Longform writers feel under tremendous pressure from the free-flowing and often ill-considered commentariat - so says a rather longwinded* but amusing article by Gary Kamiya in Salon. The degradation of the traditional barriers between professional writers and their critics is creating pressures that may affect the development of the form - and the author.

Frank Shaw notes that equally important is effect ill-considered comments have upon the discovery and appreciation of genuinely insightful comments buried in a thread full of crap. “The signal to noise ratio is increasingly becoming an issue, and finding the gold involves sifting through a ton of sand.”

Some selected quotes from the Salon piece:

“…Then Al Gore invented the Internet and everything changed. Pieces that in the olden days would have garnered five or six letters suddenly inspired more commentary than a rerun of “Gilligan’s Island” in a cultural studies class. The floodgates opened, and in charged the masses — some filled with fulsome praise, others waving scimitars and dragging siege machinery into place, others ranting about their ex-wives …”(Salon)

“…This is an age of massive feedback, but it’s hard to deny that the collective American mind, now that its amp is turned up to 11, sounds a lot like Mötley Crüe.”

“…The context of online communication is more like being in your car in a traffic jam than sitting across a table from someone and having a talk — and it’s easy to flip somebody off through a rolled-up window. As a result, the kind of people who are prone to flipping others off, braying obscenities and ranting pointlessly are disproportionately represented in online letters sections and reader blogs.

“…The letters pages of Salon, like every other online magazine that doesn’t filter its posts, is a classic spaghetti western — the good, the bad and a really heavy dose of Eli Wallach.“

*I know what you’re saying - “Colin, by tagging the article as long-winded, aren’t you guilty of the same crimes to literature being discussed?” Sure, sure. But If I see a 1500 word piece on new media that mentions all of the following, I consider it long-winded:

  • Lord Byron
  • Stendhal
  • epistolary
  • Walt Whitman
  • besotted
  • pugnacity
  • Triumph of the Will
  • Neitzche’s Zarathustra

Yes, yes. I like the piece. Every pretentious sentence is finely crafted and pop culture references are often thrown in to balance the pretention.

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