Letters to the Editor
-
Missing the Point
For those of you who may be a tad past their prime and cannot comprehend Megan's point in its current form, I offer up a short story from a few weeks ago:
www dot newyorker dot com/fiction/features/2008/03/10/080310fi_fiction_kunzru
I imagine, Megan, that some people have some difficulty with self-reflection and your essay may hit a little too close to home. Or maybe the zeitgeist has simply passed them by.
-
It's cool, we all navel-gaze...
This seems more about a young person's struggle about how far to take the ego trip when taking the risk of stepping out of doors or out into WWWebland. It's true that we're bombarded with brands and titles and names and neighborhoods and class-consciousness, but unless you live on an isolated commune, you're going to be speaking this language to a certain degree whether you like it or not. For example, if you're 23 years old, you probably have a facebook or a myspace page. It's like having a cellphone -- it's just how we communicate these days. It's nothing to feel guilty about. To obsess over whether you've just put too much or the right stuff on your list of facebook favorites is silly. Would you really be any more sincere to write something coy and evasive instead of a few random things you happened to think of at that moment? Who do you think really cares what you write or don't write, or whether you update it when the whim strikes you or not? I doubt many people are judging your worth as a person by this stuff. If you think that people who would dismiss you if they didn't like your "profile" are too shallow or snobby for you, then you probably don't care to be friends with them anyway, right? It's cool, we all navel-gaze...
-
No, but really, self-help books are inane
I had a longer post, but it got eaten. So I'll just say this: it is possible just to have good taste and a functioning brain, and if someone doesn't like self-help books or Shania Twain, it's not necessarily because they're 'elitist'. I've flipped through self-help books when I'm bored at my mom's house. They are tripe, and they say absolutely nothing that wasn't already self-evident. And if you purchase and enjoy them, that does say something about the kind of person you are, like it or not.
I see the trite cries of "why do we need lists on the internet when we can take the time to get to know each other?" Yea, maybe we can write each other hand-written letters too. God, are all Salon readers aging hippies?
-
Facebook? MySpace?
Not all of your readers use these sites. Some of us graduated from college more than a decade ago. Some never went. Some are married and don't need to associate cool-seeming things with themselves.
Also, screw Norquist. It doesn't matter to me who defended him - that doesn't make his ideas of any quality. If his political acumen is so finely honed than why is it we still have taxes again?
BTW Miller Lite is a ground-breaking beer. It was revolutionary. I don't drink it, but it represents a real historic breakthrough in brewing.
-
Self-Help Ad
I really liked where this article was going for the first several paragraphs. For years friends and I have talked about how identity is constructed according to the marketplace--particularly among "cultured" people who should "know better". Its a subject worth exploring. Since middle school I've noticed that boys, in particular, often bond according to interests in pop arts (music, film, etc.), creating their own target markets. It felt like our philosophies might've grown around our buying habits and not vice versa.
And this is all related to the myspace thing of categorizing our interests, and therefore ourselves, through identification with commercial products--marketing those products ourselves, in effect.
It even carries into the market--where the aesthetic value of "indie" music and film is defined by its place in the market. What else do Spoon and M.I.A. have in common? Built to Spill is on a "major" label, but is often categorized as "indie" music because it sounds/looks cheap (ie, not overproduced or overexposed).
And I think its all related, except I can't quite put my finger on how...
...and that's why I clicked the link, its an interesting subject and would make the basis for an interesting piece.
But all I got was an ad for 'self-help' books. What's with the obsession, anyways? If the author wanted to write about how she was actually helped by a book on the subject, why not just write about that? If she wanted to write about the need to expand horizons, why not expand the examples and suggest liberals read Barry Goldwater? Or Bill Krystal?
Or, god forbid, actually talk to a Republican, or a business exec, or a hipster, or a Christian. That where the whole article started right, with how our tastes limit us and our exposure to other people?
-
It's not about Genres it's about QUALITY and the confidence to be CRITICAL
Megan, you frame the issue as one mainly of genre. Literature vs. Self-Help. I think that's a false choice.
It's about striving for quality and the confidence to be a discerning individual.
The bottom line is we have very little time and there are so many choices. We should all strive to experience the highest quality art, food, whatever because "quality" is shorthand for BETTER. Yes. Better.
So, sticking with the books example - I'd say 80% of books are crap no matter the genre. Further, I'd say "self-help" has a reputation (in my mind) as a low-quality genre all-up. Therefore, I generally ignore it. Not because there may not be a few gems in there, but because compared to literature it's like finding a needle in a haystack.
You CAN be critical and have discerning taste while still being very OPEN to new aesthetics and ideas.
And PS - I think the profiles on social networking sites and such are very "dating" oriented, which I think very much magnifies the phenomenon of "personality/culture heuristics".
-
On Long-Winded Profiles
This is an interesting discussion, that ultimately reminds me of something I heard from Dan Rather once:
"My father used to tell me that you wouldn't worry so much about what other people think of you if you realized how little they actually did."
Writing painstaking, long lists of what you like on Facebook may at best start an interesting conversation with a friend or a stranger, or may get you a first date if you're lucky. But we're really kidding ourselves if we think that anyone who really matters defines us by what we like, "High Fidelity" aside. I figure that whomever reads my profile might appreciate a little entertainment, so I long ago deleted all of the blather and rotate in a quote or two. My friends can thus get a good indication of my mood, without me needing to post, "Mood, Quixotic."