. An audience with a strong immature element can at times turn the strongest material into the most abject disaster.
It may very well be that one or both of the onstage participants were not well prepared or well suited to the event, but I nevertheless think, from the descriptions I’ve read, that maybe a juvenile response from the audience didn’t help matters at all.
And while I don’t know Ms. Lacy and didn’t see the interview, I couldn’t help but be disturbed in all the commentary at the way everyone seemed to want to kick her when she was down.
Hey Fellas
Tyler - full disclosure: Like many others, I’ve been watching this from afar. That said, I’ve read countless articles and blog posts as well as watching the whole interview in video. Not quite like in real life, unfortunately.
Thanks for the mini-book review - it sounds like much of what I’ve heard about it, though Lawrence Lessig is pretty high on it (despite being on the wrong side of Keen’s argument).
Clive - I would have posted this sooner but I was trying to find the way to frame the audiences less than mature response, too. I didn’t succeed, so I just posted. I wonder if part of this “digital enablement (sic)” creates a sense among people that “I could do this better, so I don’t need to show any patience for this crap.” Not sure, but I’m open to opinions.
@Clive “It may very well be that one or both of the onstage participants were not well prepared or well suited to the event, but I nevertheless think, from the descriptions I’ve read, that maybe a juvenile response from the audience didn’t help matters at all.”
From my understanding of the interview it doesn’t seem that Lacy understood who her audience was, particularly in what kind of questions they wanted to ask Zuckerburg.
Since her understanding of her audience was flawed the crowd became well, unhappy, and in short order turned into a mob and tore her down. As you noted, they (and a great deal of the posts I’ve read about this) are kicking her while she’s down.
That is not to say I don’t think she could have handled it better, but that is more skill and practice needed as Dave pointed out. The ability to think on your feet and to respond was just simply lacking.
So while the crowd was ‘juvenile’, she probably should have had an idea that they might act in that manner if they became upset or annoyed. The fact that she responded defensively rather then just honestly asking what the crowd would like to focus on and changed the flow of the questions to that track.
Still, a live interview with someone who rarely gives them, live crowd, her mistakes are pretty understandable, even if they could have been prevented.
I’ll give you the flip side of that amateurish hubris: a contempt for anyone not part of your clique. An insecurity so great that a violent outburst must be resorted to when you can’t just change the channel. A continued unwillingness to learn how to assimilate different perspectives and experiences in order to enrich your own.
Oh, the audience (and subsequent web community) has been like a pack of wolves. But I’ve come to accept that that’s how the web works a lot of the time. And I can’t say I’m above being a raging jerk about some things myself.
Great post and replies. My 2 cents:
- Lacy botched it completely
- Zuckerberg is difficult
- The audience was impatient and rude
- Some of the web community has been terribly harsh and even mean which is often too easy to happen online
It is great to see constructive analysis on a positive note from Dave Robertson and David Armano. There are things to be learned here (know your audience for example).
Hey there, everyone
Thanks for the feedback (and for the book, Tyler).
Alfonso - I think you make a good (and impassioned) point that’s supported by others. Perhaps one of the side effects of digital culture is this kind of behavior, although I wonder what causes it. Is it a type of hubris on the part of the audience? It looks a lot like the type of impatience I hear teachers and professors talk about in modern classrooms. Regardless of the cause, I think the audience bears some responsibility.
Could preparation have helped avoid this problem? I think so. Had the participants taken the time before hand to discuss what they thought their audience might want and let those things guide the discussion, I’m sure it would have been more fruitful. In much of the facilitation work I do, I talk with key stakeholders to find out what they consider to be critical topics.
Again, thanks for all the feedback!
Thanks for you thoughtful post about the SXSW meltdown.
I did not attend, but 2 of my employees did. By the time they returned I had already read about the incident, and much of the online coverage had hung Lacy out to dry. My people did not attend the panel, but they said the buzz they heard was that Lacy and Zuckerberg were both to blame.
Or who knows? Maybe the whole thing was a setup and the SXSW folks are a lot slicker than we give them credit for. If that wasn’t the case here, you better believe it will happen down the road.
But yes, the mob mentality and sense of entitlement and self-importance is pretty scary.
For another take on that, you might want read “Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It” by Thomas De Zengotita. In this book, the author examines the “flattered selves” that we place at the centers of our own little worlds and just how much that sense of self-importance distorts our perception of reality.
If digital gives even amateurs a voice, it also empowers those with keen ears to tune out. With little investment to join an audience there is little to lose when choosing to leave the party.
And, while digital enables community it, at the same time, isolates.
People don’t operate the same way we would when face-to-face. We take far more liberties with others’ humanity when, for example, we’re relegated anonymous in our automobiles or untraceable (and so unaccountable)by fibre optics and wireless connections.
A modern tendency to the boorish and ignorance of proper behavior should really come as no surprise, when you think about it.
Hi Steve and John
John - thanks for the reading suggestion. Tyler left me a copy of “The Cult of the Amateur” (with words of warning), but I think I’m going to pick up your suggestion first. It seems very relevant in the context of this event and looks like fascinating read.
Steve - I liked your observation and I wish it was one that I had thought to make. Do you think the fickle behavior digital encourages is bleeding into real life?
Dave
Hi Dave
Correlation or causation? I don’t know. We do know that behaviour is learned. And what we learn or don’t learn is how we go through life. (I may still be a dork but a lot less so than when I was young and knew much less.)
Very much a sidebar, but another thought-provoking piece from Chuck Klosterman in Esquire who writes about boxing’s irrelevance in contemporary society.
http://www.esquire.com/features/chuck-klostermans-america/chuck-klosterman-0208
From what I’ve read, I do think the audience overreacted. What was happening on stage that sparked this level of anger? Did Lacy deliver a neo-nazi rant? Did Zuckerberg advocate the legalization of child pornography? No… it was just an interview. About TECHNOLOGY. The disproportion between the content and the response — regardless of the “sins” of the participants on stage — can’t really be justified. It reminds me of the ravings you sometimes see on entertainment blogs — wild flame wars about the relative value of Star Trek versus Battlestar Galactica, or which American Idol contestant should be next to go. I do sometimes wonder if social media, which at its worst lets people insult each other without any immediate, visceral risk (you might get banned or ostracized from the virtual community, but you definitely won’t get punched in the nose, fired or kicked out of your home) is resetting our conditioning about what constitutes acceptable social behavior.