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    김치전!Tom Scocca
    12/05/13 9:47am

    What I have reread is Mencken on the Scopes Trial, Hunter Thompson on Richard Nixon, and Dorothy Parker on most things—to say nothing of Orwell on poverty and Du Bois on racism, or David Foster Wallace on the existential horror of a leisure cruise.

    Don't forget this glorious treasure of the critical arts.

    Scocca, I love you so much right now.

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      Freddie DeBoer김치전!
      12/05/13 10:22am

      Serious question: isn't this comment smarm? If it's not, why not? I mean, "I love you so much right now" sounds like the definition of smarm to me.

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      UgarlesFreddie DeBoer
      12/05/13 10:36am

      No, because it is earnest. It says exactly what it means. "This article speaks to me. I appreciate that you have written it." The word you are looking for is "hyperbole" not smarm.

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    Freddie DeBoerTom Scocca
    12/05/13 10:06am

    I am not someone who could easily be mistaken for being too positive. I have argued many times that arguments of the type "there is too much irony in the world" are misidentifying both the problem and the cure. The broader cultural problems, to my mind, are not irony or snark but the cult of the trivial and the worship of cleverness, both of which produce the simultaneous self-worship and self-hatred that are the dominant feature of contemporary cultural life.

    But the question of snark in reviews and criticism is a little bit different. You're perfectly right that the reverse side of criticism these days tends to be the pose of the publicist. But when people complain that there's a lot of empty, bullshit, preening, self-fellating negative criticism, they're right, too. A lot of people have identified the current problem with media criticism as a binary between extreme praise and extreme criticism. That's true, but inadequate. It's not just really good or really bad. It's criticism that is either dismissive or worshipful. Either a movie or album or book is so bad that the reviewer feels no obligation to take it seriously at all— it's beneath them— or it is a sublime work that transcends art and carries them into rapture— it's above all of us. Both preserve the self-worship of the person doing the reviewing. "Anything that is not a masterpiece is beneath me" is the critical ethic of a narcissist.

    The problem is not negativity, but that the negativity about others and what they produce is not matched with an outward negativity about the self. I can deal with a very negative critic so long as that critic is equally willing to indict him or herself, to be clear that the critic is as much of a failure as the artist. I mean, look: this website was once a good example of the perils of descending into a blank, cynical negativity. Not because it was too mean, or because its targets didn't deserve it, or because we should all be publicists. But because it was boring. It was boring to read some shit-eating 25 year olds who had come directly from Bowdoin to Brooklyn put on some affected pose of critical exhaustion. The Gawker of a few years ago was a website with a lot of writers who had never experienced anything and yet felt free to comment on everything. And fuck that, dude. Not because it's mean, but because it was unearned, and cheap, and so, so flattering to the sensibility of the tiny demographic slice that dominates our media.

    Anybody wants to be a critic, that's cool. Just recognize that so much of our criticism and the reaction to it is a way for people to trade regard for each other. It's not the snark. It's the painfully explicit system of mutual self-regard, the transactional, obligatory boosterism within the chattering class that functions as an implicit agreement— you treat me like I'm a big deal, and I'll treat you like you're a big deal, too.

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      Tom ScoccaFreddie DeBoer
      12/05/13 10:16am

      "Unearned" is on the Smarm Bingo card.

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      Freddie DeBoerTom Scocca
      12/05/13 10:20am

      That is not an argument.

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    Tom ScoccaTom Scocca
    12/05/13 11:09am

    CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS:

    • On Bullshit was originally published in 1986, as an essay in Raritan Quarterly Review, and was republished in book form in 2005.

    • This originally said that Jedediah Purdy now is a professor at Yale Law School; he has been a visiting professor at Yale, but he is on the faculty at Duke.

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      KorbenDallasBathroomAssTom Scocca
      12/05/13 2:06pm

      Off topic, I'm curious, does GM have any policy/style guide for corrections for writers? Most major news/media outlets would attach this to the article rather than drop it in the comments. I realize that the comments are perhaps a more meaningful place for information to get exchanged on GM sites than other ones, but it is still somewhat non traditional to do this.

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      Tom ScoccaKorbenDallasBathroomAss
      12/05/13 3:47pm

      We do it different ways depending on the piece and the nature of the correction. For this one, it seemed to make sense to put an asterisk on the passage and link that and the relevant words to corrections down here.

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    Jeff BercoviciTom Scocca
    12/06/13 4:32pm

    As a writer who has written his share of takedowns, I have a particular problem with smarm. Editors are always coaching younger writers not to punch down, because picking on targets of inferior status brings no glory. This is excellent advice, as punching down just makes you look like a bully with nothing better to do. I haven't always embraced this maxim, but when I've strayed from it, I've felt gross afterward.

    But here's what happens when you train your guns upward, on CEOs, billionaires and bestselling authors: You get accused of acting out of envy. (Or of even baser motivations. Michael Wolff, that sweetheart, once told an interviewer that I'd written about him unfavorably because he "neglected to hire" me, a claim he made up out of thin air. When I called him out on it, he first obfuscated, then claimed he'd been misquoted.)

    This has happened to me plenty of times over the years, and I don't even think it's necessarily insincere. I think a lot of these people are legitimately so in love with themselves and so lacking in imagination when it comes to the interior lives of others that "He's just jealous" is the only explanation that makes sense to them.

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      benjaminalloverJeff Bercovici
      12/07/13 12:04pm

      Take-downs can be a very high form of argument, if one is surgically precise, fair-minded, and right. I think that Mark Twain is the ultimate in this genre.

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      Monardabenjaminallover
      1/18/14 10:22pm

      His takedowns are fantastic. Trouble is, with all their faults, Cooper and Scott can be — are — wonderful writers. I am sure Twain read them with great delight, and I am glad I did before coming on Twain's takedown.

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    Will ShetterlyTom Scocca
    12/08/13 1:54pm

    If civility is smarm, Malcolm X was smarmy. He said, "Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery." I tend to think he was right: if someone hasn't put a hand on you, be respectful.

    As for people who say to focus on the positive, they're not saying you have to like everything. Ignore what you don't like. But if you can't find enough good things to promote as a reviewer, you're not trying to find good work that hasn't gotten the attention it deserves.

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      Tom ScoccaWill Shetterly
      12/08/13 4:10pm

      Malcolm X was telling the people on HIS side to be civil. He wasn't complaining that the problem with the other side was that they were uncivil. Because he had a lot of substantive complaints instead.

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      Will ShetterlyTom Scocca
      12/08/13 11:14pm

      Sure, he was telling his people to be better than their opponents. Respect and substance are very compatible, for all that people who prefer to rage will defend their rage.

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    Max Rivlin-NadlerTom Scocca
    12/05/13 1:29pm

    Literally had to go underground to finish this thing, but I think it's great.

    A really good point you touch on is how reductive smarm is. It's anti-complexity and pro-"feeling." From an artistic perspective, I think this has really infected a lot of mainstream work, mostly by young white guys, who couch a pretty manipulative and unrealistic dynamic inside of a recognizable tragedy. Any of Safran-Foer's work, as well as "Beasts of the Southern Wild" are guilty of not actually giving you anything complex, just something incredibly simple and clear and, well, smarmy, that says, "Despite 9/11, Holocaust, Katrina, there's some beauty out there," without actually asking the reader or viewer to ponder anything difficult at all. Smarm is lowbrow.

    While Ellison or Agee or even Malick will leave you scratching your fuckin' head, at least their work owns up to the idea that complexity is honesty, and any art that simplifies for the sake of emotion is a lie.

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      DennyCraneMax Rivlin-Nadler
      12/05/13 2:02pm

      I would say it's not only anti-complexity but when it comes to nonfiction writing and journalism, it's anti-accuracy.

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    ZackTom Scocca
    1/10/14 2:37am

    wtf this article is bullshit. No one is asking you to listen to someone you don't want to listen to. You are not handcuffed to an idea. Just walk away!

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      Tom ScoccaZack
      1/10/14 9:37am

      Nobody made you read this article, either, though, huh.

      Although you probably should read it again, given this: http://deadspin.com/okay-you-idiot…

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      ZackTom Scocca
      1/10/14 11:46pm

      I don't see the correlation :p

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    Pink SkullTom Scocca
    12/05/13 10:11am

    There's a world of difference between giving a negative, but well written review, and the genuine problem of people shitting on something for their own advancement. I think it's stupid to put up a declaration that you won't give negative reviews, but we do need to keep the Perez Hilton's of the world in check. Why don't people just aspire to give insightful reviews, as opposed to nice ones?

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      KThraceGodPink Skull
      12/05/13 10:44am

      Yep. It's completely within the realm of possibility to criticize or be negative about something without using "snark". To me, snark suggests that the person regards him or herself as somehow superior to the product/work of art/whatever. I don't care if it makes me sound like an old person; frankly, I'm tired of snark and this constant need people seem to have to be clever or reject anything that doesn't fit neatly into their personal worldview. And yes, I know that I'm occasionally guilty of that too.

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      Dr. GOH!Pink Skull
      12/05/13 10:52am

      Insight doesn't get Likes on Facebook.

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    corndogTom Scocca
    12/12/13 2:31pm

    I read the part about David Eggers. What was the rest of it about?

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      Tom Scoccacorndog
      12/12/13 3:35pm

      Halfway down, there was a number to call to collect a $15,000 prize but we gave them all away already.

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      corndogTom Scocca
      12/12/13 5:17pm

      I'm sorry, Tom. I was just being snarky.

      Thanks for the great article, I'll read the rest when I'm not at work. (Sincere, not smarm.)

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    BigSteveTom Scocca
    12/05/13 9:58am

    In my opinion, snark has no place on the Internet, period.

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      goldwBigSteve
      12/05/13 12:44pm

      TL;DR

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