My friend Ian recently blogged about the Internet dust-up over Alyssa Bereznak's Gizmodo post that eviscerated a man she dated who happened to be a world champion at Magic: The Gathering. The whole ensuing Internet drama strikes me as a quintessential moment of the Internet serpent eating its own tail: blogger sees an opportunity to create what she might reckon is funny and harmless content from a recent life experience, and other bloggers see that content as actually unfunny and harmful and use the opportunity to create (funny/unfunny, harmful/unharmful) content that takes her down. And here I am, creating content about all of that content. Her piece totally sucked and it was mean-spirited and dumb, but so are a lot of the responses. And in the midst of all of this are the measured and more interesting analyses -- among them Ian's, who writes, "This woman's crime isn't that she's mean-spirited, or that she doesn't "get" gamers. Her crime is a failure of imagination, a failure to sense greatness. Diving into someone's else's passions, no matter how weird they might seem, never fails to stoke your own." Yes. I mean, YES. And there lies some of the very wonder if the Internet, the liberating quality of fandom (even for the inaugurated) and the discomfort that Magic: The Gathering obsessives creates in the likes of Alyssa Bereznak. What if, at the end of the day, you started to worry that the very things you're passionate about don't mean a thing at all? The eccentric communities, they reflect that fear back at us in a way that's difficult to articulate. Except to make fun of it.
But here's the thing: I do have some compassion for Alyssa Bereznak. If your job is to create content all the time, and especially if your job is to create content all the time for Gawker, your life is basically all content: every story, every person you meet, every story you overhear, every person someone else you know just met, everything you see and do and watch. It's all content.
All content, all the time.
I lived a bit of this when I was doing a lot of freelancing for entertainment and media blogs. Every movie I watched was a potential post. Every movie trailer I watched was a potential post. Every joke I made about some bit of industry gossip with a friend was a potential post. There was so much opportunity: I could potentially write about and get paid for posts about everything around me: movies, music, books, industry news, celebrities, etc. But what a drag. I began to see everything as potential work, a potential pitch, a funny thing I could write about. No doubt, this is a good problem to have, but it's also a deeply weird place to be. When you make a living creating content, it's hard to stop. There were days when I just wanted to actually enjoy something I was experiencing, but it was hard because I was trying to find the angle. I felt agitated a lot. It was hard to switch off the content part of my brain and just experience.
Of course, it's true that discretion is the better part of valor. Bereznak is clearly lacking some of that. And I'm lucky that I was never working for an outlet that was so relentless in its quest for shareable content bubbling with commentary snark that I felt reduced to being seriously mean. That's not who I am. But I understand the pull. I feel it now, as even as most of my time is taken up with the business. I identify, curate, and catalog little bits and pieces of conversations, pop culture and memories into potential ideas for social content relevant to clients. Professional hazard, I guess.
Social content. Oftentimes, it feels so disposable. Sometimes, the pieces blow up. But mostly: it aggregates. We leave cached trails of the stuff we put out there online. It's so easy to forget that we can do a lot of harm -- but it's equally easy to forget that we can do the good stuff, too. Why is the good stuff so much harder?
I want to honor the shareable experiences of my life and inspire you, too. With discretion. Always with discretion.
I picked pears at an orchard upstate this weekend. Here is a piece of content that made me so happy and I hope it makes you happy, too. One beautiful pear.
