"Don't Despair” -Douglas Rushkoff

I recently came across this post by [Douglas Rushkoff](https://rushkoff.com/) on SMITHmag that I felt really cut to the core of how, from my perspective, the very of act of making personal media can be , in and of itself, revolutionary. Fascism and fundamentalism depend on people surrendering their perspectives – the narratives they’ve developed – and letting someone *else* write the story for them. Whether it’s churchgoers surrendering their understanding of God to the minister, or voters surrendering their understanding of civics to Karl Rove, the loss of access to one’s own storytelling ability is akin to losing one’s grip on reality. That’s right: maintaining authority over the story *is* maintaining a connection to the very engines of creation. Everyone has a story, as Larry likes to say – that doesn’t mean every person’s story is interesting to every other person. But it does mean that every person has a right to his or her own story – one’s own way of connecting the dots, understanding the passage of time, and recognizing the patterns that emerge. Too many of us are willing to deny ourselves the right to that narrative, or too ready to believe our own version of the story is just not as important, accurate, or relevant as those of some external authority. (Just because people pay to watch some story, or vote for its hero, doesn’t mean it’s any more true than yours.) So my word of hope is this: as long as you can tell your own story, it means *their* story hasn’t yet been locked down. It means there’s still hope, still possibility, and still life. [rushkoff » SMITH Magazine](https://smithmag.us/author/rushkoff/) I’m all about personal story-telling, but when it comes to creating and exploring, I find myself drawn much more intently to the medium of video; what can I say, I grew up on MTV. I only became aware of [SMITHmag](https://smithmag.us/) through [Shooting War](https://www.shootingwar.com/), but Rushkoff’s [Coercion](https://www.rushkoff.com/coercion.html), really changed the way I view the media landscape by providing a clarity to a malignant culture where before I could only make out the broad strokes. Reading this post, I’m reminded of a debate that has simmered more than once regarding the new trend of videoblogging; while there is some remarkable content being produced, much of it will be regarded as meaningless and banal to most people. For sometime I’ve seen this phenomen as still an intensely positive thing, but I could not really explain why. During [Vloggercon](https://www.vloggercon.com/), I began to sense the possibilites created through this new form of media at a panel titled [ The Undiscovered Country](https://vloggercon.blip.tv/file/get/Ryanne-VloggerconTheUndiscoveredCountry833.mov) (link to video), but Douglas Rushkoff’s final entry on SMITHmag once again illuminates a perspective that I previously coudn’t quite grasp. technorati tags:[douglasrushkoff](https://technorati.com/tag/douglasrushkoff), [rushkoff](https://technorati.com/tag/rushkoff), [smithmag](https://technorati.com/tag/smithmag), [storytelling](https://technorati.com/tag/storytelling), [stories](https://technorati.com/tag/stories), [personalmedia](https://technorati.com/tag/personalmedia)