Apr 25, 2010
Today’s obsession was a Youtube video of Fleetwood Mac’s Everywhere, which I played upwards of 5 times in a row.
The title of the video claimed that it was a “rare” version, since it featured the members of the band performing some sort of quasi-related pantomime in which I took zero interest. This was opposed to the more widely known version which probably features actors or animations performing a similar quasi-related pantomime in which I also have no interest. The point is, this version was apparently rare. Which got me thinking about the concept of rarity, and how it relates to our time.
It used to be that something rare was something that existed in very small quantities. An object, artefact, book, whatever it may be. Then mass media came along, and that changed slightly — rare now meant that a piece of media had only been shown a limited number of places or a limited amount of times and records of it were scarce. But it was still rare, hard to obtain, elevated in status because of this.
Now there is an Internet. There is nothing rare on this Internet. The only limiting factor is a person’s ability to find something. But once something is on this Internet, it is there forever, available always. In most cases, even if you try to remove something from this Internet you won’t be able to. Search engines search and archiving services archive so that countless copies of your thing remain available to anyone willing to look for them. Sure, that process of scouring is by no means easy, but once found, this thing is infinitely viewable, linkable, shareable. There are no limits on how long it will remain available or how many people can see it before it vanishes into the ether. It’s there forever.
The closest thing to rarity we have now is view count, but it’s orders of magnitude less meaningful. Something that has been seen only a few times isn’t rare. In fact it can be only 3 things — new, hidden or boring. But not rare. Rarity is scarcity, and there are no limitations on this Internet. Whether this is a bad thing or not I’m not smart enough to know, but it feels like it’s important. If anyone can see, experience, consume the same thing I can, what makes it special? Where is that proud moment or tinge of jealousy or bragging going to come from if everything is ubiquitous? Perhaps the word rare should never have strayed from the physical world into the virtual. How can you create exclusivity on a world wide web?