should an artist have a website or a facebook profile?

or "You guys are locked in here with ME."

the age old question. It still seems to me that new york artists are the most power worshipping, ass-sucking losers. Continually they've got to worship the networks, NBC, CBS, ABC... "please please please let the rich people show up so i can be legitimate."

But, like Republicans, they only become less legitimate. There aren't even stars anymore. It's like watching the Warhol guy in Watchmen, he's sort of Warhol. Then again, Warhol himself was probably only sort of Warhol. I suppose that's another story.
(Read the House Next Door's series of reviews if you are still thinking about Watchmen, i am.)

Eventually one ages and realizes that the only people who actually made it in New York were like some sort of permanently self-marketing marketing people. Sort of the marketing-variant of the angry realist painters who are certain that the world is going to wake up and forget all that other stuff happened.

So - what do you want to happen when people visit your website? Is there a call to action? Will you expect a traffic boost after or around the time of a gallery exhibition? Will you expect that people will visit your site repeatedly for news of you or to see if it has been updated?

Is it simply some sort of marketing identity toy that proves artistic legitimacy and aloofness in spite of the fact that you have nothing to say?

Look at it this way, the real artists that you want to be like don't have websites, and some of them do have fan pages. Set up a fan-page for yourself, or better, have some friends or family do it.