semantic
I find it interesting how much time, effort, and expense can go into arguing about what are essentially semantic issues. One of the music BBSes (er., I guess they're called forums now...showing my age) I frequent was recently home to an extended flamewar about whether or not 'DJs' are musicians. This thread, believe it or not, stretched into hundreds of pages of diatribe, counter-diatribe, attempt at definition, diatribe-against-definition...you get the idea.
My take on the issue after reading about 10 posts: who cares? Both turntablists (as some of the DJs insisted they be called) and persons who play more traditional musical instruments (heh heh, like sample-based synthesizers...anybody remember those debates?) can do creative work. Both groups contain some undeniably talented individuals, and both contain performers whose work can charitably be described as crappy. Does who is called what matter, really? Of course not.
Why am I telling you this? Because I have occasionally, like a deer in the CRT glare, found myself reading these arguments with great concentration. Wasted time, I tell you. No more. I hereby vow to blow off one of my major fruitless addictions: Web forum browsing.
While I'm at it, I implore you all: every time you plop onto a website looking for useful information, but instead find yourself reading an extended rantwar between parties who really have nothing to fight about, shut down yer dang browser and use the time you would have spent reading it to do something else. Take a photo, read a book, write a story, or pet your dog.
BTW, I'm not advocating giving up the net, just the stupid parts of it. Webcomics, for example, are still aok by me...
My take on the issue after reading about 10 posts: who cares? Both turntablists (as some of the DJs insisted they be called) and persons who play more traditional musical instruments (heh heh, like sample-based synthesizers...anybody remember those debates?) can do creative work. Both groups contain some undeniably talented individuals, and both contain performers whose work can charitably be described as crappy. Does who is called what matter, really? Of course not.
Why am I telling you this? Because I have occasionally, like a deer in the CRT glare, found myself reading these arguments with great concentration. Wasted time, I tell you. No more. I hereby vow to blow off one of my major fruitless addictions: Web forum browsing.
While I'm at it, I implore you all: every time you plop onto a website looking for useful information, but instead find yourself reading an extended rantwar between parties who really have nothing to fight about, shut down yer dang browser and use the time you would have spent reading it to do something else. Take a photo, read a book, write a story, or pet your dog.
BTW, I'm not advocating giving up the net, just the stupid parts of it. Webcomics, for example, are still aok by me...
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