The corporate media is rapidly losing consumers. Thanks to a society obsessed with the individual, people today are no longer satisfied with simply consuming. They want to produce, vote, rate and share. Open Source fans clap their hands together and talk about the new "free media," pointing to examples like Wikipedia. Despite this development, the quality of media content online is not increasing - why?

Most people are not interested in communicating an idea, they want to be the center of attention. Wikipedia-writers play academics, bloggers document their oh-so-fascinating bourgeois lifestyles and MySpacers exercise their ego together with digital friends. The result is at best a social re-hash of what the corporate media has been promoting for years: consumer products, popularity contests and political fashion.

Furthermore, there is no such thing as "free media," especially if it's built by "the people." A prime example is Wikipedia, which regularly locks articles on "sensitive topics" because none of its pseudo-academics can agree on historical facts. Political correctness shake hands with logical fallacies and social trends, that supposedly will free us from the corporate media pressure.

The result is a sea of opinions where the majority drowns out any sane voice. You might be able to set up your own blog and express extreme ideas but since you're only one out of millions of people who're doing the same, no one will pay attention to what you're saying. Freedom of speech, ironically, deconstructs itself by regular intervals and voice only what's popular and trendy at the moment. So much for an "independent" media.

Right now the large media corporations will do everything they can to create more popular alternatives or gain ownership of these alternative channels of media. Google is one big competitor out on the market but other corporations like Microsoft will quickly follow the lead. Profit will be generated in the classical democratic ways: well placed advertising, lobbying and centralization.

We see this centralizing process in Google trying to compete with Facebook by establishing a new social network that includes many different subnetworks. We see this in record companies slowly buying up or infiltrating with pay-per-song services online. We see this in media giants like CNN who are now hosting officially on YouTube to gain more visitors. These profit monsters know what they're doing.

In other words, while the democratic process of the consumer becoming creator of his/her own media, on the surface might seem like a potential threat to the current totalitarian media syndicates that control the people in the West, the true face of this development will never be understood correctly by the majority. Democracy is like a tiger: it knows when to hunt down its prey but it does so under camouflage. Plato understood this correctly: every time we vote for "freedom," there's a smart financial interest behind it all that sees its opportunity of making profits.

For while there will be a seeming increase in "alternative" media solutions, the same political correct pressure will be present; partly because the majority will be attacking any idea that threatens their personal comfort, partly because the services who offer individuals media empowerment, have lobbyists and media police watching their back. When Facebook deleted the Jokela Highschool Shooting Sympathizers group, they did so because the media pressure became too large. Again, there is no such thing as "free media." All is under control, directly (TV) or indirectly (YouTube).

The corporate media is right now upset over Web 2.0 because it knows it'll have to change strategy to maintain media power. Without that power, democracy is useless and any political consensus will be shattered. Instead, large companies like CNN and FOX will do all it can to integrate with this new democratic model and infiltrate it without us consumers knowing it. And since most people are dumb as horses, their "alternative" media will be repeating the same corporate "truths" in a hundred different flavours. That's democracy and that's how the mass media will continue to develop in this soft-totalitarian society without any proper leadership.