Wired Interview with the Uncov Asshole. Umm, Author.

If you’re looking for Dzubia’s blog, go here – or, ya’ know, learn to use Google more effectively. What? I thought you were all about the ‘be an asshole’ schtick?

Over at Wired, they have an interview with Ted Dziuba, the guy behind Uncov, the Web 2.0 blog that essentially involves tearing startups to shreds. While the site serves a function i.e. rejecting the Valley mentality that any AJAX-powered social network is a brilliant idea (“So, a network for kitten owners to share photos of their pets’ bowel movements? Why sure, we’ll fund that!”), the interview has also revealed what has pissed me off about Uncov for so long. In Web 2.0, everything – ideas, people, art, media – are commodities. There is nothing that cannot have a dollar sign attached to it. I don’t mean this in some silly sense of the ‘pure, untouched idea’ – as if things can happen outside of an economic context – but rather that commodification is the vessel and content and function merely the crap that fills it. The intent is to find a working business model, not to use a decent business model to do something constructive. Also – when Wired mention Dzubia’s own startup plans, watch Dziuba casually sidestep the accusation of a bait-’n-switch being at the core of Uncov – it’s precious. Oh and totally fucking smarmy and disingenuous.