The best quote I’ve read all day? With respect to Andrew Keen’s book, “The Cult of the Amateur”:

It is a whining, outrageous and defensive fantasy based on sweeping generalizations, falsehoods, paranoia and a form of condescension so pissy that it blinds the author to anything resembling reality.

I haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading Mr. Keen’s book, but I think that Terry Heaton’s opinions are, by proxy, “somewhat” congruent to mine. Furthermore, he nails these sentiments right on the head:

My biggest complaint with the book, however, is its black/white, win/lose, right/wrong, all-or-nothing perspective. In this he fails his argument and belies his own ignorance. His is the extreme view, not the views of those he labels utopians. I know many of the people he attacks in the book, and not one of them has ever expressed the cultural significance of the digital age from such an extremist stage.

I won’t contribute any more to that magnificent Troll, but as I said before — if you’re going to Troll, do it to raise some hype about your book. Which is what he did. So congratulations to him.

But otherwise, I suggest you do what you should do to all Trolls — ignore them and politely move on.

Andrew Keen, widely regarded as the curmudgeon of the social media set, sat down earlier today to take a few questions and answers from a few lowly plebs about his thoughts on social media. For those not quite familiar with his work, I’ll paraphrase it up for you: Mr. Keen believes that user generated media is a pox on society and culture at large, and likens it to a digital kind of Marxism. Believers are fooling themselves into believing that the masses can — or should — create different works and this threatens to supplant the wizened and wiser knowledge of a few professional or cultural elites.

I’ll let you read the article for yourself, or perhaps a few snippits, courtesy of Mat Ingram.

Nevertheless, I have to applaud Mr. Keen on one thing: if you’re going to be a troll, why not be the most magnificently flame-baiting troll you can be? Furthermore, if you’re going to troll it out, why not write a book about it so you can take advantage of your flame-baiting habits?

I don’t think its worthwhile debating any of Mr. Keen’s points in any depth, for the reason that his premise is based on a foundation of sand. And that is that the future that he is so worried about, what with all the unwashed mouth-breathing masses creating Stuff, can still be changed.

The sad fact is that it can’t — because its here already, and — if you’re Andrew Keen? — its only going to get worse. We already live an environment that is changing, and with the incredibly fast changing trends amongst today’s youth (never mind those in other parts of the world), it is only going to change more. Something like an astounding 30% of them actually create media to share with their friends, for example. I can barely imagine this world when they’re adults.

You know, I view Andrew Keen’s position as one of a crusty curmudgeon not because he doesn’t have any experience with technology; he does, and he’s benefited quite handsomely from it at some point or another. Rather, he posits forth an assertion that’s has the air of prescience, but is in fact nothing more than a crusty attitude.

How else to describe a position that looks ludicrous in the face of overwhelming reality? We will no more go back to his idealized world of professors and professionals exclusively arbiting opinion and taste than … well, than we can expect Google to suddenly lose its share of the Search Engine wars to Ask.com. Its just not going to happen no matter how hard you wish it so — even if you have a $100 million dollar marketing budget (sorry, Ask.com).

And in that way, I applaud Andrew Keen.

If you’re going to take a controversial opinion that will act as an obvious lightning rod, I agree — why not be the crustiest, flame-baitingest, most magnificent troll you can be?

As Mike Arrington said it best at Mesh: “If I say things that are outrageous things? I make more money … Its good for my business to say things like that”.

And it seems like Andrew Keen is taking a page out of that playbook. And good for him if it sells him more books, I say.