The Artist, the Media, and the Internet
Sep. 8th, 2024 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatLast night's random thoughts...which I'm thinking maybe if I write them down they will go away?
Condemning or Destroying Artists we don't know, who may have done and often have done terrible things, on the Internet
I've been pondering this for a while now and discussed it with Mother over the phone last night.
Everyone is capable of terrible and wonderful things. And oh so many have done both. Mostly forgivable, because people change, evolve, and make mistakes. Except of course for The Doofus or the Felon or He Who Shall Not Be Named - who we've decided is evil incarnate and there really is no good in him whatsoever.
Have you ever posted something either in blog, twitter, tumblr, on a fandom discussion board, on FB, anywhere on the internet - and had people come out of nowhere and attack you for it? Misconstrue what you wrote? Take bits of it out of context - and condemn you for those sentences alone, when they are part of a larger work and require the context of the other paragraphs to make sense? Or just misread or misinterpreted it? To the point - that you begin to second guess yourself? And wonder if you are insane? And consider deleting it? Or wish you could?
I don't know about you? But I have. Too many times to count. It's par for the course for a writer. You will piss folks off. The more you write, the more likely it will happen.
And let's face it - most people don't read posts on the internet, they skim. They are scrolling through - their eyes grab something interesting, and/or they see something that rubs them the wrong way, and because they can - respond to it. And sometimes with kindness, but a lot of times with hate. It's bad enough if you are someone like myself, unknown, not famous, and innocuous. It's a hundred times worse if you are a professional musician, artist, writer, etc - who has a brand. And makes your living writing songs, poetry, art, etc. Because then our bored and self-indulgent media grabs it, or some freelance writer working for them, and uses it to make their career.
I saw a documentary recently about The Brat Pack, and they went to interview the relatively unknown New York Magazine reporter who had casually coined the term - which resulted in the destruction and type-casting of various actors. Journalists have a lot of power, and often aren't wise about how they use it.
I was thinking about all of this last night - because I googled Amanda Palmer, and discovered she was ripped apart for writing a poem about the bomber/terrorist at the Boston Marathon. She was attempting to understand the bomber, to get inside their heads, and feel empathy for them. I get it, I'd have tried that too. It's a human thing to do - to attempt to dissuade hate with empathy.
Gawker ( a nasty social media platform that I think has gone the way of the do-do now or is less popular since the advent of well million others, everyone and their evil tech brother or father has set up one now. I 've lost count and begun to confuse them with each other) - basically decided she was a narcissist, an egotist, and evil on the basis of this poem. Then the media got a hold of it - and the journalists were so nasty about it, that it cost Palmer listeners and followers, although her community and base supported her, along with long term fans. So no permanent damage was done.
I read the poem. And thought? This poem is fine. It's kind of interesting and personal and relatable. It's not meant to be a journalistic article or a national memorial piece, it's just one person's reaction to the events. Her expression of her mixed and turbulent feelings. She even follows it up with a response to the hatred that was sent her way with THIS, which is even more interesting. In that she acknowledges how some of the hate resulted in anti-Amanda Palmer poetry, and an attempt by folks to demonstrate the right way to write a poem.
From her blog: "i recently went back to those original poem/blog pages and read some of the comments – there are almost 2,500. they’re still painful to read and make me squirm (here are some examples: “Write another one when they execute him”, “You are human garbage. Just fucking stop”, “Want to blow me Amanda? I am a Muzzie”, “You mean nothing, You are nothing”, “You are not a poet. You’re a sick bowl of puke”, “What a sick, lame, disgusting, scumbag way to bring attention to yourself”, “HAHAHAHAHAHA fucking retard”…you get the general idea.)
it was shocking to me at the time, and six years on, i’m still trying to unpack it."
And I thought damn, people do have a destructive force inside them and get on this weird moral high ground and decide to drown some poor soul they feel is morally repugnant or lacking in moral fiber for whatever reason. In their self-possessed moral outrage - they drown and destroy as a hurricane pulling in others around them. Then wander back, patting themselves on the backs, for their moral righteousness, justifying it, and seeing it as..social justice?
I often think of Joseph Conrad, no stranger to the vocal condemnation of the maddening crowd, who wrote in Heart of Darkness, when looking into the abyss, be sure it does not look back into you. Evil is insidious, it creeps into us through the cracks - via resentment, rage, outrage, jealousy, envy, fear...and takes root and holds - turning those emotions into hate. The opposite of hate, the enemy of it, isn't emotion - it's reason. Or calm.
Letting go. And feeling empathy for the person. Once empathy asserts itself, the hate goes away.
I had vaguely remembered how various folks on social media decided to cancel Amanda Palmer, decided she was clearly a terrible person - and condemned her husband at the time, Neil Gaiman, who they felt and knew was a wonderful kind man for staying with her. This was back in 2013-2014.
They didn't know her, or her husband. They read articles and posts about her. I read a Guardian article that completely took her poem out of context. So out of context, that when I found the actual poem, I didn't think it was the same one. I'm wondering if Journalism School doesn't cover logic or critical thinking? I'm guessing not?
This is what was written in the Guardian at the time:
Only a few weeks ago, she received a rapturous standing ovation at the TED conference in Long Beach, California, for explaining how she created the most financially successful crowd-funded music appeal of all time. I found it very impressive, and was only half-aware of the comments underneath basically expressing frustration that Amanda had tricked a new legion of fans into not realising what a terrible person she is. One comment read: “She is such an awful human being and it makes me so sad that Neil Gaiman is married to her.”
Then, as the alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding in a boat, Amanda published on her blog A Poem For Dzhokhar, which instantly went viral after Gawker declared it The Worst Poem Of All Time:
“You don’t know how it felt to be in the womb
but it must have been at least a little
warmer than this…
You don’t know how to stop picking at your
fingers…
You don’t know how precious your iPhone
battery time was until you’re hiding in
the bottom of the boat.
You don’t know how to get away from your
fucking parents.”
And so on. It was, Gawker wrote, a “world-historically horrific poem” written by “a deluded and opportunistic narcissist”. Fox News and the Boston Globe joined in, the former calling Amanda a “hopeless loser, maybe she’ll marry the guy”, and the latter suggesting the poem “seemed less an attempt to wrestle with the aftermath of a tragedy than an attempt to insert the Amanda Palmer brand into the middle of the discussion”.
Every comment she’s made about it since has made matters worse, from writing a blog accusing her critics of being “afraid to say, in public, that they feel empathy? This scared me so much”, to tweeting to her almost 900,000 followers that she “got a nice email from bono about art, timing & misunderstanding. If ever there was a guy who’d empathize with my past few days, it’s him.”
Dear god. This is why I'm not a journalist. It's also why I've stopped subscribing and paying for it. And I only watch NY1 for weather, local news, and rail and road report. Journalists often misconstrue and manipulate and take out of context what people say for their own ends. Never do an interview with a journalist to redeem your image - you don't know what their agenda is, and more often than not, it counters yours. This is why the more successful artists, like David Bowie, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Melissa Ethredige, Taylor Swift - have publicity and social media managers. As do most of the A list actors and celebrities - they have someone managing their social media blogs, and are very careful what they post.
This is what the AV Club said at the time:
"Boston resident Amanda Palmer has somehow found a way to make the city's marathon bombing about her, with the already-pretty-self-involved artist releasing a poem to mark the event. Addressed to suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, “A Poem For Dzhokhar” talks about the events of last week, but also somehow manages to weave in gripes about iPhone battery life, typos, and not knowing how many Vietnamese spring rolls to order.
Palmer attempts to humanize Tsarnaev (which is admirable, we guess?), but ultimately the poem fails on several levels, mostly because it’s absolutely insipid. For example, consider the following eyeroll-inducing segment:
"you don’t know how to stop picking at your fingers.
you don’t know how little you’ve been paying attention until you look down at your legs again.
you don’t know how many times you can say you’re coming until they just stop believing you.
you don’t know how orgasmic the act of taking in a lungful of oxygen is until they hold your head under the water.
you don’t know how many vietnamese soft rolls to order.
you don’t know how convinced your parents were that having children would be, absolutely, without question, the correct thing to do.
you don’t know how precious your iphone battery time was until you’re hiding in the bottom of the boat.
you don’t know how to get away from your fucking parents."
Dear god. That piece can be interpreted more than one way.
I wish I could say that Amanda Palmer is the only one who has been beaten up in this manner. But others have as well. It's almost as if - if you don't go along with the crowd, if you don't just write about the innocuous things you did daily, or the meals you fixed or squee about some fandom piece, or write a nice fanfic, or do what everyone else - you get attacked.
Artists get attacked if they step outside the bounds. Or get too successful. Or too many awards. Or too much attention. My mother said in Australia they called it "chopping down the tall poppies".
I wish people would think carefully before they do these things. Put themselves in the other person's place. Think, wait, what if it were me, what if I wrote a poem or shared a piece of art work, or a story - would I want someone to attack it in this way? Except, I realize while writing this that what a lot of folks think is - I'm making this person aware of how this work can be misconstrued. Or I'm pointing out how offensive and insensitive it is. Or I am helping those they hurt with their work. But isn't that kind of egotistical and narcissistic too? I mean who made us the arbitrator of art? The judge of what art should or shouldn't be shown?
Do we really have the right to censor someone else's work?
And I look at myself as I write this and think, do I do this? Am I aware of it? I don't think I do. I try to see where they are coming from. I regret posting about Whedon - because I'm still not sure what the actual story is there. And do I have the right to comment on it?
Yet we do. My mother talked about all the facial work Tom Cruise has had done, and his personal life - gleaned from somewhere or other. Also about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. And I told her - mother, this is gossip. This is none of our business. But, I admit, I get curious too and google.
Then we decide to stop looking at their work - because based on what the internet or media has related to us - we think these people are "terrible" despite all the wonderful and related works they've done, or charitable contributions or kind acts. No, these acts nullify those. And because they've done this terrible horrible bad thing - they shouldn't be allowed to create or share any other works with us? And we shouldn't buy them either?
Why is that?
Why does one negative review, or a handful of bad actions, or a bad night, or a bad decision, or a horrible mistake, or even a few bad mistakes intermittently over the years, or gossip that may or may not be true - nullify everything else that person has done? It's like everything is going well in this person's life, and we all sharing water, and art, and all of sudden they break a couple of beaver damns, and the flood waters come rushing in and wash everything we've built away?
I am not going to stop enjoying Harry Potter, because JK Rowling is afraid of transgenders - that seems silly somehow? (Granted I've not spent any more money towards it - because I don't want to fund her TERF causes.) Her fear doesn't cancel out everything else she is. Any more than I'm going to stop loving Buffy or Angel, because Whedon was a really horrible boss. That doesn't cancel out the rest. (Although I'm admittedly tentative about watching other new things he creates, albeit not that tentative - all reports from Firefly, Avengers, and The Nevers - is that he was fine on those sets. So it wasn't wide-spread.) Or despise the works of Dickens, because Dickens was such a Dick to women. Or despise the works of Neil Gaiman, because he was accused of rape. (That hasn't exactly been proven and the source is a bunch of podcasts, but it has put a few of his projects on permanent hold.) That's not how it works. I don't just read or watch or listen to the works of saints. (There are no saints, so that would be impossible.) Nor just the works of those I like. For me - art is a way to understand what another person is thinking and feeling. A way to feel empathy. A friend once told me that she read Flannery O'Connor, whom she felt was a racist and at times offensive, to understand how the other side thinks. There's something to be said for that? Granted reading Flannery O'Connor at this point doesn't give her or her estate or her causes any money.
Condemning or Destroying Artists we don't know, who may have done and often have done terrible things, on the Internet
I've been pondering this for a while now and discussed it with Mother over the phone last night.
Everyone is capable of terrible and wonderful things. And oh so many have done both. Mostly forgivable, because people change, evolve, and make mistakes. Except of course for The Doofus or the Felon or He Who Shall Not Be Named - who we've decided is evil incarnate and there really is no good in him whatsoever.
Have you ever posted something either in blog, twitter, tumblr, on a fandom discussion board, on FB, anywhere on the internet - and had people come out of nowhere and attack you for it? Misconstrue what you wrote? Take bits of it out of context - and condemn you for those sentences alone, when they are part of a larger work and require the context of the other paragraphs to make sense? Or just misread or misinterpreted it? To the point - that you begin to second guess yourself? And wonder if you are insane? And consider deleting it? Or wish you could?
I don't know about you? But I have. Too many times to count. It's par for the course for a writer. You will piss folks off. The more you write, the more likely it will happen.
And let's face it - most people don't read posts on the internet, they skim. They are scrolling through - their eyes grab something interesting, and/or they see something that rubs them the wrong way, and because they can - respond to it. And sometimes with kindness, but a lot of times with hate. It's bad enough if you are someone like myself, unknown, not famous, and innocuous. It's a hundred times worse if you are a professional musician, artist, writer, etc - who has a brand. And makes your living writing songs, poetry, art, etc. Because then our bored and self-indulgent media grabs it, or some freelance writer working for them, and uses it to make their career.
I saw a documentary recently about The Brat Pack, and they went to interview the relatively unknown New York Magazine reporter who had casually coined the term - which resulted in the destruction and type-casting of various actors. Journalists have a lot of power, and often aren't wise about how they use it.
I was thinking about all of this last night - because I googled Amanda Palmer, and discovered she was ripped apart for writing a poem about the bomber/terrorist at the Boston Marathon. She was attempting to understand the bomber, to get inside their heads, and feel empathy for them. I get it, I'd have tried that too. It's a human thing to do - to attempt to dissuade hate with empathy.
Gawker ( a nasty social media platform that I think has gone the way of the do-do now or is less popular since the advent of well million others, everyone and their evil tech brother or father has set up one now. I 've lost count and begun to confuse them with each other) - basically decided she was a narcissist, an egotist, and evil on the basis of this poem. Then the media got a hold of it - and the journalists were so nasty about it, that it cost Palmer listeners and followers, although her community and base supported her, along with long term fans. So no permanent damage was done.
I read the poem. And thought? This poem is fine. It's kind of interesting and personal and relatable. It's not meant to be a journalistic article or a national memorial piece, it's just one person's reaction to the events. Her expression of her mixed and turbulent feelings. She even follows it up with a response to the hatred that was sent her way with THIS, which is even more interesting. In that she acknowledges how some of the hate resulted in anti-Amanda Palmer poetry, and an attempt by folks to demonstrate the right way to write a poem.
From her blog: "i recently went back to those original poem/blog pages and read some of the comments – there are almost 2,500. they’re still painful to read and make me squirm (here are some examples: “Write another one when they execute him”, “You are human garbage. Just fucking stop”, “Want to blow me Amanda? I am a Muzzie”, “You mean nothing, You are nothing”, “You are not a poet. You’re a sick bowl of puke”, “What a sick, lame, disgusting, scumbag way to bring attention to yourself”, “HAHAHAHAHAHA fucking retard”…you get the general idea.)
it was shocking to me at the time, and six years on, i’m still trying to unpack it."
And I thought damn, people do have a destructive force inside them and get on this weird moral high ground and decide to drown some poor soul they feel is morally repugnant or lacking in moral fiber for whatever reason. In their self-possessed moral outrage - they drown and destroy as a hurricane pulling in others around them. Then wander back, patting themselves on the backs, for their moral righteousness, justifying it, and seeing it as..social justice?
I often think of Joseph Conrad, no stranger to the vocal condemnation of the maddening crowd, who wrote in Heart of Darkness, when looking into the abyss, be sure it does not look back into you. Evil is insidious, it creeps into us through the cracks - via resentment, rage, outrage, jealousy, envy, fear...and takes root and holds - turning those emotions into hate. The opposite of hate, the enemy of it, isn't emotion - it's reason. Or calm.
Letting go. And feeling empathy for the person. Once empathy asserts itself, the hate goes away.
I had vaguely remembered how various folks on social media decided to cancel Amanda Palmer, decided she was clearly a terrible person - and condemned her husband at the time, Neil Gaiman, who they felt and knew was a wonderful kind man for staying with her. This was back in 2013-2014.
They didn't know her, or her husband. They read articles and posts about her. I read a Guardian article that completely took her poem out of context. So out of context, that when I found the actual poem, I didn't think it was the same one. I'm wondering if Journalism School doesn't cover logic or critical thinking? I'm guessing not?
This is what was written in the Guardian at the time:
Only a few weeks ago, she received a rapturous standing ovation at the TED conference in Long Beach, California, for explaining how she created the most financially successful crowd-funded music appeal of all time. I found it very impressive, and was only half-aware of the comments underneath basically expressing frustration that Amanda had tricked a new legion of fans into not realising what a terrible person she is. One comment read: “She is such an awful human being and it makes me so sad that Neil Gaiman is married to her.”
Then, as the alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was hiding in a boat, Amanda published on her blog A Poem For Dzhokhar, which instantly went viral after Gawker declared it The Worst Poem Of All Time:
“You don’t know how it felt to be in the womb
but it must have been at least a little
warmer than this…
You don’t know how to stop picking at your
fingers…
You don’t know how precious your iPhone
battery time was until you’re hiding in
the bottom of the boat.
You don’t know how to get away from your
fucking parents.”
And so on. It was, Gawker wrote, a “world-historically horrific poem” written by “a deluded and opportunistic narcissist”. Fox News and the Boston Globe joined in, the former calling Amanda a “hopeless loser, maybe she’ll marry the guy”, and the latter suggesting the poem “seemed less an attempt to wrestle with the aftermath of a tragedy than an attempt to insert the Amanda Palmer brand into the middle of the discussion”.
Every comment she’s made about it since has made matters worse, from writing a blog accusing her critics of being “afraid to say, in public, that they feel empathy? This scared me so much”, to tweeting to her almost 900,000 followers that she “got a nice email from bono about art, timing & misunderstanding. If ever there was a guy who’d empathize with my past few days, it’s him.”
Dear god. This is why I'm not a journalist. It's also why I've stopped subscribing and paying for it. And I only watch NY1 for weather, local news, and rail and road report. Journalists often misconstrue and manipulate and take out of context what people say for their own ends. Never do an interview with a journalist to redeem your image - you don't know what their agenda is, and more often than not, it counters yours. This is why the more successful artists, like David Bowie, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Melissa Ethredige, Taylor Swift - have publicity and social media managers. As do most of the A list actors and celebrities - they have someone managing their social media blogs, and are very careful what they post.
This is what the AV Club said at the time:
"Boston resident Amanda Palmer has somehow found a way to make the city's marathon bombing about her, with the already-pretty-self-involved artist releasing a poem to mark the event. Addressed to suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, “A Poem For Dzhokhar” talks about the events of last week, but also somehow manages to weave in gripes about iPhone battery life, typos, and not knowing how many Vietnamese spring rolls to order.
Palmer attempts to humanize Tsarnaev (which is admirable, we guess?), but ultimately the poem fails on several levels, mostly because it’s absolutely insipid. For example, consider the following eyeroll-inducing segment:
"you don’t know how to stop picking at your fingers.
you don’t know how little you’ve been paying attention until you look down at your legs again.
you don’t know how many times you can say you’re coming until they just stop believing you.
you don’t know how orgasmic the act of taking in a lungful of oxygen is until they hold your head under the water.
you don’t know how many vietnamese soft rolls to order.
you don’t know how convinced your parents were that having children would be, absolutely, without question, the correct thing to do.
you don’t know how precious your iphone battery time was until you’re hiding in the bottom of the boat.
you don’t know how to get away from your fucking parents."
Dear god. That piece can be interpreted more than one way.
I wish I could say that Amanda Palmer is the only one who has been beaten up in this manner. But others have as well. It's almost as if - if you don't go along with the crowd, if you don't just write about the innocuous things you did daily, or the meals you fixed or squee about some fandom piece, or write a nice fanfic, or do what everyone else - you get attacked.
Artists get attacked if they step outside the bounds. Or get too successful. Or too many awards. Or too much attention. My mother said in Australia they called it "chopping down the tall poppies".
I wish people would think carefully before they do these things. Put themselves in the other person's place. Think, wait, what if it were me, what if I wrote a poem or shared a piece of art work, or a story - would I want someone to attack it in this way? Except, I realize while writing this that what a lot of folks think is - I'm making this person aware of how this work can be misconstrued. Or I'm pointing out how offensive and insensitive it is. Or I am helping those they hurt with their work. But isn't that kind of egotistical and narcissistic too? I mean who made us the arbitrator of art? The judge of what art should or shouldn't be shown?
Do we really have the right to censor someone else's work?
And I look at myself as I write this and think, do I do this? Am I aware of it? I don't think I do. I try to see where they are coming from. I regret posting about Whedon - because I'm still not sure what the actual story is there. And do I have the right to comment on it?
Yet we do. My mother talked about all the facial work Tom Cruise has had done, and his personal life - gleaned from somewhere or other. Also about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. And I told her - mother, this is gossip. This is none of our business. But, I admit, I get curious too and google.
Then we decide to stop looking at their work - because based on what the internet or media has related to us - we think these people are "terrible" despite all the wonderful and related works they've done, or charitable contributions or kind acts. No, these acts nullify those. And because they've done this terrible horrible bad thing - they shouldn't be allowed to create or share any other works with us? And we shouldn't buy them either?
Why is that?
Why does one negative review, or a handful of bad actions, or a bad night, or a bad decision, or a horrible mistake, or even a few bad mistakes intermittently over the years, or gossip that may or may not be true - nullify everything else that person has done? It's like everything is going well in this person's life, and we all sharing water, and art, and all of sudden they break a couple of beaver damns, and the flood waters come rushing in and wash everything we've built away?
I am not going to stop enjoying Harry Potter, because JK Rowling is afraid of transgenders - that seems silly somehow? (Granted I've not spent any more money towards it - because I don't want to fund her TERF causes.) Her fear doesn't cancel out everything else she is. Any more than I'm going to stop loving Buffy or Angel, because Whedon was a really horrible boss. That doesn't cancel out the rest. (Although I'm admittedly tentative about watching other new things he creates, albeit not that tentative - all reports from Firefly, Avengers, and The Nevers - is that he was fine on those sets. So it wasn't wide-spread.) Or despise the works of Dickens, because Dickens was such a Dick to women. Or despise the works of Neil Gaiman, because he was accused of rape. (That hasn't exactly been proven and the source is a bunch of podcasts, but it has put a few of his projects on permanent hold.) That's not how it works. I don't just read or watch or listen to the works of saints. (There are no saints, so that would be impossible.) Nor just the works of those I like. For me - art is a way to understand what another person is thinking and feeling. A way to feel empathy. A friend once told me that she read Flannery O'Connor, whom she felt was a racist and at times offensive, to understand how the other side thinks. There's something to be said for that? Granted reading Flannery O'Connor at this point doesn't give her or her estate or her causes any money.