A crowd in a stadium does not have a distinct character. It's just a bunch of people who showed up, with very little in common except for their desire to see an event. What is important is what is happening in the stadium. Often it's a single event like a game, but without that event, the crowd is just there to make noise, and maybe hope to see themselves on the Jumbo-tron. The people who are questioning the worth of user-created-content sites are saying it's a stadium with no game, and people are left to ogle each other on the Jumbo-tron. Looking at it that way, the whole thing seems a. initially mildly amusing, and b. ultimately boring.

Actors sometimes call themselves empty vessels, to be "filled" with a character they play. Myspace, YouTube, and such, are vessels in this way. They present no character of their own, just the expression of some third party.

MySpace and YouTube have gathered a great number of people to their doors, but have separated them into 1-person theaters (your lonely desktop or laptop) where the sharing of an experience is so distant in time and space as to be almost inaudible. Wouldn't it be more fun to laugh along with other people, instead of sitting in silence snickering by yourself? The experience has its limits.

I think the knee-jerk reaction here is on the part of people trying to defend user created content sites as if there's been some insult. The user-created stuff is okay, and some of it is damn good. Anyway, who cares…