The Wisdom of the Lileks

I particularly liked this bit of Lileks this week:

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last ten years – aside from the fact that a man who can write a self-refuting line like “Only a Sith believes in absolutes” and be paid a billion dollars – it’s this: web communities create in-breeding. It’s less the planet-holding-hands-and-singing-the-Coke-song than Cities in Flight, domed off, heading on different trajectories. If you doubt this, subscribe to a few Twitter feeds from people who believe different things than you do, and you will find dross passed off as insight, biscuit-crumbs strewn as if they were pearls on silk, all because the writer believes he or she is speaking to an audience that need not be persuaded. The worst part of the internet is its ability to let the pre-persuaded accrete, and declare the sun moves around them.

Oh, and from the same column:

I suppose I could assume everyone who’s sensible and/or hip to the new “cyber” tools for interpersonal avoidance masquerading as immediate communication is already hooked up with the RSS and the Twitter and the Tumblr...