hey gawker dudes. what the fuck is wrong with you?

i was outside once, never made that mistake again

I once had to chase the pizza delivery guy and few steps outside my door because he left without giving me my 2 liter Mountain Dew. My legs hurt for weeks.

i once went outside and became lost, never again found my way home. i am currently gnawing voles and communicating via pilfered iphone from beneath a freeway overpass outside burlington, vermont. i do not recommend it.

pray for contenderizer

Curious what dayo's issue is with on smarm. Don't know that it's a flawless essay as much as it is a useful one from the perspective of making an intellectual case for ppl not dodging the issues

"On Smarm" is incoherent trash. The author cherry picks examples of people who have written about or mentioned "snark" and and based on these snippets pretends that there's a consensus of negative sentiment that people have for "snark," or that there is an authoritative tone floating in the ether that gives the appearance of consensus, when it's clear to anyone who's heard the word or seen it in print that it's often an approving way to describe one's own or another's sense of humor and overall sensibility.

His definition of "smarm" is unwieldy and cannot be summed up in a sentence that an average English-speaking adult could understand; it doesn't match the dictionary definition of the word, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to find an English corpus with entries predating "On Smarm" that upheld the author's definition in any way. His attempts to shoehorn smarm's more tradition definition of, basically, smug unctuousness, doesn't really fit the horoscope meaninglessness of his paragraph long definition of smarm that he is trying to use to unsuccessfully to describe the tone of Julavitz and Leland and others in the new sincerity school of journalism or whatever you wanna call it. As a demonstration of how flexible and all-purpose his definition is, I will quote it here to characterize "On Smarm":

("On Smarm") is a kind of performance—an assumption of the forms of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the substance. ("On Smarm") is concerned with appropriateness and with tone. ("On Smarm") disapproves.

A so-called "snarky" tone is definitely not a reaction to the above definition, as the author claims. A snarky tone is for being humorous or irreverent or ironic. A snarky tone might be used to disguise the weaknesses in an argument or to punch up a piece (or post) lacking substance. A snarky tone might even be a mere habit, but it's never a retaliation against an attitude or an intellectual pose.

If somebody objects to something, we absolutely live in a culture where openly objecting is just as socially acceptable as it always was, if not moreso. Dave Eggers is not the first asshole to say, eg, try writing a poem before you criticize one, and we don't need this overlong, creaky, poorly-constructed new media jack off sesh to remind us that everything is open to criticism by everyone. On the other hand, the Julavitzes are right to at least ask themselves and their readers what is the purpose of criticism, to say, for instance, that a descriptive criticism is more useful and edifying and sometimes even more entertaining than a judgmental criticism; and although there's room to disagree, "On Smarm"'s author is too foggy a thinker to mount that disagreement convincingly. He's also too priggish and goddamned smarmy and too full of shit to publish that article without looking like a hypocrite.

Dodging what issues? Are buzzfeed commenters and authors politicians caught in a scandal? Do they owe the public more than any other content farm? Do they owe the public anything at all? Are people really incapable of sniffing out bullshit, of seeing that their new media pastime is basically 21st century toilet reading? If one content farm has an editorial code of conduct that the "snarky" disapprove of, does that prevent another content farm from cannibalizing the same story from reddit or the chans or their tip inbox or wherever they're copying it from and putting it in the house style?

testify

i think the scocca article is good at identifying a certain mood, or cluster of ideas and rhetorical tendencies, which hadn't been named before. "smarm" seems as good a name as any other.

however, bamcquem otm that "snark," or kneejerk sarcastic dismissiveness, is a dumb reaction to eggers-style sanctimonious anti-intellectualism.

sometimes in the morning a bit slow just clicking on bookmarks without looking at what they are bump into that 1000 word bamcquern screed and am pretty sure i couldn't have bookmarked a thread where that would happened but here i am i guess, gotta be more careful with this shit mondays are hard enough already right?

Landmines could be anywhere. Cambodian cleaning lady missing her jaw and has a prosthetic leg. No one is safe.

that one was prob in cambodia tho

sometimes in the morning a bit slow just clicking on bookmarks without looking at what they are bump into that 1000 word bamcquern screed and am pretty sure i couldn't have bookmarked a thread where that would happened but here i am i guess, gotta be more careful with this shit mondays are hard enough already right?

http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/beijing_welcomes_you_tom_scocca.jpg?itok=DSaGPvxb

Curious what dayo's issue is with on smarm. Don't know that it's a flawless essay as much as it is a useful one from the perspective of making an intellectual case for ppl not dodging the issues

― deej loaf (D-40), Sunday, February 22, 2015 10:28 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

I don't really have strong feelings about the topic matter I haven't been beaten by the smarm police

I just think he's a bad writer, awful is maybe overstating it

He mistakes labored over concision for profundity

You can see the bite marks on his sentences, where they've been gnawed

His words don't work. There's no rhythm

That's just how I feel.

Agreed

i know i shouldnt contribute to this thread but i think dayo should take a long look at the ppl agreeing with him and consider if those are the people he wants to agree with

gawker has a whole subblog for pokemon?

http://pocketmonster.kotaku.com/

no, it's a whole subblog about my penis

smarmander

http://kotaku.com/the-best-pokemon-cosplay-1683899139/+patriciahernandez

Dylstew
I think I fell in love the first time I saw this one.

Forsaken18er
She's definitely captured my heart. Didn't even need to use a pokeball.

Zom-B
The only one that I'd say is in here based solely on attractiveness. I mean, outside of the hat, she could be any chick in a Vice Dos and Don'ts.

mistressjellyfish
I agree, I don't know why everyone is saying hers is the "best". This is one of the most effortless of them all, honestly she's mostly just a pretty face and a good body compared to the effort of some of the other costumes.

Zom-B
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/dnd/1210...

Essentially, she's a cute girl in a cute outfit. I guess a hat = cosplay now?

the worst thing about kotaku are the dudes that review pedo anime statuettes and japanese candy and shit http://kotaku.com/dead-or-alive-is-more-than-breasts-1686627572#_ga=1.187729133.416047259.1422305690

i know i shouldnt contribute to this thread but i think dayo should take a long look at the ppl agreeing with him and consider if those are the people he wants to agree with

― max, Tuesday, February 24, 2015 10:25 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

I'm fine with it tbh, I know that flopson likes me in plenty of other contexts (i l u flopson ;) )

I mean look if you're all into rewritten DFW with some sort of weird ten-word-per-sentence limit that guts what makes DFW good, go ahead?

Maybe another way to look at it is that I'm fine with what he's saying he's just saying it very poorly

feel like theres something maybe ind of uptight abt his writing but im not sure why u wld single him out as being bad he seems p good all things considered

Don't question me man I read a LOT of thinkpieces I know a good one when I see one :|

lol @ that max post (and much of this thread tbh) whereby he summons the power of exclusion from the circle j in an attempt to passively compel opinions into line

hah xp

somebody post a link so i can read and judge

whiney for somebody whos whole life is copsplay i dont get what bothers you so much about it

sometimes you can dismiss the bad writing aspect of bad writing but when writing tries to actually be good it's more glaring when it's not

Whiney's continued gawker/gawker media conflation so that he can throw in every minor site under that umbrella and kinja blog is kind of endearing

http://gawker.com/on-smarm-1476594977

sometimes you can dismiss the bad writing aspect of bad writing but when writing tries to actually be good it's more glaring when it's not

― mh, Tuesday, February 24, 2015 10:48 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is true

Whiney's continued gawker/gawker media conflation so that he can throw in every minor site under that umbrella and kinja blog is kind of endearing

― mh, Tuesday, February 24, 2015 10:50 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, it's coming from someone who loves Gawker, loves the work of max/J0rd/sam/def juz/caity and reads the newsfeed pretty much every day!

I'm just saying it sucks that the Gawker tone can be so dead on and then in the related links it's always like "Fucking Your Body Pillow Waifu Isn't As Sad as Your Family Thinks."

feel like theres something maybe ind of uptight abt his writing but im not sure why u wld single him out as being bad he seems p good all things considered

― lag∞n, Tuesday, February 24, 2015 10:45 AM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark

It's probably more an indication of how generally good the other writers are that when there's a bad one he really sticks out

hes def better than... some of the gawker writers

I thought it was sad, but some people don't even have body pillow waifus and have to deal. Thank you based gawker for letting me know about these subcultures.

love the stylization of the myriad guess who taylor swift is dating now posts

the swift related content is generally immaculate

for sure, it's like a distilled version of gossip rag style, almost to the point of being clickhole but not quite xp

its funny i dont really follow taylor swifts music or life so most of what i know about her is through the prism of the weirdo gawker coverage which i read every time

j0rd on Taylor is always top 10% of everything gawker's ever published

gawker getting passive-agg w/ beloved ilx poster here:
http://gawker.com/ping-pong-is-dead-long-live-ping-pong-1687648683

this looks pretty fascinating too:
Giuliana Rancic Says Zendaya's Hair Must Smell Like Oils and "Weed"

omg hamilton nolan is the worst look at this:
http://gawker.com/feed-your-babies-peanuts-1687691241

there's gotta be a better way of acknowledging who you're getting something from than "hat tip"

"a tip of the hat, m'lady, thanking u for the link"

xactly

ugh I always forget wtf people mean when they write "HT" on twitter or w/e and am so angry when reminded

nolan is hilar but his "I was a 96 lb weakling and now i'm a hulking behemoth" gym-shaming posts always have that "I have DISCIPLIIIIIIIINE" Bill-Hicks-talking-to-a-waffle-waitress vibe to em

don't know much about Nolan but all his fitness posts are downright awful (and actively harmful), unless they're just 100% trolling

yeah they are not kind

http://gawker.com/on-smarm-1476594977

update: i tried reading this and i couldnt