I actually kind of agreed with this article. The best singer in the village becomes a mediocrity when you can click a YouTube thumbnail and listen to the Wien Staatsoper on a whim. Who cares about the amateur men's basketball team from your town when you can watch LeBron without leaving your living room. But as a result of this desire to behold greatness, these formerly participatory and localized activities become homogenized and commoditized. You take the space where uncle Jimmy would break out his fiddle so everyone could square dance after supper and you fill it with a consumer good produced by Hollywood capitalists. You make consumers out of people, when they could be bit-players in the vast, preposterous ritual that is culture. It's alienation of culture, to get a little Marxoid. Alienation of identity as well. And the unfortunate fact remains, that most people *are* mediocre. They will never be great. Many won't even be competent. But they might be better off participating in culture, poorly, rather than sitting on the couch.
