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the podcasting gloves are off, and cat on quality

Listening to:	birdies singing
Reading:	Lolita
Weather:	73, a bit sticky

There is certainly no dearth of egos in the podcasting world. You can tell this by listening to any of the popular podcasts, by reading some shownotes, or by reading the Yahoo podcasters group. I'm not necessarily ragging on the collective for this, I'm just laying some of the factual underpinnings for some of my commentary. Dave Winer's gloves indubitably came off today in his blog. Back to the credit wars in podcasting and blog syndication and shit, Adam's a thunder-stealing lying dickhead, etc. I'm quite over it, myself, because I so don't give a shit who made who. But I can totally understand Dave's need to set the record straight. The dalai lama says it's a good idea to correct inaccuracies and wrong impressions as quickly as possible. I think that is a good idea, too, I'm sure the dalai lama is glad that I concur :). Heh heh, I have an ego, too, so I fit right in, yo.

As much as I love Dave Winer, and am mostly down with his philosophies of the sociology of self-publishing, self-publishers, and thought organization (including blog, podcast, website, OPML, etc.) I have to take issue with some of Dave's spiel from yesterday's podcast. K, I'm totally copasetic with Dave's assessment of the deep value of self-expression and creativity for all. And that the value is not connected with popular or professional notions of quality. And I'm mostly with him on the beauty of the unrefined, especially since it is a great indicator of non-commercialness, something we both truly love. But. I can't go along with the notion of encouraging people to leave the dishwasher running in the background of your podcast and to never do any production. I think in part he's rationalizing his own laziness. It's a lot easier to babble stream of consciousness for 40 minutes, and upload it as is, than to go back in, review, tighten up your content, clean up your audio, and make your total composition deliberate. Yeah, that stuff's not nearly as fun as telling people what you like, Dave's favorite thing to podcast about. Don't get me wrong, I listen to and enjoy Dave's likes and dislikes, more or less. And Dave's audio production is almost always at least within the range of acceptable (overall level, eq, signal to noise, etc.). But I don't much like the "oh, I'm getting a skype call, let's see who it is, oh I'll tell him to call me later because I'm podcasting" crap. Yeah, I used the C word in my podcasting-related opinion, which Dave utterly hates. But there it is, I considered other words, and chose that one cuz it expresses it best. And I absolutely cannot fucking stand the earsplitting noises and ridiculously low or high or saturated levels and fumbles I hear on lots of podcasts, including Adam's, and many of the other popular casts (most of which I have stopped subscribing to in part because of the unacceptable audio quality).

So quality does matter. Of course you have every right and freedom to podcast away, no matter how crappy your audio or content, and I'll support that for you anytime. But I won't go so far in my support as to listen to your crappy podcast more than the amount of time it takes for me to determine it's crappy. It's like you have an important right to your opinion, a right I respect, but you don't have a right to have me respect your crappy opinion. K? And I think the dalai lama and tich haht nahn and other smart cats will say it's a good idea to do everything with integrity. Finish the job, do your best, don't just do what's easy or convenient or fun. It cheapens you. And you'll reap unexpected benefits from a job absolutely well done. Thus sayeth cat.

permalink posted by cat 11:42 AM

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