“#Curate” is an obnoxious word for filtering

Mike Rhode's SXSW sketchnotes

I’m so into the evolution of language. Ask anybody. I stop hyphenating “email” in like 1977.

As a lover of language, I have a keen appreciation for the nuance and tone of vocabulary. Fluidity of meaning is super, but it has to be totally right.

The word that’s wrinkling my fur is “curate“. You know, that thing you get a Masters in Byzantine art history to do.

“Curate” as a verb for posting links for your buddies has been floating around for a bit. SXSW seems to have really flagellated that horse past all repair, though. See Mike Rhode’s sketchnotes bearing the imperative “Become a curator“.

Scoble started this, and I thank him for bringing the issue to a head. Better we make a decision now than let this linguistic boil fester any longer.

Scoble wants better aggregating tools for when he’s filtering. I’m all for that. I’m sick of taking screenshots of tweets too. But I unhumbly suggest most of what we’re gathering is more “filtered” than “curated”.

Have you read Cult of the Amateur? (God, I need an Amazon affiliate account). It’s about UGC (user-gen content) being the death of expert authority, and all that. I’m not totally down with this book, but the elevation of common man to Curator puts me in mind of this ominous thesis.

Curating is something done by experts. And Scoble, good sir, you may indeed claim that title.

But homo commonis is just a dude with a bunch of interesting (to him) $h1t that he’s gathering up in one place bascially so he can find the links to it later. If he makes industrious use of that $h1tpile by sending it to his tweeps, or his tweeps to it, then we can generously call it “filtering”.

Let’s not drag down the actual profession of curating by overstating link hoarding. It’s pretentious to ascribe more significance to our activities than they warrant with high-falutin’ words.