One of the Web’s more accomplished snarkmeisters argues that the push by some goody-goodies for more niceness on the Internet – for instance, the decision by BuzzFeed’s new books editor to avoid negative reviews, or, in Scocca’s opinion, almost anything Dave Eggers says – is worse than the problem it’s trying to address.
Tag: 12.05.13
London Newspaper Fires Theatre Critic Over 22-Year-Old Photo Online
Mark Shenton recounts how this somewhat-naughty-but-entirely-legal picture from San Francisco (which Shenton didn’t even know was online) led the editors of the Sunday Express to decide it was just too embarrassing to keep him on.
How America Lost Its Real Rural Music
“It’s not discussed enough… someone should write a book on it – how we really lost how we make and listen to music with the onslaught of mass media. It’s changed so much – in 1933 there were 20,000 jukeboxes in America. By 1939 there were 400,000 jukeboxes! That immediately eliminates so many live musicians.”
Radio’s Christmas Music Bonanza
“The fact that Christmas music on the radio performs best the night before Christmas shouldn’t surprise you, but after digging into the data for the top holiday-format stations in each of those markets last year, a few interesting trends emerged.”
The Kinda Creepy Mistakes People Are Finding In Google Book Scans
“Scavengers obsessively comb through page after page of Google Books, hoping to stumble upon some glitch that hasn’t yet been unearthed. This phenomenon is most thoroughly documented on a Tumblr called The Art of Google Books, which collects two types of images: analog stains that are emblems of a paper book’s history and digital glitches that result from the scanning.”
How American Literature Has Gotten Tangled Up In Bureaucracy
“In particular, the obsession with codifying, regulating, recording, reviewing, verifying, vetting, and chronicling, with assessing achievement, forecasting achievement, identifying weak points, then establishing commissions for planning strategies for regular encounters to propose solutions to weak points, and further commissions empowered to apply for funding to pay for means to implement these solutions, and so on.”
Why Do We Feel The Urge To Sing Along At A Concert?
“What is it with people and singing along? No really, what is it? Here, I offer four possible explanations for a phenomenon that, for anyone who celebrates live performance, doesn’t make much sense.”
Is Anything In The Arts More Painful Than Terrible Theatre?
“After the first half-hour, it felt like someone was sticking needles in my arms and legs.”
The Most Important Monuments Man Might’ve Been A Parisian Woman
“During the Nazi occupation, she had worked in the Museum Jeu de Paume, an important depot for art plundered by the Nazis. There she tried to keep track of where the artworks ended up, registering every single work.”
Saudi Religious Police Ban Arabic Equivalent Of Twilight
The kingdom’s notorious Committee for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue has ordered bookstores to remove from their shelves the popular fantasy novel HWJN, about a young djinni who falls in love with a human woman. Among the Committee’s objections: the young woman’s use of a Ouija board.