The American Accent on the Web Is Grating
Is American opinion and culture crowding out all others?
I blog in part for all the wrong reasons, or maybe it’s just one wrong reason. If it’s one reason I’d better get it right.
It’s because I’m appalled at the way opinion on a particular topic is dominated by American voices.
Now let me get this absolutely right. I am not against American voices, America, American culture. I admire American culture, give or take the odd war.
What I really mean is American voices dominate many aspects of what we think and do - so for example, and it’s not the example I really want to discuss, Hollywood now dominates narrative.
The rules of narrative as they are built into American movies are the dominant narrative structure for many art forms. Novels, for example, read like American movies.
Today you tell stories by taking two protagonists, giving one an impossible dream that he or she needs to fulfill, and play the story out by having protagonist number 2 put barriers in the way of protagonist number 1.
Now, for what I really wanted to say.
American culture’s great strength, and our great weakness, lies in the way they continually retell, rephrase and recoin what’s going on around them.
Ten years ago it was about a thing called the World Wide Web that was going to revolutionise the way we communicate. Six years ago it was the dot.com boom, which was going to revolutionise the way we do business. Now, it is Web 2.0, which is going to revolutionise the way we communicate, again, and how business is done, again.
During that period Americans have also retold the story of society, many times - it’s been a post-industrial society, a service economy, a talk global, think local society, a flat hierarchy-free society, the access
economy, and a creative economy.
America’s great strength for the past half century has been an intellectual one. They continually reshape how we think about the world around us. They, in fact, are always retelling our story.
So back to why I blog. I think they’re wrong. The way the important changes around us are described in American texts and blogs will always re-enforce a particular viewpoint of life that I disagree with. That viewpoint is: technology is neutral, you just deploy it and you get progress.
And the way American intellectuals ramp up ideas is something we should be actively combating with our own ideas. To do intellectual battle is a defining element of democracy and we’re just not living in democratic times
and it’s our fault.
Europeans are losing the current battle of ideas, falling into line behind Americans ramping up the future, once again.
Right now it’s Web 2.0 but it will soon be Content 2.0. Whereas today there’s a buzz around new web technologies, tomorrow it will buzzing around what we see, what we watch and what we participate with in various kinds of web content - particularly web video, virtual worlds, and games.
The American ideas machine is rarely idle and Web 2.0 is beginning to sound old. Content 2.0 is coming.
We all need a voice in this. In reality the room for non-American voices is slender, even on the world-wide-web.
The reason I write a blog then is because I don’t want to be reading too much of the stuff I believe to be wrong and I hope there’s an opportunity out there to join up with people who think the same way. Better blog that
too.
Check out the author’s blogs: mediangler.com and thecontentstudio.com.
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Yay, Lara Croft in Ireland!
Feshti's back and this time he's counting down the top 10 movie opening scenes of all time.
Is American opinion and culture crowding out all others?
on a more basic and superficial level, alot of irish (and english) radio stations have their own self-promoting jingles with put on american accents. its pathetic, and I find it baffling as to why they think sounding american is somehow with it and cool and trendy. it just has a counter-productive effect on the station. if I remember correctly, 2FM do it. what a load of crap! nothing against america obviously, etc etc.
Comment by krynn — September 16, 2006 @ 11:50 pm
Tony Fenton is awful for that.
Comment by stephen — September 17, 2006 @ 1:31 am
Tony Fenton is a cunt.
Comment by twenty — September 17, 2006 @ 11:47 am
Tony Fenton on the radio.
Comment by owwmykneecap — September 19, 2006 @ 11:27 am
The Community At Large » The American Accent on the Web Is Grating…
I admire American culture, give or take the odd war.What I really mean is American voices dominate many aspects of what we think and do - so for example, and it’s not the example I really want to discuss, Hollywood now dominates narrative.The rules o…
Trackback by ThisCanadian — September 29, 2006 @ 4:22 am
On a similar note, I avoid U105 (UTV’s radio station) as they seem to insist on using banal English voices telling us to buy things in their ads. Ok, I don’t wanna listen to some culchie trying to tell me why I should buy a Ford Focus, but surely there’s somebody from here they could use to do these voiceovers.
And getting back to the main point of the thread, the one thing worse than an American invasion is ‘cool’ types from here who think they’re American >:(
Comment by El Matador — October 31, 2006 @ 11:46 pm
I was thinking about this for a few months now. American Culture is already too entrenched in ours that it is impossible (well, not impossible, but its an unbearable alternative) to think of life without it.
Imagine tomorrow Britain/Ireland announced a boycott of America similar to the apartheid boycott. There’d be hardly any decent TV, there would only be a fraction of as many films as we see each year. Several chains would have to disappear (eg Wal-mart-owned Asda). clothing companies, Microsoft/Apple, Fords… the list goes on…
Comment by macca7174 — November 25, 2006 @ 1:09 am
This is an interesting topic and one I’ve considered from time to time in one form or another.Having lived in America for the last 12 years with frequent trips home to Ireland it really is ,to be honest,disturbing to see how readily American style goods/services/methods are DEVOURED by the consumer there.
I actually cringe when I see the dominance of crap US TV or hear the goings on on the radio.It’s like the US has exported the very worst of its products and it is lapped up over there.
So what do you do to counter this? Are American cars/movies/TV/Software/music etc the best ? Or is it too convenient (key word there lads) to believe they are?
Think for yourselves,buy what you need and if you don’t like what you see,hear or read turn the fucking thing OFF and do something about it.
Comment by Devin — December 4, 2006 @ 8:28 pm
With regards to the American accent on the web, surely pitchfork media must be one of the worst offenders, with an anti-UK bias that occasionally borders on rascist. For a website with such a good reputation, every time they mention a musician or band from the UK (or occasionally from Ireland. Or anywhere in the world that isn’t the US), they feel the need to slip in some condescending, glib comment about how everyone on this side of the world is an un-ironic, potato eating moron.
I guess it’s easy to forget that, as much as I occasionally think of every single American (and Canadian) as a jumbo hotdog eating, Dave Matthews Band Listening, inbred, simpleton, they tend to say much the same about me.
I’s just that there’s more of them, and they can shout louder than we can.
On a different note, the American view of Ireland, as seen on myspace’s boards, is one of the most ill-informed and offensive things I have ever come accross. But there you go.
Comment by Steven Dedalus — December 5, 2006 @ 3:17 pm
the reason I see that america is so powerful is that migration of people from not so well off backgrounds go there to hit the bigtime
but it is the belly of the beast as I heard the native americans call it
Comment by Joe — January 7, 2007 @ 9:42 pm
Hey, thanks for that.
Comment by shadows signwith — February 8, 2007 @ 4:07 am