I think that all you need to get comfortable with elitism is to post something free on Craigslist. It allows you to recognize that those Youtube comments you despair of? They're written by real live human beings for whom those comments exemplify their peak contribution to society. Elitist? Fuck yeah. But at some point you need to recognize that there are stupid people in the world, there are opinionated fuckwits that think decibels=knowledge and that a free market will marginalize all but the most entertaining of them. Ours is not a flat society. People are elevated and depressed based on their interactions with the outside world. While the Great White Hope of the Internet was flattening the peaks and valleys of our hierarchical world, we're steadily realizing that gradients and friction aren't bad by definition.