There were two interesting debates going on in the past week, one with Rex fighting off people because of oversharing on his Tumblr (which is both a fact and an opinion, confusingly), and the other with Moe and Tracie going into a comedy show and making a laughingstock of rape and feminism. Oh my on both counts!
I’ve seen and heard what everyone’s had to say, given that the statue of blog limitations is about 7 days. I’m not going to recommend that anyone be nailed to a cross for any of this.
Rex’s main folly is that he bit the troll bait in his own comments section, which is a bit like inviting your in-laws over to stay the week, then letting them insult your apartment, and then arguing with them about it. But anyway. Some people have made excellent points about “oversharing” since then, and I think it comes down to this: people want privacy + entertainment. Seems to be a lot of people out there who feel that the use of private conversations or personal emotions for a commercial or creative use is exploitative and intrusive, even if only on the self. Therefore people who do that are contemptible. What’s more, people don’t want to read emotional or deeply personal expressions unless they’re compelling in some way, and even if they are, we’re in a bit of an emo culture backlash at the moment. This is all poop on the bloggers, who (correctly) feel that they can use their own blogs however the fuck they’d like. Want to write about how you got drunk and puked in a cab last night, even though you and your friends are going to repeat the story ad nauseum (ha!) for the next several years? Want to write a deeply personal, non-entertaining piece about how you’re completely joyless at the moment? Want to repeat odd pillow talk conversations? Want to ask for the political situation in China in three sentences? Hey, you can do whatever you want. All the better if it works for you.
The other matter… well, yeah, “never meet your heroes” indeed. I think Tracie recognized that her and Moe were extreme disappointments to the girls who were looking to them for role models. I don’t know what Moe thinks, I won’t care to explore, but I think she fucked up big time. Yeah, so did Tracie, but Tracie is supposed to be the irreverent one. I think both of them going up there and leading a thoroughly insensitive discussion on rape is highly irresponsible, given the situation. But the interesting question is, who’s responsibility is it, anyway? Ah, this is what happens, Mr. Denton, when you continually mix ambition, sarcasm, and complete emotional indifference. Indeed, both Moe and Tracie are talented writers but they are not adults, too immature to be handed significant responsibility (especially with things that require respect and decorum), foolish and unapologetic and rebellious like you would expect from children and not women in their 20’s. No respectable institution would allow for this, but more importantly they wouldn’t hire someone for those purposes and they certainly would try to help a wayward family member. But Gawker Media isn’t like that. I do know respectable people who work there, but I don’t have enough fingers to count the number of bloggers there who seriously just don’t give a fuck, and not in the good way. In the end, Moe and Tracie need to be more reflective and respectful regarding the ways in which their poorly-planned jokes and mock advice will be received upon impressionable people of all ages (those editorial positions come with enormous influential power) if they want more than just a paycheck from their blogging careers, and everyone else needs to know that if this isn’t exactly what Moe and Tracie wanted, it’s exactly what Denton is looking for in all of his hires - as many pageviews as possible, even if it comes from linkbacks due to widespread outrage about iffy comments on rape.
It’s interesting how these two stories tie together - one is a blogger getting criticized for covering material too personal on the Internet, and the other is about two bloggers being criticized for being insensitive in real life. I guess the idea is that as long as you’re mature and responsible, you should say what you like. Also, both of these stories show a lot of what’s right and what’s wrong on the Internet, and how personal thoughts and experiences have clearly entered the media landscape. This in a society where we traditionally don’t publish the names of rape victims in the newspaper. It worries me that we might get to a point where we don’t bother with that charade anymore. They’re just going to blog about it anyway, right?
