Seanbaby.com

It's obvious that Seanbaby.com is funny, weird and distinctive, a showcase example of how idiosyncratic personalities, viewpoints and sub-cultures can flourish on a free, non-corporatized Internet. It's not as clear why Seanbaby is important, a vital but endangered Web species that needs to grow and prosper in a world whose desktop is being shaped by Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner.

If there's a single trait most people who read Slashdot share -- maybe the only one besides an addiction to software -- it's a love of popular culture.

Culture has become a huge term, expanding by the week. It has come to include superhero comics, trashy daytime TV, sci-fi TV shows and websites, indie rock, rap and hip-hop, gaming, anime, cartoons, whatever. High culture -- the traditional, respectable, well-funded kind -- gets covered and criticized in the other media. But upstart culture, especially low cyberculture, can be wondrous stuff, an explosition of idiosyncratic voices that gives birth to this website and to Seanbaby.com. Interesting, valuable, fragile and endangered, Seanbaby.com is in its unique way, very significant.

In fact, for those working to maintain their sanity in the Disney/Sony/ AOL/Microsoft nation forming off and around the Web, The Seanbaby News Stupid Probe is a great place to start the day.

You won't get the world as presented by the Today Show there. Instead, you'll encounter what the site itself describes as news that will "kick your head's ass," focusing on frivolous lawsuits, exploding animals, chainsaws and chickenheads. You won't want to miss the Stupid Forum either. This is a look into the soul of the real America, at least a significant chunk of it.

Seanbaby is direct, if nothing else -- most media is not. It describes itself as intended for people over 18 -- only because, as we all know, kids will shoot one another if they hear or see dirty words. Seriously Seanbaby.com is what the late, lamented Suck really wanted to be but couldn't quite pull off. From the 20 worst NES games to Superhero Bios featuring stories, comics and videos about Aquaman, Lex Luthor and all their stupid friends, this site bristles with 'tude, shared cultural references, biting, anti-hypocritical humor. It rakes the moral pompousity that passes for discussion of digital and other culture in Washington, on campus and in much of the other press. It also manages to capture a lot of the lunacy.

The site's links and forms veer off in some strange directions, but Seanbaby.com is a great antidote to news, culture and the corporate entertainment machine as presented in the Corporate Republic.

Seanbaby is one of the reasons the Web's still-vibrant climate of individualistic expression needs to be preserved as Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner gather their forces like two giant and rapacious dinosaurs to plot out the future of the desktop. (Believe me, if either or both win, Seanbaby.com won't be there.) Seanbaby.com is the voice of the other Web, the "real" web, if you prefer. It understands that comics, The Simpsons, and Nintendo aren't just "entertainment" -- they're the basis of whole sub-cultures affecting and shaping people's lives. It suggests the promise of the medium to create original and outspoken content and link people with distinctive sensibilities, two things the AOL culture relentlessly destroys, no matter what it owns, buys or acquires (AOL/Time-Warner is now trashing up the snoozy CNN news network by adding -- what else? -- lifestyle, celebrity gossip, and health stories -- and by hiring the usual platoons of blow-dried airheads. That won't get younger viewers either. The money they're wasting could launch tens of thousands of Seanbabies).

"You should know that some pussies have been known to find sarcasm and bad words confusing and offensive," writes Seanbaby, whose bio also appears on the site. "If so, I, your sexual fantasy from the future, advise you to find a new source of free comedy, caveman. For those who stayed at the risk of face rockage, you should know that soon, like all Earth entertainment, this site will be replaced by Doctor Excitement's Fun Blaster, a peace-bringing combination midget generator and launcher."

Old fart media execs wondering what they have to do to get young people to consume mainstream media have only to log onto Seanbaby.com to understand why they never will, and don't really even want to. This freedom and voice and community and definition of culture will never enter a straight newspaper, pop up on a network newscast or, for that matter, appear on Slate or Salon. Yet it reflects its new culture as well as the New Yorker Magazine mirrors the old. For as long as it lasts in this parlous time of Web sanitation, may it grow and prosper, and spawn a thousand more just like it.

Comments

Why Katz is largely unloved on Slashdot

[sv0f]

If there's a single trait most people who read Slashdot share -- maybe the only one besides an addiction to software -- it's a love of popular culture.

Actually, I don't think this is true, and this is why Katz catches so much flack around here.

Katz is not a techie, but rather a fan of tech/popular culture. Most folks come here for tech news, not cultural news. When the two intersect, as when a computer-animated movie is released, Katz invariably emphasizes 'the stuff cultural theorists care about' and de-emphasizes or fails to understand the stuff techies care about -- and gets flamed for it.

Idea: maybe Jon needs a wider forum?

[ethereal]

This is not a troll, this is a serious suggestion. But don't let that stop you :)

Mr. Katz gets flamed a lot here, mostly for either saying what we were all mostly aware of already, or for the way that he says it (humorously, the phrase "moral pompousity" used in this article is sometimes pretty close to the truth). But just because this isn't necessarily news for this batch of nerds doesn't mean that it isn't news for someone - I agree that there are a lot of old media companies who probably need to get whacked with this particular clue stick. In the meantime, the "nerd ghetto" here on /. is often in need of some serious clue sticking about the way the real world of lawyers, politicians, and public opinion really works. Thus, I propose a trade.

Jon Katz should get a semi-regular opinion column in an old-fashioned medium like USA Today (motto: news for those who don't like to read) or maybe on talk radio. He really has a pretty good handle on entry-level geek evangelism, and he could do a lot more good preaching to a choir that isn't already singing his tune. In return, he (or someone else that's available from the old media world) should write some stories for /. focusing on how it is that young, smart, hopeful nerds can get so pounded by the old-world forces of politics and money, and what we can do about it. I realize that /. has become a lot more trademark/copyright/patent-savvy in the last couple years than it was originally, but we still get blindsided by some issues or by the depth of feeling that Joe Sixpack has on them, so it's clear that the /. community as a whole has something still to learn.

I guess in a way this is a pretty idealistic plan - the people of the world don't really want to be exposed to the cutting edge of technology culture that we're creating and experiencing, and I imagine we'd all be pretty happy if the world of the mass market consumer society left us all alone (OK, except for our weekly /. movie review...). Nobody likes that guy who goes around poking holes in your rosy worldview. But the masses who are just venturing into the digital age need that perspective from Jon Katz, just as we here need some perspective on what those masses are really going to do with our playground once they're all in here.

Plus, anything that avoids the usual JonKatz flamefest would be a big plus IMHO. Not that I mind the flaming, it just gets a little repetitive and predictable after a while. If you have to flame Katz, flame him for his writing style or the truth of his statements, but don't fault his goal of laying out how he thinks the tech world works. It's a good goal; it's just that sometimes we're the wrong audience for it.