Origins of the faux-naif bloggy voice?

There's this voice that blogs have. And it's ironic and chatty, but also, like describes things very simply. And it describes things sort of matter-of-factly, but also with this tone like 'I am describing this thing which is hilarious in this very straightforward way' and also this tone where it describes things that we all know as though we did not all know them. And this works especially well for commentary on culture or politics, because it makes one feel like an innocent, marveling at the crazy people. Or sometimes it is in the voice of an innocent who is too innocent, and mocking their faux-naif shock at something that is not shocking, because maybe we always expect better, but they shouldn't, and their shock is cynical, as opposed to ours, which is a calculated affectation, but meant sincerely.

This voice in blogs -- where does it come from? I feel like we were throwing around the term faux-naif on ilx and sort of developing this tone way early on. But it probably got picked up here from elsewhere. Suck already had it, sometimes, maybe?

So not only where did it come from, but how did it emerge to such prominence? And what other 'default affects' are there in the journo-blog world these days? Like, if someone is developing a style, what are the various models they'd emulate?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/32/Rye_catcher.jpg/200px-Rye_catcher.jpg

nabisco?

; )

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/46/BreakfastOfChampions(Vonnegut).jpg/200px-BreakfastOfChampions(Vonnegut).jpg

乒乓 otm

but forrealz, http://i.imgur.com/jL8RiIh.jpg

; )

― 乒乓

salinger feels somewhat different, but vonnegut and wallace i buy. also, probably eggers. Heartbreaking... was in 2000 and it very much had that voice.

eggers is literal vermin who needs to be exterminated

salinger feels somewhat different,
Yeah, didn't totally mean it as a serious answer, sorry, just wanted to see that cover image in the First Post.

eggers idk, i feel like his whole deal was making things way more complicated than they had to be, like his whole approach was college junior w/ a few philosophy and lit crit classes under his belt attempts to explain the world

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01548/dave-eggers-portra_1548020c.jpg

Thought for a second that was
http://media.salon.com/2012/04/segel_rectangle.jpg

looks like segel starcrossed w/jaymc

David Shapiro

eggers is literal vermin who needs to be exterminated

― 乒乓, Tuesday, 12 March 2013 20:20 (14 minutes ago) Permalink

:)

http://12thstreetonline.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/eee1.jpg

And This American Life, updating the performance-art detached/bemused Spalding Gray and Laurie Anderson.

there was some article that said it was DFW

eggers is literal vermin who needs to be exterminated

he should be spared for publishing The Instructions if nothing else.

vonnegut otm

the mcsweeney's tone has had an influence i guess but otherwise dave eggers is a meaningless person

i feel like ilx is always in danger of succumbing to this tone

Totally!

tumblr is the apotheosis of this, it is literally impossible to distinguish between any of the really cool kids on there because their writing style is all identical

i actually really liked heartbreaking work of... when i read it but i was about 13/14 at the time and who knows how annoying it would be if i read it now, i saw him giving a reading at the time when he was promoting you shall know our velocity and i spoke to him afterwards and he was really nice to me and my friend who was also like 14 and spent ages talking to me and i think he is probably a totally nice guy based on this but i have never read anything by him again and never actually think about him.

ur sentences are often very long

what an interesting question

im not really knowledgeable enough about "internet writing" in general to really have an idea of its origins, but i wonder if the function is possibility in some respects to too serve two simultaneous but yet opposed needs. it's flexible enough to genuinely provide the info on something while reflecting the absurdity of providing info on something so inconsequential/crazy/whatever. if you don't strike this tone just right then you're either doing academic criticism (which makes you vulnerable) or naively embracing something to the risk of being the object of fun yourself.

it's like having a point of view on something without actually, you know, having a point of view.

^^ this makes a lot of sense to me - it's finding the appropriate distance between a subject & the writer, right, in all sorts of ways. & it fits intothe whole generation-kneejerk-irony thing too, right. something that's often annoying about reading cultural comments on blogs is the showy tone of commenters, slipping into some kind of lazily superior expert register to project knowledge. & this seems like a similar thing, writing with enough of a sort of faux-patient/bemused tone as to separate oneself from the content you're generously going to unpack for everybody.

Of the twenty-some young men who were waiting at the station for their dates to arrive on the ten-fifty-two, no more than six or seven were out on the cold, open platform. The rest were standing around in hatless, smoky little groups of twos and threes and fours inside the heated waiting room, talking in voices that, almost without exception, sounded collegiately dogmatic, as though each young man, in his strident, conversational turn, was clearing up, once and for all, some highly controversial issue, one that the outside, non-matriculating world had been bungling, provocatively or not, for centuries.

can someone link to some examples here

It's been too long since I've read Franny & Zooey for me to tell whether or not yr taking the piss for sure

http://mentholmountains.blogspot.ca/2011/11/new-worst-move-in-journalism-phoney.html

the new york times blamed david foster wallace, mostly, kinda

That little juke where the writer affects to hesitate over their next revelation because, well, it gives the next words a bit of artificial acceleration after the pause and alters the cadence and emphasis a bit, is most certainly an affectation, but it works, in a limited way and it is dead easy to use. It is just tiresome after a few exposures, as are most affectations.

u tuomas level faux naive posters in their own boar

it's funny the internet both hyper connected (anything you write is implicitly in conversation with and exposed to observation from literally every point of view) and hyper-isolated and specialized. i wonder if this type of writing exemplifies that dilemma because you could certainly say it's a "coded" language that addresses a certain context and thus a certain audience while at the exact same time knows it's "out there" in the wild west of the internet.

this is writing that could be seen in direct opposition to actually "naive" writing on the internet--the kind of stuff that, when it's exposed to discussion or observation at these wider levels, sorta surprises the author and catches them off guard, like they didn't know they were writing "on the internet."

eggers' twee style is certainly passe, but i think he should be judged on more than just heartbreaking. his work has become steadily more sober since that one. seems like he's aging gracefully imo. his charity/humanitarian work is also pretty impressive, i think, even though the branding for 826 is his verbose-twee style at its most insufferable.

on the topic of internet writing: i don't much care for the faux-naive affectations (although i have been guilty of using them myself) but can't be bothered to get upset over it. style fads happen. the goony ilx style, fwiw, can be p aggravating itself.

i don't think it's the goal to write without affectation, either. i'm sure there's some kind of civilized standard of writing restraint. i don't think it's necessarily a gold standard of perfectly plain writing.

the ", well," thing just reads to me really unconfident -- the same (possibly totally unfair, cuz it almost alone prevents me from really liking philip roth and he's a big deal right) reaction i have to italics, which seem to me like something you use when you doubt the ability of the structure of your sentence to itself suggest emphasis and focus. (plus with italics you're not suggesting at all: you're insisting. makes writing much less collaborative + thus less empathetic + thus less useful.) when you put in the "well" gulp it's like either you don't think you made your lil joke clearly enough or you don't think i'm smart enough to notice it without a highlighter.

it has rhythmic uses too obv but here's an idea: write a sentence that doesn't need to be artificially enrhythmed

also, i used to have a penpal who was into white-people lit-internet and would put lots of things in parentheses. pretty sure that's another hallmark of the faux-naif bloggy voice.

salinger comes from the benchley/perelman '30s new yorker wiseass tradition -- very different imo.

dfw feels like the right answer, but where did he get it from? delillo maybe?

discourse analysis to thread http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_analysis

also i believe that we are talking about several different things here

* "faux naif bloggy voice" -- no idea what this is
* hedging -- the "well", the hiccups described above are, imo, classic hedges
* using parentheses to add information that is not necessary but that the writer wants to share (sometimes background info, sometimes an aside)
* the chronic informalization/increasingly conversational nature of journalistic writing (this is the one that burns me the most -- writing where the writer's voice is so strong that it overpowers the material being written about)
* whatever else y'all have in your minds that you are categorizing as this "white people lit internet" (?)

it has rhythmic uses too obv but here's an idea: write a sentence that doesn't need to be artificially enrhythmed

― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, March 13, 2013 1:31 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

never

also i swaer to you all i never read any nyt article abt this

this - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/another-thing-to-sort-of-pin-on-david-foster-wallace.html?pagewanted=all

*gazes upon that article for the first time*

i don't mean this wholely critical, and i'm sort of loath to cite examples, b/c they're examples of writing I like if anything. part of why i associate an element of this with ilx is because its a very powerful critical stance to take. you are confronted with some densely constructed argument about some rock thing or why certain music is not good, or the nature of aesthetics more broadly, etc. and answer "but britney is great! everybody loves to dance to toxic!" and that's very hard to respond to.

there's a structure and a framing to how its used now, especially in regards to broader political/social commentary that feels especially new, but deploying exactly that sort of tactic.

on the other hand, i've also found its terribly abrasive to people that aren't used to it. like i sent a column on some economy-related commentary stuff to a friend and he was like 'why is this promoting anti-intellectualism and making fun of people being serious', when of course it was poking fun at pseudo-intellectualism and seriousness as a substitute for thought, etc., but because he was outside of the circle of people who know how to decipher this sort of writing, the layers of meaning just collapsed.

i think that part of this style of writing seems to come from recent college grads from liberal arts colleges who majored in the humanities - feels like that, anyway - idk, coming into your own during the 20s and having had to 'think critically' (what a chestnut!) about ~things~ and ~life~ makes you sort of realize just how insane and received everything we take for granted that we 'know' is - and once you position yourself outside of the morass of received knowledge - not even knowledge, received experience, intuition, worldview - ! and you adopt this tone of "i am just trying to think ~rationally~ about these interesting phenomena. and of course that's really kind of disingenuous, because what is rationality, even, at some subterranean level you are just doing a seinfeld 'what's the DeAL with women's advertising! lobsters! sports!' critique.

i think the crucial move that these writers make is inviting you to just step over and into their shoes, just for a moment, see through my eyes, the eyes of a naif! and let me guide you through the ways that this doesn't make sense. that move of empathy, of bridging a gap between the writer and the reader. which of course is its own horseshit because jeez the thing most unknowable is precisely that which lies outside your own empirical experience and which is only bruised at by reading somebody else's words. your own words, even! solipsism, the noumenal and the phenomenal.

it has rhythmic uses too obv but here's an idea: write a sentence that doesn't need to be artificially enrhythmed

― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, March 13, 2013 1:31 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

never

― 乒乓, Wednesday, March 13, 2013 9:46 AM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark

i realize this post would have been much funnier if i had italicized 'never', if only *sigh*

^^^like xp.

he should be judged on more than just heartbreaking. his work has become steadily more sober since that one.

off-topic but yeah, haven't read "heartbreaking" but have read "what is the what" and "hologram for the king" and both are extremely good novels, is this not a consensus view?

as for the original post, i read lots of blogs and don't understand what style is being referred to here though i'm sure i'm familiar with it, i too would like to see examples

good post dayo

keep it going, guys. i want something good to read today. what about klosterman? and murakami? are you guys gonna bring up wes anderson? and the people in the hyundai commercial? is it really an indie twee thing? what about all the question marks? so many? people not willing to commit? always hedging their bets? that's what i see a lot of on the internet? like they are afraid people are gonna make fun of them all the time. well either that or the blustery overconfident all caps thing. but blog-wise, there are too many unfinished thoughts. things not thought through well enough. thinking in public. but not in a good way. but also yeah actual examples would be nice. back up your work, sterl!

ukelele lit

fuck murakami btw

ha i was actually thinking that scott's posts superficially resemble a lot of what's being described here yet in my mind don't line up with the given examples AT ALL. i am at a loss to explain why, really.

I agree w/ dayo literarily itt

because scott is old maybe

can we get some examples of this? this thread is stupid.

scott i dont think of this as that sort of overly-precious or twee internet style of writing which is/was sort of like 90s/early 00s style of being on the internet when the internet wasnt really 'for everyone' the way it is now. the new style is probably in part a reaction to that early style of writing with the overuse of caps and exclamation points and the cartoonish asides and the self-conscious appropriation of urban slang (word!) but its also an attempt to seem certain in the face of overwhelming uncertainty and to seem reasonable in the face of terrifying unreasonableness.

imm what sterlings talking about is like the economists blogs where they use a kind of reflexive plainspokenness to exaggerate the reasonableness of their point. its still blog-conversational but if anything its affect is a seeming affectless idk

well w/ academic stuff there's another thing going on, like if you don't have the plainspokenness you can't even communicate w/ most people out there

There's this voice that blogs have. And it's ironic and chatty, but also, like describes things very simply. And it describes things sort of matter-of-factly, but also with this tone like 'I am describing this thing which is hilarious in this very straightforward way' and also this tone where it describes things that we all know as though we did not all know them. And this works especially well for commentary on culture or politics, because it makes one feel like an innocent, marveling at the crazy people. Or sometimes it is in the voice of an innocent who is too innocent, and mocking their faux-naif shock at something that is not shocking, because maybe we always expect better, but they shouldn't, and their shock is cynical, as opposed to ours, which is a calculated affectation, but meant sincerely.

This voice in blogs -- where does it come from? I feel like we were throwing around the term faux-naif on ilx and sort of developing this tone way early on. But it probably got picked up here from elsewhere. Suck already had it, sometimes, maybe?

So not only where did it come from, but how did it emerge to such prominence? And what other 'default affects' are there in the journo-blog world these days? Like, if someone is developing a style, what are the various models they'd emulate?

― s.clover, Tuesday, March 12, 2013 4:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

lol

No one is paying much attention to what I'm saying here, but ultimately I think this is the voice of the dilettante.

Love that NYT essay. These bits especially otm.

"If, even from Wallace, the aw-shucks, I-could-be-wrong-here, I’m-just-a-supersincere-regular-guy-who-happens-to-have-written-a-book-on-infinity approach grates, it is vastly more exasperating in the hands of lesser thinkers."

"So much of what passes for intellectual debate nowadays is obscured behind a veneer of folksiness and sincerity and is characterized by an unwillingness to be pinned down. Where the craving for admiration and approval predominates, intellectual rigor cannot thrive, if it survives at all."

The craving to be perceived as good and honest and flawed only in a likeable way is at the core of this style.

There's something about this tone. That reminds me of voiceovers in commercials and movie trailers. Where the narrator. Speaks phrases and clauses. As though they're complete sentences.

No one is paying much attention to what I'm saying here, but ultimately I think this is the voice of the dilettante.

yeah I think there is something here, like before blogs how many writers would you follow that would be giving you their opinion on britney spears and quantitative easing and that movie they just saw and something that just happened in europe etc

I opened this thread the other day right after reading this blog post, which was linked to on the New Yorker magazine thread, and I thought maybe that was the kind of thing that Sterling meant. But I don't know that it's faux-naif, necessarily -- just kind of that "OMG, let's chat about this, you guys" bloggy voice. (She even uses the abbreviation "w/r/t," which I associate with DFW.)

discourse analysis to thread http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_analysis

also i believe that we are talking about several different things here

* "faux naif bloggy voice" -- no idea what this is
* hedging -- the "well", the hiccups described above are, imo, classic hedges
* using parentheses to add information that is not necessary but that the writer wants to share (sometimes background info, sometimes an aside)
* the chronic informalization/increasingly conversational nature of journalistic writing (this is the one that burns me the most -- writing where the writer's voice is so strong that it overpowers the material being written about)
* whatever else y'all have in your minds that you are categorizing as this "white people lit internet" (?)

― and that sounds like a gong-concert (La Lechera), Wednesday, March 13, 2013 8:34 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

Again, I think everyone is talking about a constellation of rhetorical devices, so calling it one thing is confusing. It's a toolbox for highly educated people who want to also sound colloquial in order for their audiences to identify with them.

a few examples (which are good and i enjoy, mind you):

http://gawker.com/5989143/booting-a-bookworm-off-the-treadmill-bachelorette-partying-with-your-husbands-mom-and-other-questionable-advice

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/18/why_dont_people_want_to_elect_economists_to_run_stuff/

http://www.theawl.com/2013/03/oz-the-great-and-powerful-stench-of-garbage

like,...

haha xpost i totally picked up w/r/t from dfw.

that said the voice in that post is chatty, but it doesn't have the tone i'm thinking of in particular. it does have a different modern "i'm critiquing this but i'm not advocating burning anything down" sort of tone that another blog subset pioneered, and also feels unlike writing of 15-odd years ago.

which means... what, exactly? that... ? that ....? no, I think...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_%28linguistics%29

"And they act like because they use math, their “science” is more sciencey than sociology or whatever"

http://ct4.pbase.com/o2/02/82302/1/105880271.vtM7cL1c.suicide.gif

i think ultimately this voice expresses exasperation, exhaustion, and hey why not

^^ p much how DFW felt a lot of the time I think?

yeah, it is, like, epidemic-y?

To the extent I have a writerly voice, it's definitely been heavily infected by DFW and Vollman and the median aesthetic of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern

this thread is making me self conscious

m bise ur voice is that of a carmine thai dictator

i certainly mimic internetisms when i'm on ilx. when in rome and all that. but the blogification of just about everything in print is way annoying. or is it? i dunno. lol.

lagoon have u ever considered that u are the origin of the faux-naif bloggy voice

which era vollman and what do you see as the distinguishing characteristics? the more overt tics of his voice are such a high-wire style to pull off, i feel. although his more short, declarative, narrative stuff i think works pretty well and is easy to draw inspiration from...

idk that blog voice is any more annoying than the classic authoritative newsie woosie objectivism, kind just points to that a default voice is always gonna be kinda hacky, great writing will always transcend that but its asking alot for any newspaper piece or blog post to be great

lagoon have u ever considered that u are the origin of the faux-naif bloggy voice

― flopson, Wednesday, March 13, 2013 1:40 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://thelayzmen.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/billy-joel-we-didnt-start-the-7023-1233002619-0.jpg

THIS MY BLØG

the mere fact that you are acutely aware of the origin of your style affectations is a sign that you are using/attempting to use the bloggy voice/a voice.

this reminds me of the proliferation of noise board (bored/borad) language that i could see spreading all over ilx when i first got here. it was weird, but kinda fun to watch from the sidelines. write like that now and you would seem pretty out of it, no?

i also like to define this voice by who doesn't use it and also who aspires to use it and, i dunno, kinda fails.

"And they act like because they use math, their “science” is more sciencey than sociology or whatever"

It should be fairly obvious that Pareene chose this tone because the column was discussing a study by economists of why more economists are not heads of state and he wished to convey the equivalent of a 15 year old saying "well, duh".

noise voice > bloggy voice, rip

t/s: faux-naif bloggy voice v. posting so friggan much and still having no discernible posting style or personality?

"the mere fact that you are acutely aware of the origin of your style affectations is a sign that you are using/attempting to use the bloggy voice/a voice"

not a modern think afaik, and not a negative thing either?

anxiety of influence ahoy.

vollmann is not on the right track i don't think because lacks the practiced distance from the subject, lacks the aw shucks vibe when referencing academic shit, and he's a deeply sincere guy. (buyt in conversation he actually talks like some of the caricatures of bloggers in this thread).
dfw is closer but probably not quite there.

eggers/mcsweeneys i think had a huge influence on this voice.

t/s: faux-naif bloggy voice v. posting so friggan much and still having no discernible posting style or personality?

― 乒乓, Wednesday, March 13, 2013 1:49 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

occurs to me posting so friggin much and still having no discernible posting style or personality is kinda the voice of the tumblr literati tao lin et al, i think there was discussion of that around here somewhere

I don't really distinguish between typing on the internet and saying things out loud. typing feels more naturally really.

dfw is think is for sure an antecedent, he was obvs more passionate and rigorous than most of this stuff, but thats only natural

fair enough. but let's remove vollmann from the list, please.

anyways
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=567821

this is the voice i think of when i read sterlsy's original post

<i>I know someone from the internet from Seattle and he likes the novel</i> The Moviegoer <i>by Walker Percy a lot. His name is Matthew. I argued with Matthew on the internet one time. I said</i> The Moviegoer <i>was melodramatic and did melodramatic things in regard to existential despair.</i>

i still think primarily of nabisco

FUCK ....... but just look at that shit

to me nitsubisco is like elegantly brandishing his intellect

^ faux naif bloggy voice

a positive quality of bloggy voice is imho its critique of credentials and experts, its v much expressing the promised internet democratization, anyone can show up and be judged not by their position but by their argument, not that thats how it actually works irl obvs but it works more like that now than it used to

its very american in that sense

just tossing in a 'like': cheating.

nabisco is maybe the missing link between dfw and bloggy voice

elect me dictator of ilx and i promise such gesturing will not be allowed, i will be the sole voice of authority on all things

a positive quality of bloggy voice is imho its critique of credentials and experts, its v much expressing the promised internet democratization, anyone can show up and be judged not by their position but by their argument, not that thats how it actually works irl obvs but it works more like that now than it used to

is the bloggy voice really responsible for the critique of credentials and experts?

also lots of genuine experts go down this route, like paul krugman using lolcatz references or w/e

well i guess you could say its more an expression than the cause

paul krugman is attempting to assimilate by using these tactics -- he's hardly the vanguard of bloggy voice

krugman is an expert but hes also for sure critical of credentialism, i mean hes got to deal w these hacks all day

im sure many actual experts welcome these developments w open arms

well ultimately it comes down to 'you don't need someone else's approval to get something published' which helps experts too, tho hurts them in other ways

paul krugman is attempting to assimilate by using these tactics -- he's hardly the vanguard of bloggy voice

code-switching? ; )

doy

I mean, I believe this to be the case, yes. (no doi)

also most of the internet is nothing like the blogs ilxors tend to read, I've been there and its a scary place, not a lot of bloggy voice even in the blogs

so youve been to reddit

feel liek w krugman it prob fits the way he sees himself/the world better than some authoritative bigshot tone does

its very american in that sense

― 乒乓, Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:10 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i feel like there's a twain-quality in what some ppl are going for, even though the actual voice isn't very twain at all.

"And they act like because they use math, their “science” is more sciencey than sociology or whatever"

It should be fairly obvious that Pareene chose this tone because the column was discussing a study by economists of why more economists are not heads of state and he wished to convey the equivalent of a 15 year old saying "well, duh".

― Aimless, Wednesday, March 13, 2013 1:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The problem I have with this tone in this case is that (1) I can't even entirely tell what level of irony it is and I'm not sure he can either (is he parroting this exceedingly skeptical statement because he fully agrees with it, or is his exaggeratedly childish tone supposed to convey some sketpicism about the skepticism as well? And if so, what does he actually think about economists?) and (2) if he's actually adopting the statement fully, it comes off as a little too easily dismissive in an unearned way -- young blogger reminds us that OF COURSE economics is all just a bunch of bullshit dressed up with fancy numbers, etc.

well it is!

i knew you guys wouldn't let me down. now i have more to read. i can't believe that old spy magazine faux-naif article isn't online. its a crime against humanity! way ahead of its time. think it also had the accompanying pictures of celebrities wearing geeky glasses.

i have no idea what my internet voice sounds like. maybe i don't want to know. or do i? i dunno. lol.

it's a partially true hyperbole that makes a point, but it's not literally true

xp

young blogger reminds us that OF COURSE economics is all just a bunch of bullshit dressed up with fancy numbers, etc.

― space phwoar (Hurting 2), Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:25 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is in a way p accurate as economics biggest problem is the quality of their data, which they then dress up in fancy equations

reminder that economics is a social science ; )

pareene uses that exact same tone and voice in every single piece of his. i enjoy most of his stuff but i think he could stand to ease up a little on the 'um, because that like sucks, dude!' shtick.

he obv got it from ilx

'if by it you mean hepatitis c than yes'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-Elr5K2Vuo

Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (133 of them)

you could have at least chosen a dn that wasn't a regurgitated joke from 5 years ago to post itt with

think there might be some crossover between this and The Tyranny of Humour

this is in a way p accurate as economics biggest problem is the quality of their data, which they then dress up in fancy equations

― lag∞n, Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:32 PM

boy u sure know a lot about stuff or whatever

133 isn't even very many posts, I feel like you should have waited til like 250 to make the statement

this is in a way p accurate as economics biggest problem is the quality of their data, which they then dress up in fancy equations

― lag∞n, Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:32 PM

boy u sure know a lot about stuff or whatever

― am0n, Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:51 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is like a well known thing, not trying to be fancy or w/e, folks

well shucks :B

everyone and their grandma already knows that the entire field of study is a complete crock

http://24.media.tumblr.com/e193a4e290a2c3683f7e325fc4448345/tumblr_mjm2kdTOHE1rshsako2_250.gif

Is the Tiger Beatdown/Wonkette style of comedy writing an ultra-exaggerated version of this voice, or its own beast? (Deliberately stilted/simple sentences! Exclamations marks! HERE IS A SENTENCE IN ALL CAPS, BECAUSE WHY NOT?)

that's gawker

http://25.media.tumblr.com/5159848d4a4911f01443fe2e6fa5fc3b/tumblr_mjlzty1o8m1qfoj4do1_500.gif

feel like another possible target of blame w/r/t all this stuff is......... wait for it.................. indie rock.

i blame the guy in the hat with the old man voice

wayne coyne

shawn mullins

yeah indie twee mentioned on here. that's as old as the hills though.

x-post

i support all of these tone options and every one of them is grating when it's used without any other discernible ambition beyond trying to identify with readers who have no discernible ambition beyond wanting to be identified with.

or something. *submits post*

"sciencey stuff" was my least favorite line in the pareene thing but everything else was cathartically otm (again)

what i should be called out on wrt that "artificially enrhythmed" bullshit last night is my constant+notentirelyunconscious use of "like"

not that i expect people to like keep tabs on me that close i'm just saying i reread it and thought lol

Is the Tiger Beatdown/Wonkette style of comedy writing an ultra-exaggerated version of this voice, or its own beast? (Deliberately stilted/simple sentences! Exclamations marks! HERE IS A SENTENCE IN ALL CAPS, BECAUSE WHY NOT?)

― blatherskite, Wednesday, March 13, 2013 3:02 PM (42 minutes ago)

i assumed this is what the thread was about, but yeah people who write like this are terrible

that was the style that preceded the one were talking about

yeah i really can't stand that. i was fine w tiger beatdown for a while because it was the first place i'd seen it and it was novel and then it became the "ladyblog" voice and crept into the tone of writers i otherwise like and :/. i associate it w tumblr; idk if that's on point or anything.

Beats. Bush-era. Simpsons. Irony. Every. Time.

Faux-naive vs. Shocked, shocked.

Really the only pleasure in any of this is twofold: seeing who adopts this voice (esp late adopters) and trying to figure out why and 2) seeing who resists the adoption of this voice and trying to figure out why

who are the joiners/nonjoiners, basically.

yeah i'll take all of this over the moral shock + lurid sneer of fox-style tabloid reporting. xp

what about ned always being speechless on facebook all the time everytime he posts a wacky link. where does that fit in. lol love the ned.

speechless...

*youtube video of an otter farting*

what about people who preface everything they say with a disclaimer: "you know i like ____, but [outrageous thing about _____]"

i love that -- the people who do it always do it so reliably!

choire sicha is the origin of this bloggy voice

hes drawing on dfw but its basically him, hes the guy

he also does it better than anyone

is he the new pope

Is the Tiger Beatdown/Wonkette style of comedy writing an ultra-exaggerated version of this voice, or its own beast? (Deliberately stilted/simple sentences! Exclamations marks! HERE IS A SENTENCE IN ALL CAPS, BECAUSE WHY NOT?)

this is the pre-2003 version of internet writing i think i said this already

do you guys actually read lots of blogs? or have favorites. in 2013. i never look at them unless someone links to some dumb/outraged thing. the outrage of the day. the dumbness of the day. i don't even know why i look at those. i got some old journal of popular culture mags from the 70's the other day and they were very entertaining. and i went on the website of that mag and every single recent article is either about vampires, zombies, or superheroes. almost. or reality t.v. i am sure they are getting bushels of essays on the show Girls as we speak. there is a singlemindedness to mod pop cult discourse and it just seems so samey and zeitgeist-y to the max. i dunno. lol.

i'm sure academic types see the same stuff all the time too. the same zombie essays over and over. zombies and consumer culture, blah, blah. its all so fucking american too. i need to broaden my horizons. those 70's mags had all kinds of weird shit in them.

Well not per se, but there are so many sites that blur the lines now -- blogazines like HuffPo and Gawker, mainstream news sites with some bloggy content, etc.

RIP journalism ;_;

Blogs replaced the unnecessary middleman, then became the unnecessary middleman themselves.

“Edith Wharton Meets Aquaman: The Glimpses of the Moon and Imperiled Male Culture in Entourage” by Donna Campbell

“Failure to Launch: Not-So-Superheroes in Gravity’s Rainbow and Superfolks” by Megan Condis

“The Accidental Supermom: Superheroines and Maternal Performativity, 1963-1980” by Laura Mattoon D’Amore

“The Female Link: Citation and Continuity in Watchmen” by Erin M. Keating

“Terror in Horror Genres: The Global Media and the Millennial Zombie” by Nicole Birch-Bayley

“Forged in Love and Death: Problematic Subjects in The Vampire Diaries” by Mary Bridgeman

“The Sand/wo/man: The Unstable Worlds of Gender in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman Series” by Ally Brisbin and Paul Booth

“Remembering Why We Once Feared the Dark: Reclaiming Humanity Through Fantasy and in Guillermo del Toro’s Hellboy II” by Tony M. Vinci.

sorry, that was just a little comic relief. doesn't really belong here. stuff from that mag i was talking about. i'm so sick of superheroes. and vampires. probably will always love zombies despite the overload.

there is a singlemindedness to mod pop cult discourse and it just seems so samey and zeitgeist-y to the max.

yes

I read that as "to max"

pop cult journal doesn't mess around:

Essays should range between fifteen and twenty-five pages of double-spaced text in 12 pt Times New Roman font, including all images, endnotes, and Works Cited pages. Please note that the fifteen page minimum should be fifteen pages of written article material. Less than fifteen pages of written material will be rejected and the author asked to develop the article further. Essays should also be written in clear US English in the active voice and third person, in a style accessible to the broadest possible audience. Authors should be sensitive to the social implications of language and choose wording free of discriminatory or sexist overtones.

what do people think distinguishes the ladyblog voice in particular?

outrage?

bombeckian bombast?

CAPITAL LETTERS REFLECTING EMOTIONAL RESONANCE RATHER THAN EXTREME ~EMOTING~.

RETICENCE, I MEAN, OF COURSE. :/

plus a smidge of Sally Forth-like whatareyagonnadoamirite?

http://thebrightblush.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/photo-30.jpg

And The Mouth-Twitch of Young Women in the Late 2000s and Early 2010s

who is that? WS, but in more of a would-curl-up-and-watch-a-movie-with way.

wow, this thread sure took a turn

http://www.edyoungblog.com/files/2012/02/Dr.-Drew.jpg

^^ a man about to give us A Frank Appraisal.

turned into a sausage fest in here

Sterling you do realize that all three examples you linked at 1:25 were written by people who work/worked at Gawker, right?

Oh OK Max already pointed out that Choire is the source. Carry on.

i figured gawker was a key part of the nexus (i mean lots and lots of current bloggy things are tied to the ex-gawker diaspora), but didn't read it/pay attention at all in the whole formative period, so good to know that there's an actual person this goes back to. although i would like to think back all the earlier little mag on the web experiments and think which generation of those writers probably had an influence here (suck had a difft voice, but maybe some _parts_ of suck presaged this?)

I think there's a strong anxiety element to the whole thing - an underlying fear, maybe subconscious in some cases, of seeming dull, not with it, overly self-serious, a relic of the print era, etc. if you don't at least make a nod to that style.

that's the power of the in crowd
that's why i am interested in late adopters and bloggy voice teetotalers

is lindy west a good exemplar of the ladyblog voice? http://jezebel.com/people/lindywest

maybe. i find her writing distractingly cluttered with jokes and references that cloud her (often very good) points. if that's what you mean, then yes.

i read her pope thing. its like if musto and taibbi had a sassy bloggy baby. i think people like stuff like that though. they must. there is a lot of it. half gossip column + half fuck you.

I enjoy it in small doses, at least in the hands of someone who can pull it off, like Sady Doyle. Otherwise, it seems like a bad pastiche. All the stylistic boxes are ticked, but it falls flat, like reading anyone's attempt to mimic, say, PG Wodehouse or Hunter Thompson etc.

hi

This is all really interesting but I don't think I know what blog / voice is / was actually meant!

With DFW the big tendency was I think to mix in a lot of technicality and grammatical precision with a lot of informality at the same time. I think other US writers do this also. But I don't think this is naif ... ?

http://d3fsqtc6sy2z27.cloudfront.net/uploads/37b229e23a2a7a0f344a1289b45e90ec_large

i have no idea where to put this but holy shit is this the most annoying email or what
it makes me never want to order from grubhub again

We Miss You.
Like the Deserts Miss the Rain.
Oh, hey. So this is awkward. How you been? Us? Doing great. Things are really looking up. One day at a time. Deep breaths.

Just one thing: Please come back. Since you left, we're all numb. John Mayer is deep. Nicholas Sparks is moving. And who knows how the hell all these cats got in?

Let's Work It Out. And Order Some Dinner.

But hey, if you're really gone for good, help us get a little closure. Why'd you give up on us when there were so many good times still ahead?

1. I moved away. And this long-distance delivery just isn't feasible.
2. I met someone new. They'd deliver the sun, the moon and the stars if I asked.
3. Our relationship grew too expensive for my taste. Were you ever going to treat me?
4. You screwed up a lot. I'm through giving you second chances.
5. Our relationship wasn't healthy. You made it so easy to order so many things.
6. We're just taking a break. You're still my one and only.
7. I haven't quit you. I just renewed my vows with a different account.

And that's it. Please come back.

Hasta Luego,
GrubHub

ugh
esp this

Let's Work It Out. And Order Some Dinner.

actually all of it is the worst
the whole thing
worse than groupon

^^ reads like a haiku

still insane to me that this thread went 200 posts before anyone mentioned Choire Sicha

did you read his book max

haha I posted about grubhub over here:

Sarahel's Semiotics 4U

see also: the Innocent Smoothies Aesthetic thread

yes

well

i liked it

cool

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/english-has-a-new-preposition-because-internet/281601/

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/n_9825

preachin' to the Choire

pronounced choir situation

i hate that use of "because"

i only like it to watch the spread of adoption

its the worst of thing thats kinda funny as a joke until it becomes a convention then its just dumb and useless and not funny

except i guess it could help on twitter because character limit

hmm i wrote worst when i meant kind interesting because freudian xp

The article is correct in that the new form of 'because' has become widely used and recognized, but it remains to be seen if it has any staying power.

it's insidery shorthand because people like to be part of a crowd that is so in that they use their own shorthand
reading old noise board threads is good for this too, if i'm being honest

people who use "because" like that are monsters

real concision hedz use "ftb"

= "for to because"

afaics, it is merely a truncation of "because of". If it were true that all cases of the new usage would conform to traditional usage by substituting "because of" for "because", then this new use represents a very common sort of progression in American English and I'm guessing it will stick. We Americans love to truncate.

i suspect it will not make the leap from jokey voice to regular voice

because dumb

#dumb

afaics, it is merely a truncation of "because of". If it were true that all cases of the new usage would conform to traditional usage by substituting "because of" for "because", then this new use represents a very common sort of progression in American English and I'm guessing it will stick. We Americans love to truncate.

i disagree, i think it's a much bigger ellipsis than that.
e.g.: "i have to see this because EMOTIONS" is not short for "i have to see this because of emotions" - that's still an incomplete sentence! It's more like "i have to see this because [i have a lot of emotions related to this]/[i anticipate experiencing a lot of emotions]/[i anticipate that this is full of emotions and they are a thing i like to see]"

i.e. it is not the 'because' that is really the focus we should be looking at, it is the way the subsequent word is a distillation of a clause

So you locate the ellipsis you describe in "because" and not also in "EMOTIONS"?

that was an xp

i disagree with aimless's theory too -- it is too casual to be that widely adopted

it'll go away like the vomit in everyone's mouth went away

ha some people still have a lil vomit in their mouths and when you hear about it you feel a little pity because so uncool

so it will be thrown under the bus, you are saying?

when you hear about it you feel a little pity because so uncool
exactly -- only the too late adopters will use it and they will out themselves as deeply uncool

that little bit of vomit shows up on my facebook wall sometimes

and i'm guessing that at least 4/5 times it's a late adopter, if not 100% of the time

as does "best. (x). ever." (which will probably never go away unfortunately)

cataloguing people's language tics is why i can still find facebook useful/amusing
it's like a living corpus of language in use

a cyber corpus

ilx too on a boring day

Hm, I used "because" as a preposition for the second time on ILX ever just a few hours ago (sorry LL)

i only like it to watch the spread of adoption

― sweat pea (La Lechera), Friday, November 22, 2013 1:03 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, me too, basically.

http://fistintheair.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/childish-gambino-tweet.jpg

oh no

i rest my case

the "because internet" construction doesn't seem like a faux-naif thing to me, at least not in the way that it was discussed in this thread. dayo's observations were otm: this voice at its most characteristic is a response to the writer's awareness of their limitations -- of all the conditioning that comes to bear on their claims, as well as the impossibility of ever really stepping outside all of this stuff to talk "objectively"... the same old derridean impasses they teach every english major -- and it expresses a desire for an "innocent" subject position. culture paradoxically comes to seem alienating when one recognizes it as a "total" system. for these bloggers, becoming a cultural critic is not about their love of culture, but their fear of it. trends, phenomena, etc. need to be kept at arm's length and to do this you need to keep an eye on them. by rendering cultural phenomena visible, one can forget -- for today -- that culture itself permeates everything, has no borders, and is invisible.

people who say "because internet" are evincing a level of knowingness that is the opposite of the faux-naif blog voice. where's the anxiety? people who say this seem to think they can make generalizations about the meanings and origins of things and be correct.

people who say this seem to think they can make generalizations about the meanings and origins of things and be correct.

i think that it's more that they expect their readership to understand just what the ellipsis they are making would have contained - also, not "origins of things" so much as "reasons for things".

bored arrogance

+ insidery

Isn't it mostly a technique for compression needed b/c of character limits for Twitter and texting?

People pick up habits there and apply them to their writing elsewhere, even on ILX iirc.

Isn't it mostly a technique for compression needed b/c of character limits for Twitter and texting?
it's one reason people give, but it's definitely not the only reason people use it (esp the later adopters)

People pick up habits there and apply them to their writing elsewhere, even on ILX iirc.
more specifically, people assimilate, or attempt to

Isn't it mostly a technique for compression needed b/c of character limits for Twitter and texting?

"b/c of" has fewer characters than "because", "bc" would have fewer still.

ll otm itt because sociolinguistics

Thank you

otm

the dfw-lite essay style seems to not be about condensing ideas though, almost the opposite.

would you prefer if there were a separate thread for every syntactic feature of "blog voice"? i'm pretty sure this thread is standing in as a place to put all related data and observations, however tedious it all might be.

i guess not. i think the thread topic is interesting though.

"X because Y" doesn't express anything other than "I read those blogs/threads too" imo, same with shibaspeak, same with vikings, etc etc. The effect varies as like with all memes; sometimes it contributes to community coherence, sometimes it comes across as try-hard, sometimes nobody notices.

i'm ok with people using language this way

it's gonna happen regardless of whether or not we like it; my only point is that it helps to be aware that it is a linguistic manifestation of a socially-motivated urge/desire.

it'll go away like the vomit in everyone's mouth went away

Christ.Yesterday I realised I ended txt message to someone with ...NOT without even thinking and I wanted to kill myself once I realised.

Why don't I just have a cow man and be done with it.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115726/period-our-simplest-punctuation-mark-has-become-sign-anger

all of this makes me hate language

(grits teeth)

you. musn't. hate. language.

http://theoriginalwinger.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/gambino-because-the-internet-597x322.jpg

I'm a little baffled by the way people have written about the "because" thing.

The origin of it seems super-clear to me -- it started as a way of mocking that childish, hand-waving thing people do when they don't have a coherent argument, so they fall back on repeating a single word that's supposed to magically justify their position. How do you defend your obnoxious views about gender? Because, umm, like, EVOLUTION. Why are you opposed to progressive taxation? Because, you know, FREEDOM. And then people started using it in a SELF-mocking way, or to be faux-evasive ("that actor I like does a nude scene in this dumb movie? I need to see this because REASONS"), and then it started happening all the time, etc.

I think it's actually a pretty elegant construction -- removing extra words to reveal that someone's dumb argument basically boils down to a single noun -- and a useful piece of sarcasm, but only if it's referring to something that's actually behaving in that hand-wavy dumb-argument way. The problem with overused internet-talk constructions is that people get so taken with how clever the phrasing sounds that they start using it willy-nilly in places where it doesn't even make sense. It's like if someone came up with a really clever mean insult for, say, bald guys, and people thought it was such a sick burn that they started using it on everyone, insulting dudes with full heads of hair, and eventually it just becomes some stupid thing people always say, totally disconnected from the point it was originally designed to make.

P.S. I am a bald guy, that is why I used that example

P.S. I am a bald guy, that is why I used that example because self-deprecation.

I mean, the main thing that bothers me about the "because" formulation is that you can use it in this glib, sneering, bullying way to dismiss valid arguments. You could write a whole earnest, well-reasoned BOOK arguing that we should do something or other to combat terrorism, and someone can come along and go "hahaha apparently we should do this BECAUSE TERRORISM," as if you're the idiot with no real argument. A lot of popular internet phraseology feels like that to me -- it equips people to imitate the sound of being clever, savvy, righteous, and penetrating even when they don't have any genuine cleverness or savvy to bring to bear.

A lot of popular internet phraseology feels like that to me -- it equips people to imitate the sound of being clever, savvy, righteous, and penetrating even when they don't have any genuine cleverness or savvy to bring to bear.

U mad, breh?

"Back in my day, when you wanted to roll your eyes at something, you needed actual FRIENDS there to see it and agree with you"

it's definitely a facet of a cultivated personality. i don't know what else to call it other than a sociolinguistic marker of "i am like this" with this = whatever personality trait that person is trying to project.

nabisco otm.

A bunch've art/fashion people are trending towards the following voice - "iz fukign me of taht no1 evn wunt 2 wriet liek hella trol dense theory liek az if itz a big dael idk." / "liek i wol wunt2 raed a local public8n ov loek #theoretical stanpoinz by a range ov ppl. y iz eg evry art public8n so watery" / &c - but it's probably an alt-lit thing, right?

That's not the actual voice is it

Are those verbatim quotes

I do not believe for a second that "a bunch've art/fashion people are trending toward" that voice.

And Nabisco OTM in re the often unearned dismissiveness behind that way of writing.

in fact, I said something similar upthread:

"And they act like because they use math, their “science” is more sciencey than sociology or whatever"

It should be fairly obvious that Pareene chose this tone because the column was discussing a study by economists of why more economists are not heads of state and he wished to convey the equivalent of a 15 year old saying "well, duh".

― Aimless, Wednesday, March 13, 2013 1:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The problem I have with this tone in this case is that (1) I can't even entirely tell what level of irony it is and I'm not sure he can either (is he parroting this exceedingly skeptical statement because he fully agrees with it, or is his exaggeratedly childish tone supposed to convey some sketpicism about the skepticism as well? And if so, what does he actually think about economists?) and (2) if he's actually adopting the statement fully, it comes off as a little too easily dismissive in an unearned way -- young blogger reminds us that OF COURSE economics is all just a bunch of bullshit dressed up with fancy numbers, etc.

― space phwoar (Hurting 2), Wednesday, March 13, 2013 2:25 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

take a flying fuck at the moooooooooooooooooooon

http://i44.tinypic.com/fkxjq0.png
IDK, stumbling across it increasingly frequently from people who would've been associated w/witch-house or seapunk &c when those were around.

So is that like a thing? (because old)

Well when Lamp first showed up talking about high concept theory and stuff but writing fukken this and fukkn that and then plax did too and then it spread around cause everybody thought it was cool and now half of ILX types like each other

I thought that was what you might be referring to

Your twitter pal seems like a third generation xerox of that

Not a very good gimmick

also seems a little like hipster runoff

乒乓 and that insane twitter otm

like i said before, this is an insider/outsider issue as much as anything else

I guess this is the first time that that voice has come off like some sort of Riddley Walker thing re: intelligibility. I think there's a bunch of Queer Art of Failure/Cruising the Future-via-Tumblr vibes floating around so maybe they frame this as some sort of resistance? Probably just an insider/outsider issue, though.

given that i have no idea what you're talking about, probably! i have no idea how shit is being framed, i can only see the whys and hows.

anti-doge blog

waht is teh voice of earned dismissiveness? harold bloom?

i'm much more fond of this not using periods thing as a rhetorical effect anyway

Are you talking about like steve roggenbuck etc.?

I also really don't buy this thing about the new meaning of periods.

xpost to etc—the one person i have seen type like that twitterer was someone arguing abt feminism/an art show on facebook and iirc they did explicitly frame their writing style as a form of or rooted in some kind of resistance. (also, do u mean cruising utopia or is there some other book?)

steve roggenbuck uses a different voice imo

I think so too but he does deliberately include misspellings. His style is about embracing the immediacy of internet vernacular though; it doesn't have much to do with oppositional or radical politics.

i think both groups are probably interested in the potential radicality of internet vernacular but for slightly different reasons

jfc there is no "potential radicality" whatsoever to writing like that

they might disagree but idrc about it enough to argue

Roggenbuck talks about radical populism and refers to Whitman a lot. He aspires to be a Warhol of web aesthetics but without the weary cynicism. The ppl etc seems to be talking about -- seapunks and others -- seem to be more traditionally subcultural and less interested in affirmation as a mood.

i think we can all agree that capitalization is just a huge waste of time + good riddance to bad rubbish

democratization of language and descriptivism over prescriptivism is one thing, but the style above just makes things really hard to read

what style above

that twitter

Agreed. I think that's the point tbh and there is a way in which faux naiveté is just obtuseness, deliberately employed to alienate and frustrate audiences. Warhol used it that way at times.

also claiming affiliation with people who write that way habitually, for whom it isn't at all hard to read, inside/outside

plus style points for offhand erudition

i guess the vast undifferentiated intellectual social class needs a house style too

!!!!!!!bingo!!!!!

is there any reason to believe these twitter ppl are not 13 yr olds looking to be difficultly rebellious?

(*searches twitter for 'liek'* no, no there is not)

i came across this site earlier today with really annoying prose: http://fuckyeahculturalappropriation.tumblr.com/

the tone is very much "everyday dude talkin' bout shit" but with occasional academic terms thrown in to indicate a casual greater knowledge of the subject. but what i found interesting is that they use question marks a lot to indicate a high rising intonation? never seen that before, but i don't read a lot of overearnest social justice tumblrs.

I had to stop reading a blog I quite liked because of its random exclamation points. I guess to indicate eagerness!

i forget the name of it but isn't that fuck yeah cultural appropriation thing basically copycatting another similar blog that answers questions about racism?

a+ hate reading - thx xzp

that tumblr is unreadable

its a stream of consciousness voice, which is fine, but its also actually actual stream of consciousness which is less fine.

archness, knowing, emulation, stylistic layers of internalized quotation -- i'm all for these things, and not just in the service of irony. but these things take lots and lots of work.

on the whole tho, i'm all for more expressive language, more misspellings with nuances and creative punctuation. but i'm not for saying these are about 'emulating' speech -- they're ways that text can express differently than speech can.

i mean it's like maybe because racism?

xpost to etc—the one person i have seen type like that twitterer was someone arguing abt feminism/an art show on facebook and iirc they did explicitly frame their writing style as a form of or rooted in some kind of resistance. (also, do u mean cruising utopia or is there some other book?)

― 1staethyr, Wednesday, December 4, 2013 3:27 AM (2 days ago)

Yeah, Cruising Utopia; had my wires crossed. RIP José Esteban Muñoz :/

Because the night.

i studied w/ munoz in grad school RIP :(

http://www.americandialect.org/because-is-the-2013-word-of-the-year

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=9494

<3

matt levine c/d

nailed it

https://medium.com/absurdist/the-bible-written-in-new-york-city-blog-voice-d8aa8341e081#.86blr6rat

a very reasonable take on the oregon clowns that opens five consecutive paragraphs with

Still, hang on.
All together now:
Here is the thing.
This, my good buddies,
Here is what this is:

Lol

ironically it never explains what a jamoke really is in case saying jamoke a bunch makes you start feeling unsure you really know

i blame bill simmons for this one

yah, the folksy sportswriter is a different but related tradition.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16929/16929-h/16929-h.htm

can someone help me pin down why i can’t stand the tone of online writing (fka blogging) in 2019?

everything i read seems longwinded, didactic, lots of unnecessary exposition, humourless, lawerly argumentation

i don’t think it’s faux naif blogger voice anymore (can’t remember if it was a good thing or bad... i do miss the gawker voice)

examples?

lol imagine 'reading' in 2019 when you could be neurally juuling in augmented reality

i imagine it. sometimes it's good! sometimes not. (continues)

i either write like that or write like fred rogers when i'm trying to discuss an issue

i go into dry and humorless mode mostly so i can avoid invective, which there's far too much of about. my sense of humor is often cruel. also, frankly, i seldom have the opportunity to try and make a reasoned argument, because there's seldom a fucking point to doing so these days. so it's a good way of keeping in practice so that my already dodgy reasoning skills don't atrophy completely.

i prefer writing in fred rogers mode but it's hard.

pa

can someone help me pin down why i can’t stand the tone of online writing (fka blogging) in 2019?

everything i read seems longwinded, didactic, lots of unnecessary exposition, humourless, lawerly argumentation

i don’t think it’s faux naif blogger voice anymore (can’t remember if it was a good thing or bad... i do miss the gawker voice)

can someone help me pin down why i can’t stand the tone of online writing (fka blogging) in 2019?

everything i read seems longwinded, didactic, lots of unnecessary exposition, humourless, lawerly argumentation

i don’t think it’s faux naif blogger voice anymore (can’t remember if it was a good thing or bad... i do miss the gawker voice)

lol imagine 'reading' in 2019 when you could be neurally juuling in augmented reality

― lumen (esby), Friday, June 7, 2019 1:27 AM (five days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

exactly. the faux naif voice ultimately was a literary technique, even if it was one you hated. it was about leaving space for uncertainty, and in this way reflecting the experience of thinking rather than just instantly jumping into "takes."

the internet moves too fast now, and is too paranoid and full of ill will, for this kind of approach to survive. "buckle up twitter" maybe has some residual cutesy quality but it's still just full on attack mode.

i mean, sometimes what was called the "faux naif bloggy voice" was used for being passive aggressive, but i think setting yourself up as an innocent contemplating the wild west of american culture is like a definitely literary trope. you can probably trace it to the "new journalists" of the 60s

The blustery faux-nihilism of ‘buckle up twitter’ and the bloggy faux-naïf voice of yore both strike me as two sides of the same coin - techniques by insecure writers of performing candor and ‘realness’ while actually keeping the reader at a safe distance

otm except i wouldn't say they're thinking about the reader at all, just the impenetrability of their own performance

I mean, it’s hard to wade into the online world without some kind of rhetorical armor.

I might be mixing up the faux naif voice with alt lit and the earlier new sincerity. The kind of like 2008 jezebel voice was insider-y and maybe a little different.

Faux naif in my sense was schtick but a less abrasive one than like the screaming style of 2019 social media

OeO/BN otm

what are we calling ‘buckle up twitter’?

what is "buckle up twitter"?!

A reference to the piece Fizzles posted. It's worth reading.

Yeah the writer of that piece uses it as shorthand for that abrasive hyper-cynical takedown tone, as in "buckle up twitter, I'm about to explain to you why Ulysses is a literal pile of used toilet paper!"

Strident and incurious and sarcasric and enraged

otm except i wouldn't say they're thinking about the reader at all, just the impenetrability of their own performance

Yeah I think that among the reasons why that tone is so insidious and popular is there’s a way that it weirdly flatters the readers ego bc it somehow makes you feel not like you are being shouted at, but that you are shouting along with the writer at some other third party

still don’t know if this is what flopson meant of if he was referring to the type of blogvoice that i used to write in because i can’t tell jokes and just want to be dull about what i think is right on x topic.

xpost yeah you're very very quickly on the inside of a knowledge-wielding club, with a model for how to wield it. may be just an innate side effect of wider and more rapid access to information --- expertise still takes a long time and a lot of engagement, while something slightly longer than a sound bite (but short enough to be memetic in the original sense) can be launched into the world with considerable ease.

it’s hard to wade into the online world without some kind of rhetorical armor

otm. but one's rhetorical strategy can be as simple as Trump's sixth grade taunting, accompanied by an invincible resistance to shame or self-doubt.

Twitticisms wear me out.

that "buckle up twitter" piece was so great to read, that style of writing is like nails on a chalkboard for me

i do enjoy twitter threads when they're written by actual historians, scientists, et al, in a calm and non-strident and thoughtful way

yeah it feels like there’s a tonal overlap between say sarah taber’s undoubtedly informed and informatively detailed agri-science threads and this style.

feels like people will imitate that style even where hard knowledge isn’t present. that does suggest a problem with the original tone. i note in that sarah taber thread: “Notice anything in common there?” and “That's why we call these areas "scrub".” both of which have that manner.

I think the “that’s why we” is significant. she means agri-science academics and professional agriculture inspectors. but the implication is “do you want to be a member of our knowledge club?”. that can be easily imitated without any knowledge.

the whole tone is one of “schooling” people.

What I also took away from that piece was the author’s dad seemed cool

Those types of “schooling” Twitter threads as a means of replacing a true deep dive into a new area of knowledge are to me the equivalent of those dumb fast speed, “camera pointed down” cooking videos of garbage food hacks for millennials I always see on Facebook and elsewhere.

i feel like a lot of people just aren't very good writers or particularly intelligent, and they don't compensate for these problems by doing a bunch of research. In the past, most of these people did not give the public the "benefit" of their voices. So, in a way, it's good, that more people have an outlet and can be heard. However, it's also like having to listen to the music of everyone who wants to be in a band.

buckle up seems to be an extension of vox-explainer voice. imho its a "we are the voice of facts and reason" sorta reaction to the current administration w/ a smug "serious people" vibe.

What ever happened to ironic quotation marks? Bloggers in the 2000s used to, like Derrida, write "under erasure" all the time, distancing themselves from concepts they mistrusted, or that they felt had a suspect provenance, or whatever. I believe I used to do this, but stopped for some reason. Others seem to have done this too.

Do people have less of an appetite for deconstruction than they once did?

I still do this. Old habits die hard.

Possibly replaced by Ironic Capitalization

ironic capitalization is Different imo

Or maybe it isn’t! But that’s fine.

Also voted puttanesca

And here’s why

Omg lol that also contained my vote on the sauce poll. I did vote puttanesca but it ruined my joke

idk i think it actually got even funnier

one weird trick to make your pasta bloggier... and that's okay

i think i decided at some point that all concepts are contentious so there was no point singling only some of them out with punctuation

True, true, but sometimes you need 'em for that extra 'do u see???' oomph.

The schooling voice seems precisely designed as a mighty weapon capable of clearing great swathes of open but infertile space. This tone shall not be policed because this tone goes to 11. Seems natural after an age of equivocation shaming (resisting urge to add a question mark there) - sub-thought - typing on phones now, with increasingly aggressive autocorrect, is making affected type/speech an actual effort.

n30*l33+ Sp0nG3BoB c0pY r3qU1rInG N3@rLy _3_ +!m3z @S L0nG +0 +yP3 @Nd n3g@+!nG !Tz PuRp0s3 !s @ g00D eX@mPl3 0F tH@+ pHeN0m3N0n

I wonder if part of the faux-naif bloggy voice is a reaction against the impenetrable academic voice that many of us were trained to use. People don't get taught in school how to write about specialized subjects in a straightforward, accessible, informal way, and if most of the nonfiction writing you've been doing is in the form of academic essays, it probably helps to have this standard blogging voice that signals, "I am chatting with a lay audience" that you can jump into.

the voice that drives me batty is the twitter hipster voice, it's predictable and repetitive and dull and yet speakers of this deeply unarcane tongue think it suffices as a shield to say the most outrageously callous dumbfuckery

one dril is enough is how i break it down to an extent and everyone else is doing the updated version of quoting austin powers all the time

Origins of the faux-naif bloggy voice? It's complicated.

what is the shared genealogy of this and american podcast voice?

Did anyone ever cite an actual example of this voice?

(I just read down the thread and couldn't really find one.)

We need to talk about the faux-naif bloggy voice

i feel like The Awl, as much as i loved it, was an early purveyor

Origins of the faux-naif voice? This blogger has Thoughts.