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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Replying to @arthur_affect @Nymphomachy and
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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yeah I guess that's a good point, I'll have to think on this a bit more but notably it doesn't make me like David Sedaris' writing even one iota more so I still think there's something there
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I mean he's "smarmy" in the sense that Scocca really seems to get exercised about, which is that he's sentimental and emotive without being particularly political Which is the main thing that separates him from DFW, the other 90s literary David
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His stuff about dodging rape as a gay teenage hitchhiker in Oregon is pretty ironic and "snarky", like the jokey tone clearly isn't reflecting his actual lack of trauma from that time period, but he doesn't come out and make it about capitalism or conservatism or anything
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