nerdshares:

It started on Friday with Choire Sicha’s piece on the reaction against Cintra Wilson, for the classist nonsense she wrote about (quelle horreur!) a JCPenney coming to midtown. Now, both pandorasmittens and hortense have written far more eloquent posts than I could muster on why Wilson’s article is repulsive. And I’m sure Choire is at least somewhat familiar with this argument, since one of his article’s tags is “fattism” (because it’s a made up -ism! And classism is sort of only tangentially related!), but see, he likes Wilson’s article because, like most Gawker posts, it’s all bombast. Not solid reporting, not compelling opinion, just a low-class snarky down-in-the-muck insult-fest that leaves some people thinking “Ooh edgy! This is mean and therefore smart! This person’s intelligence transcends plebeian standards of decorum and tact!”

Because Choire clearly appreciates both Wilson’s message and her tone, he scrambles to find a way to justify what would seem to be unjustifiable. He concedes that Wilson is “a CRAZY PERSON,” but she has a point! He attempts a feint: that, really, it’s the quality of food in America that’s terrible but “the problem is that we are kind of not allowed to even mention it,” which is entertaining in that it is not at all the point that Wilson is making. And, he points out, Wilson apologized twice! And she’s getting roasted on her website. He then goes on to cite numerous ad hominem attacks regarding Wilson’s looks which, for him, are a super convenient straw man — because, after all, if some people attack Cintra Wilson’s looks, all arguments against the superficial nasty bullshit she’s endorsing are therefore invalid (I have to check with some professors of analytic philosophy but this logic seems sound).

And then he caps his piece with this:

Basically everyone is a nasty person. But guess what? Some of us are fat nasty people, and some of us are thin nasty people. Can’t we all get unified by our nastiness and ignore the meaningless question of size on the Internet…

He’s right; we, especially those who are intelligent enough to realize how truly bizarre the world and humans are, are all capable of being really nasty cynical jerks — about almost anything. But instead of just embracing that nastiness, shouldn’t we actually attempt to be better? I know: that’s not as funny. It’s definitely not hip. It’s also not going to score you any cool points. But maybe those things are slightly less important than, I don’t know, not reveling in the marginalization of an entire group of individuals, many of whom, in this case, are most likely overweight and shop at Penney’s for one reason: they are less privileged than you. And also, I’m sure that Choire, whose article appears next to an ad for Best Buy, would jump if JCPenney offered to buy some ad space on The Awl. I’m being cynical, Choire. Do you approve?

But usually I like The Awl. So I did my best to dismiss that lukewarm defense of jerkitude as an isolated incident. Of course, then Alex Balk, in a round-up of reviews of The Time Traveler’s Wife cheekily quotes “The Awl” as saying: “Vaginas. I’ll fuck ‘em, but God knows I’ll never understand ‘em.” It was here that I merely considered starting my own ad-supported blog called “You Really Think This Schtick Isn’t Tired? Really? No? It’s Still Interesting and Relevant and Edgy? Okay.”

And then I read this post, which is all about how Choire didn’t read that David Denby review of Inglourious Basterds in the New Yorker. No, I’m not kidding. It’s essentially an excuse for Choire to brag about dismissing Denby after “1/3 of a sentence.” (Probably because Choire is not about to indulge Denby because Denby hates snark and snarkers hate Denby.)

Okay, so that may seem like an odd final straw, but I spend a significant amount of my time banging the drum for blogging, for online journalism, for digital media in almost all of its incarnations. I have said over and over that blogging can be as responsible and well-researched and thorough as print journalism (and so has Gawker, of which Choire is an alum). And then I read something like this. People genuinely feel entitled to money made off this self-indulgent, masturbatory tripe? And then wonder why old media stalwarts have public paroxysms of agitation over the notion that blogs could replace papers? I mean, Choire speaks to potential advertisers pitching…what, exactly? All the posts he’s going to write about the articles he didn’t bother to finish reading? How exactly does that make him or The Awl any superior to That Lady Blogger With the Cupcakes and The Tutus and The Dog? It’s not that I hate cynicism (it is often appropriate) but when writers consider themselves too fucking hip to actually make an argument, I consider myself too conscientious to waste my time on them.

fimoculous:

(responding to katiebakes, and trying to find the middle)

I’ll add this: isn’t the problem with Hotelling’s Model that everyone, on the micro-scale, thinks that they’re arguing from the middle? Every person, even the extremist, thinks they’re just being rational, the only sensible one in the room! And if I may mix suspect metaphors, it’s the Long Tail of Hotelling’s Model that interests me.

So going back to the comments on my site and others…. Spiers response was intriguing. It was, if I may summarize, “The guy publicly makes a jackass of himself, so he shouldn’t be surprised when such ridicule occurs.”

Her word was “jackassery,” which again feels like a question of defining the middle. The internet is such a big wide open place, so what precisely is the purpose in identifying its fringes and then demonstrably debasing them? Does this serve an ethical purpose — or just an entertainment one? In a word, why?

What’s all the fuss that Lodwick is an Odwick?

There is more context, of course… two more things are true: 1) Lodwick decided to live his personal life publicly, in a manner that wasn’t very smart, and 2) he’s within a pre-established circle of people, not some weirdo from another land. Perhaps this is why he deserves such scrutiny?

Maybe?

It’s true, but there remains this: Scrutiny is different than unabashed ridicule. From where does that arise?

Back to Hotelling’s Model….

I have tried to talk about this before, and failed. I’ll try again: there is an increasingly prevalent impulse to make the internet the same. This is a very subtle maneuver, and anyone who is guilty of it (including me) would undoubtedly deny it. But I propose one slice of the Gawker Voice (which is extended well beyond Gawker by now) is the primary mover of this trope: identify the fringes and then ridicule them from the center.

I’m as guilty as anyone. It’s part of living in this time.

Before you denounce this trope, try to scan the sites you normally peruse in a day. You’ll see this happening over and over and over. (“Look at this FREAK” could be a folder name for my bookmarks.) Keep the goggles on for a while, and you’ll start thinking internet is annoyingly culturally conservative. It doesn’t feel good.

But let’s get back to the middle! Of course, this isn’t really Gawker’s fault — that’s retarded. And why the fuck do we care that some people who have power get taken down every once in a while? Isn’t this inevitably good for society?

Maybe?

Yeah, I dunno. Maybe Lodwick deserves it. Hell, maybe he even wants it. But the truth is, I want Lodwick out there acting like a weirdo, and I think it’s good for the internet, whateverthefuck that means.

Ultimately I think two things: 1) I’m actually quite glad that he’s doing this, and 2) I still want to make fun of him for it.

I don’t know why that is.