In March I mentioned that perhaps we ought to ignore the Web 2.0 guys completely. Now, I’m figuring we ought to actively shut the up. Everyday I wake up to discover more and more not only do these people not know what they’re talking about anymore but that it’s likely that they never have.

Let’s compare two posts from earlier in the week, one from Marc Andreesen and one from Robert Scoble.

For the record: I will not “Amway” my Facebook friends

HP buys my company Opsware for more than $1.6 billion in cash

Now, in the first one, Robert Scoble is making the announcement that he will not spam his friends with paid for posts on Facebook–the social network that he seems to have only recently discovered. Now in the second, Marc Andreessen is announcing that he just sold his SECOND billion dollar company–the one he formed after literally inventing the world wide web.

But who do we hear from more? Who is supposed to be the expert? Maybe you could make the argument that before people like Marc started blogging we had to settle for Scoble, but that’s not true, Mark Cuban has been writing for years. And even if it were true, shouldn’t we gravitate towards the higher authorities when they become available? Scoble is a Top 100 Technorati Blogger, Marc is a full 500 places below him.

What I have come to realize is that all the talk of these tech guys being on the cutting edge, playing with tomorrow’s technology today–it’s all bullshit. They don’t see themselves that gate monitors but gatekeepers. If it doesn’t fit their narrow interests, they’d like to get rid of it. How else can you explain their recent fascination with Facebook? When I got my account over 2 years ago, I was still a late adopter. The only thing different today is that they added some gaudy nerd gadgets and NOW, they say, it’s the next big thing. They got lucky with blogs, and Myspace and YouTube. It wasn’t that they predicted a few massive cultural phenomenons, it was that by chance the public interest and the nerd interest happened to be aligned. But when you throw in Second Life and Twitter and Ze Frank and Lonelygirl15 and Rocketboom their record starts to look less accurate.

If it was about studying how the internet is affecting our media, you’d see a hundred articles about Tucker’s 11th week on the NYT Bestseller list. And you’d see a lot more honesty about the fact that hardly anyone plays Second Life. We’d be talking about why almost no one has successfully transitioned from User Generated Content to Hollywood consistency instead of about how YouTube is changing the world. We’d be discussing how despite all the hype the iPhone really isn’t changing anything–that it’s just a fancier version of the existing competitors instead of something entirely new. Or how Podcasting has not caught on with the general public and how the decline in music sales really has very little to do with technological disruption and is actually the result of an investment in unsustainable genres.

There is a real danger in getting caught up in the wrong camp here. For the first time in forever, an awkward minority of society has been given the microphone and they are not going to give it up easily. They latched onto the web precisely because they didn’t fit in elsewhere. As the walls come down and the internet is more seamlessly integrated into our lives, those flaws are more difficult to hide. Here’s the question that helps me align myself with the people that are doing something instead of just talking.

Have I ever gone a day without wanting better hardware or application technology? Yes. Have I ever gone a day without wanting better media–be it radio, tv, internet, cinema, books? No.

There are guys out there like Cuban or Andreessen (sometimes Calacanis) who succeed because they see what people want and then give it to them. Then there are people like Scoble, or Arrington (sometimes Rubel) who appear successful because they are always moving on to the next thing–because they are running away from appearing obsolete. Sometimes they’ll get luck and end up being right, but most of the time they are hopelessly out of touch. So you can follow the ones who have made billions of dollars but don’t have as many RSS readers, or you can follow the ones who cling to their online validation but have yet to turn it into anything. Your choice. I know who I’m learning from and I see the results everyday.

In April, I wrote about why I didn’t have a Blackberry and why I didn’t think I was going to get one. Well, now I have one and I can’t believe how wrong I was. In the last month or so, my daily email volume has tripled and the significance of time-sensitive responses increased just as much. And instead of tying me down, the bberry has freed me. I can work on the train, in the car, at lunch, wherever. When you’re waiting for someone, instead of sitting around you can read your RSS or get a jump on emails you hadn’t responded to yet. But most of all, it adds a level of professionalism that I lacked before. Multiple times now, I have been able to respond instantly to requests or questions that previously would have taken be hours to get to. The results are tangible too, people will let you know how much they appreciate your timely answer. Brainstorming is able to take place outside of a single room. I’m now more productive and more efficient.

But what I said before still stands. Get one because you NEED one, not because you want to seem like you need one. Trust me, it doesn’t say anything about you. There is not glory in carrying around a computer in your pocket. It’s no different than carrying around a calculator or a credit card–it’s a tool that if you need, is worth having. Unless you actually get a lot of email, why spend $500 on an iPhone? Trust me, it’s not that hard to remember dates or go an extra hour without responding. Unless you work online, what do you need to carry the internet around for? I know the Tim Ferriss opinion of them and he is right to some degree. It’s a line that once you’ve crossed, is difficult to ever undo. But if you do it for the right reasons you shouldn’t have a problem. For the love of God though, try not to be the person that says “Call my Blackberry/iPhone/PDA” instead of “Call my phone.”

Speaking of running in LA, I’m pretty sure this is the only city in which your average run could include:

*A black transvestite in a dress and fake breasts jeering “I could beat you in a race, backwards.”

*Being forced to scream at a woman’s incessant honking “He’s in a fucking turn lane, shut the fuck up”

and having her turn around and give you the finger.

*Stopping in a park to do situps to find every available grassy area occupied by homeless people or regular people having sex.

*Stopping in a different park and noticing that “futbol” is prohibited.

*Getting one of your tear ducts so clogged with sweat, smog and grit that it swells up to the point of you being told “You look like a retard. No, you literally have the features of mongoloid.” (You can guess who said that.)

*Having small children race you down the street as their parents pay no attention to the fact that their offspring running off with a shirtless teenager.

*Having a random Mexican scream from a moving car to “put a shirt on.”

*Having that instant pang of shame immediately counteracted by Mexican women cat calling from the next vehicle.

More to come, this is only from the last week.