Last week, I started writing an article that was critical of, well, criticism. Reviews of music, TV, movies, etc. seem to be less about recommending a given artwork and more about parsing and explaining the subtext of the work in question. Make no mistake, thinking about subtext and context is good and valuable, and I think everyone should be ready, willing, and able to examine and discuss these sorts of things. But sometimes I just want to know if a new thing is good, or at least the sort of thing I tend to enjoy, and I’d rather not get someone else’s blow-by-blow reaction to a work before I’ve had my own.
Also, and I acknowledge that the opinion I’m about to express here doesn’t seem all that popular these days and may seem retrograde to some, but not all works of art are all that significant in the first place. TV, in particular, still mostly exists as a vehicle for commercials, with very, very limited exceptions. Again, that doesn’t mean there is no value to examining what a TV show is trying to say, whether intentionally or unintentionally. I’m only saying the older I get, the more I think that the only real intention behind most TV shows is “Buy these cars and laundry detergents”, and the more I think even the subtexts of TV tend toward the one-dimensional (relationships are hard work, racism is bad, you should mentally ensconce yourself from the rest of the world by loathing and fearing those things which you do not immediately understand, etc.).
As a result, I can’t help but roll my eyes all the way back when an author uses an episode of Big Bang Theory as a platform for his or her AP English-level journal entry on the nature of romantic love, or whatever the fuck. Nor am I particularly interested in learning about a new piece of music from all angles before I’ve even listened to it. And I am absolutely not interested in writing in either style, since I don’t like articles written that way in the first place, and this is my fucking blog and I can and will do whatever the fuck I want with it. And really, the noblest goal I can ascribe to these practices is starting a conversation, and, holy shit, if you still think anything posted on the internet can possibly constitute an actual conversation, be it an article, comment, or forum thread, I’ve got a bridge to sell ya, buddy.
Anyway, my point is that I was sitting in front of the laptop, fussing and fretting over my word choice and all this other bullshit for an hour or two, until I eventually got so fed up and frustrated that I decided to up and chuck this blog off the side of a barge altogether. And here I am, a week later, having expressed my original thought quickly and painlessly. Was that so fucking bad? Truly, it was not.
Writing is stressful, which doesn’t make any sense because almost all of it is stupid fucking garbage. Take a minute to go check on the front page of wherever you go to read articles on the internet when you should be doing your job. Look at this crap! Did anyone bother to even so much as proofread this bullshit? Odds are they did not. At least once per day, I read an article on the internet that was written by someone I assume to be a compensated professional that is straight up missing actual fucking words. Most of the time the words in question are articles, and articles are super fucking important! A sentence missing one or more of its articles is fucking nonsense. How could this possibly happen if quality is of the slightest concern?
And yet, there’s so many goddamn websites for just about every interest on the face of the planet, and this combined with the draconian corporate bean-counting most of the employees of these places seem to labor under seems to have created competition for writers to espouse the spiciest takes in order to bring in the most clicks and eyeballs. This results in a lot of articles that try way too damn hard to say way too much of substance and end up saying very little of note, whatsoever. There’s already too much media these days, in the sense that no one could possibly keep up with all of it, even before you account for all the internet flotsam. On top of that, everything that is created these days is viewed as significant. I do think that represents a breakthrough – it’s better than the omnipresent cultural gatekeeping it replaced, that’s for sure – but I’m starting to find all this spilled ink over the meaningfulness of cultural ephemera that will be mostly forgotten in a few months or so truly enervating.
My point is that, as a writer, I got caught up in all of this. I was trying too damn hard to write constantly and consistently write something smart and insightful, all so I could get a job writing for some bullshit website or worse, freelancing. Either of those is basically impossible for me, and trying to do both was making me crazy and resentful of this blog and everything in it. So I’m re-opening this blog, with a few caveats:
–I will write and post new articles if and only if, and when and only when, I feel like it.
–Guest article submissions are always welcome. I don’t know anything, and that doesn’t stop me from running my mouth, so why should it stop you? If you want your words put on a niche corner of the internet, where only four people will read it (on a good day) but you can more or less write whatever the fuck you want, send your submission to robsblogcomments@gmail.com. Include your article, as well as the name you want to be credited as. Nothing is off topic. I will do my best to give it a fair shake, however, don’t even bother sending anything hateful, and since this is the internet and the internet sucks, I hereby reserve the right to reject any article for any reason. Unfortunately, I cannot offer any compensation at this time, however, that will change in the (unlikely) event that I am able to monetize this blog.
–I will not read your comments. This isn’t a democracy, and comment sections are the damn worst and I refuse to bother myself with them. If you have something to say, including critiques of my bullshit, write up an article and submit it for consideration.
That is all.
Rob Writes About Whatever 