Faulty reasoning

The person who created this is being a critic only because he has internet access

I used to be agree with the above statement.  Giving everybody the internet as a publishing space is like giving a toddler a paint set, a cup of coffee, and no supervision in a room full of Italian furniture (I typed "fancy furniture" into Google and Italian stuff was the first to come up, so I'm assuming it's the fanciest).  You'd be stupid to be surprised at a mess.  However, somewhere in there, there might be something brilliant, and unless you give the kid a shot, there's no way to find it.  I've heard that Picasso's first canvas was his mother's walls, and while I think that he wasn't very good, many people consider him to be quite the artist.  He used the only outlet that was given to him and used it well.

Now I disagree with that statement.

Stuart told me that he read an article comparing the ability to publish online to the invention of the printing press.  For a long, long time, nobody had the ability to publish any more copies than they could hand-write.  Then came the printing press, which let them put out their word to the masses.  Did all of the intellectuals, critics, poets, and artists that were noticed only once they were able to publish by using the printing press not exist before they could do this?  Of course not.  They were only recognized as such by the limited number of people they could share their work with.  Let's take a quick look at famous books:

 The printing press was first invented in 593 in China, but the Gutenberg Printing Press, which revolutionized printing in the western world, wasn't invented until 1439.  As you can see, all of these books were printed after the printing press was invented.  We wouldn't have any knowledge of them unless they were printed.

The printing press enabled thousands of people to share their work, thousands of people to appreciate it, and thousands of people to critique it.  Obviously, there was still crap produced.  Lots of it.  But you have to assume that with everything that was submitted, a decent percentage of it was good.

The internet enables hundreds of millions of people to share their work, hundreds of millions of people to appreciate it, and hundreds of millions of people to critique it.  Obviously, there is still crap produced.  Lots of it.  But you have to assume that with everything that was submitted, a decent percentage of it was good.

Crap that the internet enabled.

It has to be assumed that the ratio of good stuff to total stuff is pretty much the same no matter what pool you're pulling from.  Because there are more people publishing now that they have the ability to, there will be more crap, but there will also be more good stuff.

If we don't give people the ability to publish, how will we ever find everything that needs to be published?  I can only imagine that the guy who thinks that nobody is an artist is, well, the only person who really isn't an artist.  I'm aware of the fact that I'm currently trying to benefit from publishing on the internet, but doesn't everybody at least deserve a chance if they want one?  I'm not going to go call up some big New York City publishing firm and ask them to put out a collection of my ramblings, because they're not good enough, but putting them on here gives me an outlet, and obviously you think it's worthwhile enough to read this far, so point proven (Unless you're just doing this to make fun of me, but at least I'm serving some purpose, right?  Like, that's a good thing?  I think?)