MOMENT | Snark is the New Black
Photo of Julia Louis-Dreyfus* from SNL by Alan Singer, 1983.
Is it me or has anyone else been feeling that the Internet has gotten even more negative than its usual cranky self? Here are a few recent observations: The ALS ice bucket challenge goes viral, raises millions and millions to fight a horrible disease, and yet Slate runs a pious story that points out a lot of the participants are probably spending more money on bagged ice than on ALS research (as if). 13 year old Mo'ne Davis is the first girl to pitch a shutout in the Little League World Series, and so many ugly comments come out, including a guy on Twitter with 91,000 followers who said: Mo'ne Davis will get knocked up by one of her teammates within the next 3 years. It gets favorited 141 times, retweeted 72 times. An award-winning unbelievably talented chef (who happens to be a nice person and decent human being) starts a jam company out of the trunk of her car, then grows to open an incredibly successful restaurant in a gentrifying Los Angeles neighborhood and McSweeny's tears it down with satire that is so farfetched it's comical. I recently went to a movie and noticed two guys next to us laughing hysterically at all the parts I was. By chance, we all ended up at the same restaurant afterwards and they said hi and asked if I liked the movie. I said (thinking it was obvious by our collective guttural reactions), "Yeah, I loved it, you?" His response, "No. We did not care for it."
Has it become so incredibly out of vogue to just earnestly like something good? Sorry for the after school special tone, but this is all making me depressed. I'm guilty for my share (and more) of eye rolls, so I'm very much saying this to myself as well, but I think it's worth stating that it's not easy to open a restaurant, be a girl in the Little League World Series, start a magazine, produce a movie that makes you laugh for an hour and a half, put out an album, or start something that the world cares about. It is easy, however, to craft a snarky tweet or a nasty comment with almost complete anonymity. No we shouldn't be robotic in praise, and yes criticism is a sign you've "arrived", but I feel like we're starting to create a culture that praises the hate of art more than the actual creation of art.
*Julia Louis-Dreyfus is awesome.
Update: The New York Times also covered this topic (with more research and reporting, obviously) just this weekend. Thanks for the tip, Lite + Cycle!
Comments
I don't think so, sorry, the comments apparatus is kind of wonky I think...I mean it's basically unchanged technology since 2005. I still use blogspot, I need to get on something else! Haha.
I do wonder about the erosion it is creating. I have a tumblr blog, and I follow a few other tumblr blogs. It seems like every other post on my dashboard is something that reflects severe self loathing, or is more or less a suicide note*. We all have those feelings from time to time, but if my Tumblr dashboard is any indication, we've got big problems afoot.
*-I am well aware that a huge swath of Tumblr users are teenagers; and as such, this self loathing is going to be expressed a lot more. However, I don't follow a single teen on Tumblr.
I don't consider myself particularly doe-eyed but am increasingly jolted by the negative commentary of friends + coworkers. It feels so unproductive to neg what someone spent time and effort creating.
The only thing I will say, in regards to Hirl, is that gentrification is a really damaging process. Essentially, people from a higher socioeconomic class start raising the overall cost of rent in a certain area, so the poorer natives are eventually pushed out of their own neighborhoods. It doesn't improve poverty--it shuffles out the impoverished, and turns their neighborhoods into playgrounds for people using hip urbanism to pretend they come from a rough part of town. So I can understand the critique on Hirl, even if it has a mean-edged sarcasm to it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/sunday-review/dealing-with-digital-cruelty.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone&_r=0
I much prefer to share about things that I find interesting and exciting instead of wasting negative energy complaining about things on social media.
That being said, there are serious issues with gentrifying neighborhoods (which Kels pointed out) and something that seems as harmless the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge - wasting water especially. There are serious droughts across the world that have political, economic, and social consequences.
As someone who works in the non-profit sector, any time you're raising money you want to be raising awareness as well - especially for a disease as cruel as ALS - and I don't think the challenge is doing that.
I think there's a difference between being nasty and cynical and being an engaged and critical thinker, relating to the world around you. Fingers crossed that people are choosing the latter.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/01/troll-slayer