The Internet Has Ruined My Writing
"Wait a minute. You come into my house, my party, to tell me about the future? That the future is tape, videotape, and not film? That it's amateurs -- not professionals?"
Is the Net Good for Whiners? The YM Staff prefers to hash things out in private over email. It's our under-mundo of blogging, complete with wacky nicknames and wonky defibrillations. As a vetting process, I rank it up there with screaming at a mirror or alphabetizing suicide notes by method. Most recently (or 2nd to most recently, technically, but that dog got a bad burn on its belly), we took on the much linked-about Writing About Writing on 10 Zen Monkeys where a bunch of dudes whimmed and sickled about how the Internet deprofessionalized their writer profession. What follows are reactions and insights from people who do not consider themselves "writers" -- but rather rejoice in the shadows of poorly disguised porn names and respect the value of teeth-gnashing jealousy. Here we go down the road you grew up on...
Dee Dee Dee Sizemore: That was the biggest snore I've ever read. If a subject is so boring that it makes even Krassner and Parfrey impossible to read, there's a fundamental problem. People who ramble on about "media studies" and "Web 2.0" are like a toothless ouroboros. I wonder why they didn't ask Adam Greenfield for his input. He writes like an lorem ipsum generator--it would've really completed the Roundtable of White Men. (Christ, couldn't they have at least included Jenny Gardener--oops, I mean Xeni Jardin?)
Agent 69: Two people praised BLDGBLOG -- written by a fool who redefines the qualifier lightweight in a way that can even impress those who toil at House & Garden -- and I stopped reading at that point. We could point out that anyone who needs to buttress their notion of writer and place in that sad pantheon is a high school yearbook editor whiner par excellence. Because that's never been said before.
DDDS: You couldn't you have come up with more than 2 architectural allusions there?
A69: I could have, but the Internet ruined my writing.
Hank N. Sack: I have to believe that Parfrey was goofing on the subject. And Shirky should grow some fucking hair on his head and stop talking. Of course, all this crap boils down to Writers losing their exclusivity in getting their shit out to the public. It's ALWAYS about the unwashed gaining access to what was once exclusive, which means the former elites have to up their game to remain Ahead of the Curve. Maybe now that the internet has ruined the written word, Real Writers will move on to mime or something. With Marcel Marceau gone, there's a big opportunity there.
A69: Add a parenthetical note about how fucking precious the Economist obit was -- referring to him as Bip, as if we would all be shamed or impressed to find out that was another name for him besides "That fucking french mime."
Super Fuzz Big Muff: I'm sorry, but the whole "writing about writing" thing is the gayest thing on the planet. That being said, I really enjoyed writing about writing about writing, since people who write about writing are laboring under the illusion that the kind of writing they consider worthwhile is even worth sticking up for. I will be contributing more extensive thoughts in due course. Stay tuned, fuckos.
DDDS: I really don't think Parfrey was being insincere. And both he and one of the other visionaries mentioned something about how the internet makes it so much easier to do research, which sent a fucking shiver down my spine. Rushkoff was the most cogent and non-abstruse. His best comment was "Authors are no longer respected in the same way, books are treated more like magazines with firm expiration dates, and writers who simply write really well don't get deals as quickly as disgraced celebrities or get-rich-quick gurus." Add to that list upper-middle-class liberal arts college grads living in Brooklyn who write bildungsromans that are really thinly-veiled autobiographies. (Oh, and also the ones who write clearly mendacious "memoirs." Pronounced ME!-moirs.) PS: Anyone who quotes Italo Calvino in my physical presence is getting slit neck to nuts. And I'd like to add that this all traces back to the translation of the Bible from Vulgate to vernacular.
Action Jack-n-Jill: I actually found this through Ed Champion's blog, and plan to attend his Sunday afternoon laptop clatches at the Outpost regularly from here on out. But not this week, as I'll be hosting a cattle call to cast for my film (a medium which, for all the "Why Johnny Can't Read" hysteria, employs an assload of writers and pays them really well).
Stoking panic amongst writers about their job prospects is simply too easy. Stoking panic amongst elitist misanthropes about the decline of Western Civilization is even easier. Some of the more reactionary respondents should take a look at Andrew Keen and how well he's selling -- by marketing his book on the very Internet that he professes to loathe in the most cynical linkbait cash-in anyone's ever seen.
Maybe instead of blaming the Internets, why not look at publisher consolidation? Or big box chain retailers and their show floor placement payola scams? Or America's "test first, ask questions later" educational philosophy? Or that the intelligence of people who do read magazines and newspapers is regularly insulted by prose dumbed down to a sixth grade level?
Or capitalism? Huh? WHAT ABOUT CAPITALISM?!?!?!?!?!
(I told myself I'd stop doing that, but every time I get started complaining, that's where I end up -- it's been like this since I was a wee tot in red diapers)
Chester The Bear-ester: MICHAEL CLAYTON is a rent.
The Vindictives: "...And The World Isn't Flat Anymore"
