Yes, it's an opinion, but guess what? It's My Blog and I Can Editorialize if I Want to (with spelling mistakes AND grammatical errors)
There is so much I want to say and I hope that I can get it out. I am sure a lot of you know Keri Smith's work and her writing, and might have seen her recent post about being attacked in a web-based magazine. For others who don't know, a piece was recently published criticizing Ad-Free Blog, an endeavor founded by Keri Smith and her husband Jeff Pitcher, as a way to support a mission of blogs free from cooperate advertising. Apparently, the author, Ken Magill, wasn't down with Ad-Free Blog's endeavor--so much so that he went on a viscious, bizarrely personal attack on Keri and Jeff.
I think the internet, while amazing in its everflowing information, can be one of the most dangerous places on the planet. Nothing says FRESH MEAT like crticism through the easy anonymity of publishing on the net. It seems to allow a certain spirit of FREE FOR ALL when it comes to processing information--both good and bad.
This isn't the first time I have been utterly frustrated, disgusted by 'crticism' I have witnessed, particularly, on the web. Literary criticism has seemed to me more and more personally based. Salon, which I read every day and like, has published many articles on writers that spend more time criticizing the writer and not the work. Don't even get me started on the letters that come in from readers, seemingly to delight in shredding people to pieces.
I'm not writing this to particularly defend or stand-by Keri and Jeff, although I do support their endeavors, as fellow artists, activists, and as human beings who are seeking out a life that is with meaning. I am writing this becuase I am sick of the internet being lauded as an all important medium--where some people are more acceptable to write in it than others. I am also writing this because I am sick of people passing emotionally driven, fascist in nature, personal attacks as CRITICISM. Blogs are personal in nature--to criticize them and take them apart in a "journalistic" piece is to criticize the way someone talks during a conversation. Sure you can do it, but it's just DUMB to, and really not that helpful. Also, WHAT IS THE POINT? So you feel SMART and COOL and BETTER? Oh, how CUTTING EDGE.
If Ken Magill had written a piece honestly challenging Ad-Free Blog, I might have disagreed with him, but I would have at least taken it seriously. I go to journalism to get opinions that I don't get around the water cooler or in the back of my own catty mind. Magill is in a long line of critics that forgot that personal attacks don't amount to honest criticism. As he says about blogging: "...the blogosphere is about as diluted as a medium can get, because practically everyone who has had a coherent thought on the toilet thinks it should be published." Apparently, so is web journalism. Maybe he should get off the THRONE and stop slinging the shit.
I think the internet, while amazing in its everflowing information, can be one of the most dangerous places on the planet. Nothing says FRESH MEAT like crticism through the easy anonymity of publishing on the net. It seems to allow a certain spirit of FREE FOR ALL when it comes to processing information--both good and bad.
This isn't the first time I have been utterly frustrated, disgusted by 'crticism' I have witnessed, particularly, on the web. Literary criticism has seemed to me more and more personally based. Salon, which I read every day and like, has published many articles on writers that spend more time criticizing the writer and not the work. Don't even get me started on the letters that come in from readers, seemingly to delight in shredding people to pieces.
I'm not writing this to particularly defend or stand-by Keri and Jeff, although I do support their endeavors, as fellow artists, activists, and as human beings who are seeking out a life that is with meaning. I am writing this becuase I am sick of the internet being lauded as an all important medium--where some people are more acceptable to write in it than others. I am also writing this because I am sick of people passing emotionally driven, fascist in nature, personal attacks as CRITICISM. Blogs are personal in nature--to criticize them and take them apart in a "journalistic" piece is to criticize the way someone talks during a conversation. Sure you can do it, but it's just DUMB to, and really not that helpful. Also, WHAT IS THE POINT? So you feel SMART and COOL and BETTER? Oh, how CUTTING EDGE.
If Ken Magill had written a piece honestly challenging Ad-Free Blog, I might have disagreed with him, but I would have at least taken it seriously. I go to journalism to get opinions that I don't get around the water cooler or in the back of my own catty mind. Magill is in a long line of critics that forgot that personal attacks don't amount to honest criticism. As he says about blogging: "...the blogosphere is about as diluted as a medium can get, because practically everyone who has had a coherent thought on the toilet thinks it should be published." Apparently, so is web journalism. Maybe he should get off the THRONE and stop slinging the shit.
posted by Summer Pierre at
4:37 PM
3 Comments:
maybe worry less about art and writing being all safe and accept that when one of your friends puts something out there it's open to whatever.
name of the game.
Well said, Summer.
CONSTRUCTIVE critisism is the name of the game, not personal vindication.
Unfortunately though the world of blogging invites just that, simply because we are so damn open about ourselves in our blogs. How many of us hesitate to tell our friends and family that we are blogging, yet we don't mind exposing deeply personal matters to a largely anonymous world - only it is not anonymous. There are real people reading our blogs, and some of these people are journalists who use that intimate knowledge as a weapon rather than as a means of comprehension and compassion.
I am not too impressed with journalism in the US in general; it is too driven by the pressure to bump up ratings and tinged with political agendas and fear based sensationalism. Or, in this case, someone is using a personal attack based on what is only one-dimensional knowledge of a person, rather than voicing a constructive opinion.
I applaud Keri for sticking to her guns and you for expressing your wonderful voice, once again.
IMHO, the reason the man is so spiteful is that he must have a very tiny member :-). What else could make him so mean? Let the haters hate and just go on with your own bad self, I say ( ... meaning the fabulous Keri and Jeff too, of course).
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