The TaraElla Story

Chapter 11. In Context: What It's Like to Join the Cultural Conversation In an ideal form of cultural democratisation, people should be able to just say and do what they feel like, to join the cultural conversation.

The world described in my novel Eastlands Dreaming is based on such an assumption. But the real world does not really work like this. Like it or not, as of 2021, mass media still controls the culture and what people are interested in to a great extent, and if you want to participate in the cultural conversation and remain relevant, you better talk about what others are talking about. Surely there will be some audience for a blog discussing the relevance of the French Revolution to today's world, but this audience is likely to be very limited, because frankly it won't be what many people are interested in, unless some mass media cultural icons decide to embrace the topic. There is a reason why many blogs out there discuss the same things: it's the same things that are dominating the news, 94