29th
Zeitgeist Movie : The Downside of Universally Accessible Self-Publishing
The success of the full length online documentary Zeitgeist is a huge step toward bringing professional video content to the web. It’s also a pungent reminder to the web community at large that we are now the gatekeepers of content. In case you haven’t heard, Zeitgeist is an elaborate and, in some cases, riotous story of far reaching conspiracies and historical deceptions that date back as far as the time of Christ. It all ends with 9/11 and the Federal Reserve (Don’t ask me how they weaved that tangled web).
I’m sorry to say that we haven’t been very good gatekeepers on this one. With minimal research, you can easily dispel many of it’s core arguments and yet I’ve seen mostly praise coming from the blogosphere. In just the first few minutes of the movie alone, they make more than a few preposterous claims about parallels between the life of Jesus and the myth of the ancient Egyptian god Horus. It just goes downhill from there.
If we want universally accessible self-publishing, then we need to take responsibility as researchers and testers. If you’re a blogger, you can start by letting your readers know about Zeitgeist. Do the research. Tell the truth.
