that redaction is now just seen as boring and unnecessary. Self-publishing and notions of the citizen journo, i.e. where every commenter or blogger or fucking psychotic eejit thinks they have parity of esteem as a birthright, have drowned out the tap tap tap of keyboards that are daily whittling whole forest plantations of twaddle down to a few precision-turned paragraphs. That remains the case for virtual and mainstream media.
There is so much to get through, so much to read and refashion into something sensible, and yet the constant dilution of language and the dwindling attention span of the audience make the task harder. The world will end with humans communicating through baby talk video conferencing, the ability - or necessity - to string sentences together or even write having become obsolete, a dead-end branch of evolution, many tens of generations beforehand.
When someone says: "Hey, look at this! You can switch on this computer, connect to the internet and be whatever or whoever you want to be. Whoopee!", it is quite compelling. All we, middle-aged, overwhelmingly male, quite privileged and very self-regarding, have to offer in return is: "Actually, you don't realise this yet but you still need us, otherwise you'll end up looking stupid and no one will believe a thing you say or pay the slightest bit of attention to you." Who's listening?
I might have escaped this for the time being but it'll get me in the end. It's so depressing.
