Letters to the Editor
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Let's try another tact
Hey Salon, please oh pretty please publish more interchangeable, content-free stories by NY-based shallow consumerist ditzes discussing their various self-obsessed issues. Please treat me like a total idiot, or, alternately, a reader of Cosmopolitan.
Maybe we'll see if this method delivers a better result than telling the truth.
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WTF were you thinking, Joan Walsh?
How can you one week print the prison photos and this week the excellent essay about a black man's death and continue to print this absolute bullshit? OK, lighthearted take of issues...we have Cary and The Fix. But what slice of the market does Ryzik's narcissistic appeal to, and are they really worth pursuing? Please get your act together and at least post this drivel in Boradsheet, which is to feminism what Andrew Dice Clay was to mature.
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Total BS
I have not been one of those "Salon.com is going down the tubes" folks lately, but I'm afraid that I have to join the chorus with this article. Nor am I immune to quality "fluff" pieces, if that makes sense...but...COME ON! This is insulting.
This is just such ridiculous baloney: people who have an addiction to shopping? Who are bored when they can't shop? Who can't imagine not spending money on things they don't need? This kind of crap is just embarrassing.
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i've never posted in the letters section before
i never felt the need, but now i feel like joining the chorus. this is tripe. please stop.
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What's the Point?
Whenever anyone posts a comment about an article in the the-world-is-falling-apart-and-you-give-us-this-tripe vein, I usually roll my eyes and say, "Get over yourself!" This article, though, has me joining that camp, at least a little. Salon already published a pretty good critique on the Levine book a few weeks ago, so why do we need this? I wouldn't be complaining if this weren't exactly half of the new content, discounting columns or blogs, published today. I like Broadsheet. I like the entertainment pieces. I even like some of the personal essays. I just like them to contain at least some semblance of relevance or topicality.
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Please ... make it stop ...
My eyes are bleeding
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Shopping and buying...
Wow...Norman Mailer? Melena Ryzik is quite a few
rungs above me on the Status Ladder, thatz fer damn shur.
Seriously though...this article might be casting a
shadow onto something important. What did our Cro-Manderthal
ancestors do for hours each day? Hunting! and Gathering!
What if "shopping" is the hunting and gathering of today?
You can take Man out of the Cave, but can you really take
the Cave out of Man?
Perhaps we should learn to cut the link between "shopping"
and "buying". I spend part of every day-off-of-work getting
on my bicycle and riding all around my college town, stopping
at my favorite food stores and shopping spots. I walk up and
down; in, out, and around; and if I see nothing to buy, I buy
nothing. If I come home with nothing, I feel just as fulfilled
as if I had come home with something, because I KNOW there was
nothing out there that I wanted. If you spend 5 hours in the
woods hunting for a deer, and you don't see a deer, does
your day feel like such a waste that you have to chamber a
round and shoot a squirrel? or a stump? just to feel like you
"got something"? So learning to separate the process of
"shopping" from the act of "buying" is half the battle
of achieving " consumption-limitation".
I would like to see Salon find some literarilly-skilled
working-class Midwesterners who could write articles on
effective shopping and effective buying and effective
long-term deconsuming as an okay lifestyle that people
could live with for a lifetime. That would attract a whole
new class of reader.
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200 pairs of Shoes ?
Plus all the other stuff mentioned - who spends that sort of money on a journo's salary ?
Either she's way overpaid or more likely she's relying on Daddy or Hubby to dig her out of a financial pit.
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Skipped column, wanted readers' responses...
... and I have to say I agree with them.
The teaser on Salon's front page had me thinking, "What are they thinking?!?"
So, I clicked through to get to the letters (I admit it - I didn't RTFA).
This doesn't even seem to qualify as quality fluff.
rb
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Make up your mind
Ok, Salon, you need to decide whether you're going to be a serious news magazine, or a worthless lifestyle magazine for spoiled Manhattanite women. Honestly, if I see one more article like "How guilty should I feel about my underpaid hispanic nanny?" or "Why my two-year old is the most wonderful being on earth" I'm going to swear off Salon entirely. Slate is better anyway, and free.
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Why shop?
I didn't mind the "fluff" of the piece, but I wished it dug deeper. I know friends who drop to shop to the point of jeopardizing their credit and they still keep shopping. I wish Ryzik could examine the behavior of shopping more and why women do it. There are indeed shopaholics in the world, and I'm sure all of us at one time, have found ourselves binge shopping. Is it because it can be a creative outlet? Is it an activity for lack of something more meaningful? It would have been a better article if Ryzik had gotten more out of the stylists and shopping friends than she did.
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Shopping addiction...
...must be an urban problem. Or maybe an American one?
Just didn't identify with this article at all - I've lived in France too long now, I think. My recreation is going to the beach, or to friend's houses for dinner. We like to cook here. Conversation is another big as well.
RE the circumstances under which I write this letter... My house burnt down 3 months ago. I've had to rebuy almost everything I owned; just enough to get by in this small place I'm renting until the house is rebuilt. Might be a compulsive shopper's dream to start all over again and buy, buy buy like a maniac... but I find it exhausting and not terribly fun.
Ugh. I liked the old, worn-out stuff I'd had for decades.
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Don't like it? Don't read it!
If you don't like the fluffier "lifestyle" pieces, why read them? Read the juicier, more serious stuff, but if you find yourself reading something that doesn't meet your needs, please just move on rather than wasting your time and bandwidth spewing angrily about the articles you're not interested in. Don't enjoy them? Fine, that's your prerogative, but why rip the articles and the folks who write them and enjoy them, when you can just flip to the next one instead? Why do so many folks get such pleasure out of sharing their vituperative, nasty attack messages?
I don't understand why so many readers find it so terribly offensive that Salon publishes a wide array of articles for a wide variety of interests that they feel it necessary to toss their angry screeds up here at the drop of a hat. Don't like the gossip articles? Skip them! Don't like Cary Tennis's advice? Don't read it! Don't want to read about shopping addictions? Then why did you click on the title in the first place?
Why the huge hunger to start flame wars? All I can guess is that lightheartedness offends the sensibilities and embarrasses the readers who go to Salon only to find in-depth political reportage and such; they don't want to be mistaken for middlebrow readers who deign to click through publications which might include any articles whatsoever that the average People magazine reader might enjoy. Honestly, folks, if you just can't stand variety in your publications, go find a nice niche magazine or Web site. Why the crankypants vitriol? How about showing a little lightheartedness, a little tolerance for a variety of interests and viewpoints, and little less need to dump on others' words, work, or light entertainment?