- Joined
- Apr 19, 2008
- Messages
- 18,772
- Reaction score
- 6,286
This article caught my attention this weekend. I've been doing the psychological equivalent of pacing, thinking about the piece, and whether or not to start this thread.
The New Reading Environment
I'm not quite sure how to frame this thread. There are a number of different ideas and topics raised by the article, so go read it.
The author has, as the title indicates, framed the piece as a meditation on the changes the 'net has brought and is bringing to the social contracts between writers and their readers.
Here are some things that caught my eye:
And later:
What do you think? What catches your eye?
I'm honestly not sure how to take the writer's tone, rhetorically.
The New Reading Environment
I'm not quite sure how to frame this thread. There are a number of different ideas and topics raised by the article, so go read it.
The author has, as the title indicates, framed the piece as a meditation on the changes the 'net has brought and is bringing to the social contracts between writers and their readers.
Here are some things that caught my eye:
The first decade of the 21st century was a transitional one in terms of reader-writer relations, its habits now as foreign as those of Edward R. Murrow’s America. Gone are the happy days when we dialed up to submit a comment to Salon.com, only to be abused by Glenn Greenwald or destroyed — respectfully — by the academics at Crooked Timber. Back then, we could not have imagined feeling nostalgic for the blogosphere, a term we mocked for years until we found it charming and utopian. Blogs felt like gatherings of the like-minded, or at least the not completely random. Even those who stridently disagreed shared some basic premises and context — why else would they be spending time in the comments section of a blog that looked like 1996? Today’s internet, by contrast, is arbitrary and charmless. On social media, criticism once confined to the comments now comes as free-range abuse directed at other readers. Readers can address all parties instantaneously — writers, editors, publishers, and the world. And so writers who publish online peer into the fishbowl of readerly reception. Drop in some flakes and watch the fish swarm.
And later:
Instead the new style is simultaneously careful and strident, low-key and declarative. Articles are luridly headlined and. Extravagantly. Punctuated. Arguments sit right at the top, just like we were taught to do in high school — except now the enemy is not lack of clarity, it’s impatience. Axios, whose name is a cross between a defense contractor and an aggressive men’s deodorant, has dispensed with everything but theses and bullet points. Transparency about readership has led, in turn, to formal transparency, an internet house style that conceals nothing but delivers no pleasures. Agreeing with something has never felt less gratifying.
What do you think? What catches your eye?
I'm honestly not sure how to take the writer's tone, rhetorically.
Last edited: