As to your point about unpopular artistic creations, I grant that certain works set out to deliberately transgress or subvert the dominant cultural dialogue and to remain “fringe” — and sometimes their creators do take special pride in a formidable abstruseness or impenetrability. These artists may bear outright disdain toward what might be viewed as audience-friendliness. Such artists seek the periphery. More power to them.

But I fear there’s another truth about a different kind of “unpopularity,” in which good, fully apprehensible works that in every way desire (and often merit) a place in the cultural dialogue are relegated to the periphery of a “mainstream” that is conditioned by forces of commerce.

Commerce tends to tailor mainstream taste toward work that is entertaining more than elevating, titillating more than explorative, sentimental more than genuinely transformative — or, sometimes, just plainly cynical in its formulaic lust for the buck (product placement, etc). “Unpopular,” as we use the term, often means, more precisely , “uncommercial.”

A book is judged “uncommercial” by its publisher’s sales force, or a movie is judged “uncommercial” by its distributor. These works thereby become predestined to “unpopularity.”

There are exceptions. “Uncommercial” works do sometimes unexpectedly gibe with commercial trends — or revolutionize a commercial matrix.

What is popular can be valuable (enduring), and what is valuable can be popular. Edouard Manet enjoyed great popularity even while revolutionizing French painting. Vincent Van Gogh, on the other hand, never enjoyed popularity enough to buy a healthy supper.

My point is simply that very often, in spite of an artist’s sincere efforts to engage an audience, to create a work that will inspire others or illuminate their lives, the artist’s vision is by nature at odds with commerce (in a sense, that’s a real artist’s role). The artist thus has “unpopularity” thrust upon her. Meanwhile, her creation might have had every chance of striking a “popular” chord if only it had been given a “popular” airing.

In a better world, being at odds with commerce would not expressly doom a work to unpopularity.

The measure of the Internet’s power will lie, at least it seems to me, in how thoroughly it can redefine culture as something other than a byproduct of commerce. And of course, it is Internet-users like you and me who will shape that redefinition. Have we risen to the challenge? That’s the question that has yet to be answered.

Personally, I believe we’ve made baby-steps. But for the time being, purely commercial voices certainly remain dominant …

Thanks very much for reading and chiming in. ~Mark

To the last point, I actually rebelled against popularity for a while, believing that popularity and value were negatively correlated. Something that I’ve struggled with is that popularity has value in itself. Even if I disagree, I can become a better person by trying to understand the value so many others find. In fact, I think that artists who create works that are strictly unpopular may be the most selfish of all – I certainly was.

At best it’s liberating and a democratiser without social preconceptions.