This is probably why I have not encountered this "New Sincerity" stuff. That and my devotion to genre fiction.
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Replying to @banalexistence
This old essay kind of captures my issues with Sedaris' writing style and the idea of being "anti-irony"https://gawker.com/on-smarm-1476594977 …
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Replying to @Nymphomachy @banalexistence
The funny thing is this piece cites David Foster Wallace's cruise essay as a piece of great writing the New Sincerity never could've created but DFW helped *start* that movement with his E Unibus Pluram essay about TV ruining culture
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I dunno, I don't think the divide he's talking about is nearly as sharp as he claims Every snarky satirist has something they very fervently and earnestly believe in that they'll give you hell for mocking
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I'm not terribly surprised, since snark is *also* effectively an attempt to pull authority and demolish criticism by making something sincere ridiculous and position the snarker as a morally superior enlightened being.
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Replying to @loudpenitent @arthur_affect and
The real gist to sum all this up is we all hate each other and we're just finding reasons to proclaim why we are the supreme authority and our opponents are vapid, cruel and hollow. Snark, smarm, it's all the same manipulative, petty shit.
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Yeah I mean the real upshot of "irony culture" is that the "nothing is sacred" ethos is always just as hypocritical and fake as its supposed "everything is sacred" opposite
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I mean to be clear here I namedropped Daisey because I do think he's a pretty important encapsulation of the distinction: dude went to Shenzhen and then fabricated an entire one-man show about being the great white savior of exploited Chinese manufacturing employees and then (+1)
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Replying to @Nymphomachy @arthur_affect and
(cont) threw an absolute tantrum online when Ira Glass investigated his claims after putting his program on the line to vouch for him and discovered he made up literally all the meaningful details Because "his heart was in the right place" and he was just trying to "make change"
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That's "Facts matter vs facts don't matter" culture, which honestly is orthogonal to "snark vs smarm" When it's the self-identified snarkers on the wrong end of it they think that "Facts matter" culture is SUPER smarmy
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Cf. any time a screenshot dunk goes viral on Twitter and someone tries to go "Okay but in context what he clearly meant was"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
It's funny because before that happened Daisey's overall career was absolutely Team Snark by any reasonable standard, like the Gawker stuff about mocking hipsters and techbro culture and "writering"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
Before the stuff came out about the story of the worker with the disfigured hand being fabricated, if you made broader fact based criticisms of his piece you'd absolutely get shat on for smarm ("Actually the Shenzhen suicide rate is lower than the US overall")
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