amorpheus

I am probably going to regret writing this because I am probably as guilty of it as anyone but much less aware of it. Still, I feel like I need to say something because I am sick to death of people's excuses for being boring.

A while back, I went to a mind-numbing comedy show featuring some of the most vacuous morons that I have ever seen assembled in one place. Only one of them even gave any attempt to do anything thoughtful and political, and even then it wasn't like he was that knowledgable - he just knew what people who have graduated elementary school are expected to know. Maybe I'm overestimating the average American by expecting him to know who those guys on Mount Rushmore are. Maybe I'm overestimating him by expecting him to know what Mount Rushmore is. Anyway, I would usually encourage people to occassionally take the extra effort required to be smart and relevant, but this guy's problem was that he wasn't funny at all. At one point, he noticed that nobody was laughing. He kvethed about how no one gets his jokes and that he needs a smarter audience. Fuck you. Fuck anyone who blames an audience for his poor performance. You're lucky if you can get an audience to listen to you. It's not our fault that you're not funny.

People have all sorts of excuses for mediocre work. I can't tell you how many times I have been involved in a discussion of literature where someone says that a book was good for its time, as if he needs some sort of historical context to decide whether he likes something. How about the context of whether you enjoyed reading it? Why the fuck do you need any more context than that?

Rachel Kramer Bussel recently linked to a blog that raises some points about bloggers getting book deals and ended up pissing me off more than it should have. For one thing, is anyone else as tired as I am of discussions about blogging? There isn't that fucking much to say about it (even if I am right now hypocritically writing about it). It's a way for people to write things that other people can find easily. If you think it's more than that, you're wrong. If you think it can't accomplish that purpose, you're also wrong.

That being said, what bugs me about the entry in question is the point made that "The medium only allows you to show a smidgen of what you can do.," etc. This is something people say about any medium they don't find sophisticated enough. I hear it most often with comic books. People say that mediocre writers are "good writers for comic books." No, bad writing is bad writing, no matter where it appears. If it's in a medium that produces a lot of crap, it's still bad writing. It's the same way with movies. People talk about the limitations of the medium as if nobody has ever made a good movie. I know that the medium used has an intrinsic effect on the way ideas are expressed, but if the message you're trying to send does not come across through the medium you're using, don't use that medium, you retard.

In short, I'm not saying that blogs aren't crap, I'm just saying that the only ones to blame for that are the bloggers themselves. If something doesn't need to be said, you don't have to say it. If it's important to you that your audience like you, do something they like. Otherwise, don't blame them for not liking you. If you don't like a particular medium, you don't have to use it. In general, if you feel the need to blame other people because you are boring, you can go fuck yourself.