When Keeping It Real On Twitter Goes Wrong ...

[Versatile]

Not to interject, but you guys aren't necessarily disagreeing. Norrin thinks that we just have more access to assholes, because they have outlets they didn't have before. The angry basement shut-in now has a Twitter feed. Azrael is saying that people say stuff online that they wouldn't say in real life, again, because of these new outlets. These aren't mutually exclusive possibilities. From my personal experience, I want to agree with Az—there are people I know who online are raging berserkers and in person are meek. But just because they're a quiet asshole in real life and a loud asshole online doesn't mean they weren't always an asshole. They're just different incarnations of the same asshole.

That makes sense in my head.

So, which are you? ;D

 

[typefitter]

Not to interject, but you guys aren't necessarily disagreeing. Norrin thinks that we just have more access to assholes, because they have outlets they didn't have before. The angry basement shut-in now has a Twitter feed. Azrael is saying that people say stuff online that they wouldn't say in real life, again, because of these new outlets. These aren't mutually exclusive possibilities. From my personal experience, I want to agree with Az—there are people I know who online are raging berserkers and in person are meek. But just because they're a quiet asshole in real life and a loud asshole online doesn't mean they weren't always an asshole. They're just different incarnations of the same asshole.

That makes sense in my head.

So, which are you? ;D

I'm actually nicer online than I am in real life, which is how I ended up on a lot of watch lists.

 

[Appgrad05]

I wouldn't know Wright Thompson from my neighbor down the street but twitter is the modern equivilant of a party line and I'm just listening in as he talks amongst his friends.

It makes feel a little weird sometimes but I enjoy it. Particularly how he can eat four chicken tenders from Popeyes from when he goes to get them until he gets home.

Why he'd go to Popeyes instead of the more delicious Abner's is I hope a mystery solved on the twitters.

Not to speak for Wright, but two reasons for me:
Biscuit > Texas toast
Drive-thru > 20 minutes for some damn tenders to fry up

 

[3OctaveFart]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/24/internet-anonymity-trolling-tim-adams

The psychologists call it "deindividuation". It's what happens when social norms are withdrawn because identities are concealed. The classic deindividuation experiment concerned American children at Halloween. Trick-or-treaters were invited to take sweets left in the hall of a house on a table on which there was also a sum of money. When children arrived singly, and not wearing masks, only 8% of them stole any of the money. When they were in larger groups, with their identities concealed by fancy dress, that number rose to 80%. The combination of a faceless crowd and personal anonymity provoked individuals into breaking rules that under "normal" circumstances they would not have considered.

 

[YGBFKM]

Stealingjournalists.com

 

[GBNF]

I am a big fan of Jones and he knows it. Same with Thompson and Lake and Ben Montgomery and Van Valkenburg and a ton of that crew. A fan, and a part of me feels like a friend to some of them, even though I've never met most. Such is the internet and idolatry.

However, as wonderful as all of them are - and their talent is unimpeachable, as are most of their track records - the question is not who's wonderfuller and who has a bigger deck. The question is, given the same parameters - same story, money, time, life, etc. - could another writer "almost" write a story as good.

What's happened in long-form journalism is this idea of "superstar writers" makes everyone else either love them because, well, yeah, I really don't think that I - a very good, sometimes great, award-winning features writer and columnist - could churn out a story as good as Wright Thompson about a subject. Is he 90 percent better than me? 80? 70? I won a state columnist of the year award at 23. Pretty good writer. Is he 50 percent better than me? What if that story that he writes is only 10 percent better than the story I would've written?

Well, there's a contingent out there who says, "fork Wright Thompson and fork that 10 percent, because you toil in relative obscurity and he writes 213,100-word pieces on the South and thus, circle-jerk." They rant and rave about the "circle-jerk" even though I've never touched Jones penis in my life and damnit I'll prove it somehow. They write pieces completely tearing down a writer, on Deadspin or on Twitter or on here, and they do it because that 10 percent means nothing to them. We're all good writers, right?

And then there's me, who lets that 10 percent affect him in ways that, sorry, others don't. That 10 percent forks me up. Maybe it's 20. Maybe it's 40 percent. But it's there, and it makes me love him for it. And I hate to use Wright Thompson as the be-all, end-all here, but he's at the center of the conversation.

That 10 percent makes me feel like I should reach out to a guy like that and say, "Job well done." Do I need a bow-tie to do it? Do I need to write, "Sir," at the end of every forking post to each other? No. Do I need a snifter of brandy or whatever the fork they're drinking? No. But just because I publicly laud a guy for writing a story that I don't think I could've written doesn't make me a jock-sniffer or whatever. It doesn't make me a douchebag. It doesn't make me a sniveling little follower.

It makes me a reader who appreciates good writing, and fork you for saying I shouldn't just because that writing comes with a side of crawdads or crawlegs or whatever they're called.

 

[3OctaveFart]

Why fawn?
Blaze your own path and make your mark.
You're only on this rock for a short time.
Too short a time to be a lap dog for a few magazine writers.
At the end of the day, the object of your affections is someone who spends a career writing about other people's life achievements.
Would they trumpet your accomplishments if the roles were reversed?

 

[Boom_70]

The work of KVV / MacGregor / Thompson has been top notch must read stuff lately. KVV seems to have found a great niche for his work at ESPN the Mag.

Jones seems to be stuck with doing what is essentially PR work for upcoming movie releases. Not his fault since he is likely stuck with the assignments that Esquire gives him, but for a man of his talent it seems beneath him. I enjoy his ESPN column but it never seems to fit the theme of the magazine for that week.

 

[Norrin Radd]

Why fawn?
Blaze your own path and make your mark.
You're only on this rock for a short time.
Too short a time to be a lap dog for a few magazine writers.
At the end of the day, the object of your affections is someone who spends a career writing about other people's life achievements.
Would they trumpet your accomplishments if the roles were reversed?

I'll vouch a bit for GBNF here.

While he threw a bit of a grenade into a conversation that had calmed down and had a solid back-and-forth, he's more than carved out his own career, his own niche. Just got a little fired up here, is all.

I'd argue that his approach is just fine. Nothing wrong with using someone else's quality to motivate; we all have people we measure our work against.

And he gets props for a pretty good take on the nature of being "friends" with someone on the Intertubes.

 

[GBNF]

Why fawn?
Blaze your own path and make your mark.
You're only on this rock for a short time.
Too short a time to be a lap dog for a few magazine writers.
At the end of the day, the object of your affections is someone who spends a career writing about other people's life achievements.
Would they trumpet your accomplishments if the roles were reversed?

They have trumpeted my achievements, insignificant as they may be. It's because they're nice people and so am I. That's what we do. Sorry.

 

[typefitter]

Why fawn?
Blaze your own path and make your mark.
You're only on this rock for a short time.
Too short a time to be a lap dog for a few magazine writers.
At the end of the day, the object of your affections is someone who spends a career writing about other people's life achievements.
Would they trumpet your accomplishments if the roles were reversed?

I know you don't believe half of what you write, which I always find very attractive, but let me break down this little gem, FJM style.

"Why fawn?"

Because giving someone a compliment, saying something nice about somebody, equals fawning. This is not a terrible and cynical worldview.

"Blaze your own path and make your mark."

Platitudes are better than compliments, which will prevent you from blazing your own path and making your mark. If you pay attention to what other people are doing in any way, it can only hurt your own career.

"You're only on this rock for a short time."

True.

"Too short a time to be a lap dog for a few magazine writers."

Also true. Again, saying nice things about people will turn you into a lap dog. The way that, say, if you really love a movie, you could never say so, otherwise the director will make you bring him a sandwich and then suck his deck while he eats it.

"At the end of the day, the object of your affections is someone who spends a career writing about other people's life achievements."

This is true of all non-fiction writers, so the lesson, clearly, is that non-fiction writers are all useless saps doing useless work. They add nothing to the world. They are like single octave farts.

"Would they trumpet your accomplishments if the roles were reversed?"

What? These people who have been criticized for being too complimentary? Of course not. They would be the last people on earth to celebrate another writer's great story—if there were such a thing as great stories, which we have already established there are not.

Dentistry, now there's a profession.

Christ.

 

[Norrin Radd]

I would argue that in the grand scheme, dentistry is a much more important profession than sports journalist.