It's Awl Over
January 16, 2018 1:22 PM Subscribe
The Awl and sister site the Hairpin announced that they'll cease editorial operations at the end of January.
The sites are a frequent source of MeFi front page fodder, including color stories, holiday dread, pretending you've never heard of Slavoj Žižek, and the Patricia Lockwood poem "Rape Joke".
The sites are a frequent source of MeFi front page fodder, including color stories, holiday dread, pretending you've never heard of Slavoj Žižek, and the Patricia Lockwood poem "Rape Joke".
I pin the blame for this on their switch to Medium, and then having to switch back. It could not have been good for their ad buys, let alone any other methods of monetization.
.
posted by SansPoint at 1:29 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]
.
posted by SansPoint at 1:29 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]
2017/18 strikes again.
posted by Artw at 1:33 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by Artw at 1:33 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
At least it’s a clean death and not a pivot to video.
posted by Artw at 1:35 PM on January 16, 2018 [20 favorites]
posted by Artw at 1:35 PM on January 16, 2018 [20 favorites]
Dammit.
posted by aspersioncast at 1:36 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by aspersioncast at 1:36 PM on January 16, 2018
The outpouring of grief on Twitter right now is reminding me how very many writers I follow now thanks to The Hairpin.
Zach Schonfeld: We lost Gawker, Gothamist, and now The Awl and The Hairpin in the span of 18 months. RIP, blogging. I am so sad
posted by rewil at 1:38 PM on January 16, 2018 [22 favorites]
Zach Schonfeld: We lost Gawker, Gothamist, and now The Awl and The Hairpin in the span of 18 months. RIP, blogging. I am so sad
posted by rewil at 1:38 PM on January 16, 2018 [22 favorites]
The Hairpin never quite recovered from the loss of Edith Zimmerman. And yes the switch to Medium was boneheaded, particularly since much of the reason I read those sites was the comments and Medium has the worst commenting interface I've seen, bar none.
Tell me the Billfold is OK?
posted by peacheater at 1:38 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]
Tell me the Billfold is OK?
posted by peacheater at 1:38 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]
.
posted by dinty_moore at 1:39 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by dinty_moore at 1:39 PM on January 16, 2018
The Billfold and Splitsider are ok, from what I've read.
posted by rewil at 1:39 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by rewil at 1:39 PM on January 16, 2018
.
posted by lalochezia at 1:40 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by lalochezia at 1:40 PM on January 16, 2018
This is giving me the same feeling I got when every venue I performed in closed within a year.
At this rate my resume is going to 90% places that folded within the last year.
posted by The Whelk at 1:44 PM on January 16, 2018 [19 favorites]
At this rate my resume is going to 90% places that folded within the last year.
posted by The Whelk at 1:44 PM on January 16, 2018 [19 favorites]
.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:44 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:44 PM on January 16, 2018
At least it’s a clean death and not a pivot to video.
You joke, but there's a reason everyone is pivoting to video.
Now, most of those sites will die too, but somewhat more slowly.
posted by GuyZero at 1:45 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
You joke, but there's a reason everyone is pivoting to video.
Now, most of those sites will die too, but somewhat more slowly.
posted by GuyZero at 1:45 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
We lost Gawker, Gothamist, and now The Awl and The Hairpin in the span of 18 months. RIP, blogging. I am so sad
The Toast deserves a spot on that list, too. And I know it's not exactly a metafilter favorite, but maybe XOJane?
posted by mosst at 1:50 PM on January 16, 2018 [32 favorites]
The Toast deserves a spot on that list, too. And I know it's not exactly a metafilter favorite, but maybe XOJane?
posted by mosst at 1:50 PM on January 16, 2018 [32 favorites]
(And just when I was planning a post on Fran Hoepfner's delightful Classical Music Hour column.)
posted by Iridic at 2:03 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by Iridic at 2:03 PM on January 16, 2018
That's truly sad news. For a while there it seemed like clever longform online writing was going to be a thing again.
In remembrance, I want to share what remains my favorite Awl piece: The Men of Hammacher Schlemmer.
posted by ZaphodB at 2:07 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
In remembrance, I want to share what remains my favorite Awl piece: The Men of Hammacher Schlemmer.
posted by ZaphodB at 2:07 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
I just put up a piece today.
Jesus Christ what a way to start the year.
.
posted by TheProfessor at 2:09 PM on January 16, 2018 [1 favorite]
Jesus Christ what a way to start the year.
.
posted by TheProfessor at 2:09 PM on January 16, 2018 [1 favorite]
We also lost MTV News which had some stellar political writing.
posted by The Whelk at 2:11 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 2:11 PM on January 16, 2018 [5 favorites]
You joke, but there's a reason everyone is pivoting to video.
Tactical sacrifice of users to secure advertising of a type that theoretically still pays money.
Now, most of those sites will die too, but somewhat more slowly.
Yeah, that.
posted by Artw at 2:12 PM on January 16, 2018 [9 favorites]
Tactical sacrifice of users to secure advertising of a type that theoretically still pays money.
Now, most of those sites will die too, but somewhat more slowly.
Yeah, that.
posted by Artw at 2:12 PM on January 16, 2018 [9 favorites]
So, can we talk abut how the advertising model doesn’t work cause advertising has stopped being effective partly because people don’t have disposable income anymore?
posted by The Whelk at 2:21 PM on January 16, 2018 [27 favorites]
posted by The Whelk at 2:21 PM on January 16, 2018 [27 favorites]
How come all these sites are shutting down now? Blogging has been called dead for years but this feels like it's more real.
posted by macrael at 2:22 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by macrael at 2:22 PM on January 16, 2018
So, can we talk abut how the advertising model doesn’t work cause advertising has stopped being effective partly because people don’t have disposable income anymore?
I'm fuzzy on where Google gets $90B annually and Facebook gets $26B annually if that's the case?
posted by GuyZero at 2:22 PM on January 16, 2018 [11 favorites]
I'm fuzzy on where Google gets $90B annually and Facebook gets $26B annually if that's the case?
posted by GuyZero at 2:22 PM on January 16, 2018 [11 favorites]
.
But if I'm being honest, most of my interactions with the site in the past couple of years has been marking all as read in Inoreader. The switch to Medium was awful, Choire was too big a loss for them to have come back from, and the quality since has had a pretty worse signal-to-noise ratio, even with a significant drop in quantity.
The year-end FAKES series was pretty good, though, and I'm happy that the last thing I actually read on the site (before the announcement) was this.
posted by General Malaise at 2:22 PM on January 16, 2018
But if I'm being honest, most of my interactions with the site in the past couple of years has been marking all as read in Inoreader. The switch to Medium was awful, Choire was too big a loss for them to have come back from, and the quality since has had a pretty worse signal-to-noise ratio, even with a significant drop in quantity.
The year-end FAKES series was pretty good, though, and I'm happy that the last thing I actually read on the site (before the announcement) was this.
posted by General Malaise at 2:22 PM on January 16, 2018
Oh, and not to toot my own horn, but previously (one of my very few Metafilter blue posts).
posted by General Malaise at 2:25 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by General Malaise at 2:25 PM on January 16, 2018
I'm fuzzy on where Google gets $90B annually and Facebook gets $26B annually if that's the case?
because no ones leaves google news or Facebook.
posted by Annika Cicada at 2:28 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
because no ones leaves google news or Facebook.
posted by Annika Cicada at 2:28 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
'm fuzzy on where Google gets $90B annually and Facebook gets $26B annually if that's the case?
It’s clearly not coming from pageviews on longform articles. The clickfarms and garbage are fine.
posted by Artw at 2:29 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
It’s clearly not coming from pageviews on longform articles. The clickfarms and garbage are fine.
posted by Artw at 2:29 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
because no ones leaves google news or Facebook.
The argument given was that advertising itself was now worthless/useless because no one has money to spend anyway.
Advertising is still as popular as ever. People certainly have money to spend - for example, last year Kickstarter raised $3B for the projects it hosts. Three billion fucking dollars for shit that doesn't exist (yet).
People have money to spend. Advertising is still plenty popular. Running an online magazine is a brutal business with low margins and intense competition and ad networks are equally brutal.
It’s clearly not coming from pageviews on longform articles. The clickfarms and garbage are fine.
I think a lot of advertisers on FB and GOOG are actually pretty happy with their results. Sadly unless you can offer millions of highly targeted impressions it is indeed a bad business.
posted by GuyZero at 2:34 PM on January 16, 2018 [6 favorites]
The argument given was that advertising itself was now worthless/useless because no one has money to spend anyway.
Advertising is still as popular as ever. People certainly have money to spend - for example, last year Kickstarter raised $3B for the projects it hosts. Three billion fucking dollars for shit that doesn't exist (yet).
People have money to spend. Advertising is still plenty popular. Running an online magazine is a brutal business with low margins and intense competition and ad networks are equally brutal.
It’s clearly not coming from pageviews on longform articles. The clickfarms and garbage are fine.
I think a lot of advertisers on FB and GOOG are actually pretty happy with their results. Sadly unless you can offer millions of highly targeted impressions it is indeed a bad business.
posted by GuyZero at 2:34 PM on January 16, 2018 [6 favorites]
Google and Facebook Account For Nearly All Growth in Digital Ads:
Digital ad revenue in the U.S. grew by more than 20% last year to a record $72.5 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. That’s the good news.
The bad news—at least for those who dislike duopolies—is that some estimates by other industry experts show that virtually all of growth in digital ad spending went to Google and Facebook, which already account for more than three-quarters of the U.S. digital ad market.
M-o-n-o-p-o-l-y
posted by imabanana at 2:43 PM on January 16, 2018 [14 favorites]
Digital ad revenue in the U.S. grew by more than 20% last year to a record $72.5 billion, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. That’s the good news.
The bad news—at least for those who dislike duopolies—is that some estimates by other industry experts show that virtually all of growth in digital ad spending went to Google and Facebook, which already account for more than three-quarters of the U.S. digital ad market.
M-o-n-o-p-o-l-y
posted by imabanana at 2:43 PM on January 16, 2018 [14 favorites]
You're certainly going to do better if you can get actual advertising sales on your side and sell some ad placements. If you are relying on remnant advertising then you A) get next to no money for showing it and B) it's all scuzzy shite that shits up your site, makes you look bad and probably fills your users browser with malware, driving them to ad-blockers.
Of course, if you serve millions of pages and have no costs and don;t give a shit about serving malware then remnant is fine.
posted by Artw at 2:47 PM on January 16, 2018 [7 favorites]
Of course, if you serve millions of pages and have no costs and don;t give a shit about serving malware then remnant is fine.
posted by Artw at 2:47 PM on January 16, 2018 [7 favorites]
Google and Facebook Account For Nearly All Growth in Digital Ads:
That's including ads that show on other peoples sites, FWIW.
posted by Artw at 2:49 PM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]
That's including ads that show on other peoples sites, FWIW.
posted by Artw at 2:49 PM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]
The Whelk: At this rate my resume is going to 90% places that folded within the last year.
This clearly means it's all The Whelk's fault! He's a witch! And he turned me into a duck! (I got better, thanks for asking.)
imabanana: Google and Facebook Account For Nearly All Growth in Digital Ads
Related: It's the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech (Zeynep Tufekci for Wired, Jan. 16, 2018)
posted by filthy light thief at 2:57 PM on January 16, 2018 [8 favorites]
This clearly means it's all The Whelk's fault! He's a witch! And he turned me into a duck! (I got better, thanks for asking.)
imabanana: Google and Facebook Account For Nearly All Growth in Digital Ads
Related: It's the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech (Zeynep Tufekci for Wired, Jan. 16, 2018)
Here’s how this golden age of speech actually works: In the 21st century, the capacity to spread ideas and reach an audience is no longer limited by access to expensive, centralized broadcasting infrastructure. It’s limited instead by one’s ability to garner and distribute attention. And right now, the flow of the world’s attention is structured, to a vast and overwhelming degree, by just a few digital platforms: Facebook, Google (which owns YouTube), and, to a lesser extent, Twitter.Not a complicated idea, but really dark. Information is free, but the biggest and broadest distribution channels are made and maintained by private companies, who rake in ad revenue based on knowing who you are as a content viewer.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:57 PM on January 16, 2018 [8 favorites]
That's including ads that show on other peoples sites, FWIW.
So, for instance, the DoubleClick ads Metafilter has would be counted as Google. It;s a monopoly of ad providers*, not a monopoly of content**.
* Not that there isn't a problem in that in itself
** yet.
posted by Artw at 2:57 PM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]
So, for instance, the DoubleClick ads Metafilter has would be counted as Google. It;s a monopoly of ad providers*, not a monopoly of content**.
* Not that there isn't a problem in that in itself
** yet.
posted by Artw at 2:57 PM on January 16, 2018 [3 favorites]
Also somewhat worrying: YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, the three platforms dirrcting peoples attention listed above, are currently hugely dominated by nazis.
posted by Artw at 3:00 PM on January 16, 2018 [9 favorites]
posted by Artw at 3:00 PM on January 16, 2018 [9 favorites]
.
posted by Berreggnog at 3:01 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by Berreggnog at 3:01 PM on January 16, 2018
Of course it was the Awl nearly two years ago that published the most prescient piece foreseeing the problems at the intersection of tech and media. I want to block quote some of it, but it's all seriously so important I can't find just one sentence or graph.
posted by General Malaise at 3:11 PM on January 16, 2018 [10 favorites]
posted by General Malaise at 3:11 PM on January 16, 2018 [10 favorites]
"a lot of people can go broke depending on an audience of smart people. So perhaps we’ll change our business plan as time goes on."
posted by unliteral at 3:12 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by unliteral at 3:12 PM on January 16, 2018
Seeing as no-one has done this yet:
Help Fund Metafilter!
posted by Start with Dessert at 5:09 PM on January 16, 2018 [10 favorites]
Help Fund Metafilter!
posted by Start with Dessert at 5:09 PM on January 16, 2018 [10 favorites]
Without The Awl, there's no The Hairpin. And without The Hairpin, there's no The Toast because it was in their comments section where Nicole Cliffe and Mallory Ortberg met.
posted by mhum at 5:57 PM on January 16, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by mhum at 5:57 PM on January 16, 2018 [7 favorites]
Last week, I finally turned on an ad blocker. I held out for so long, hoping that there could be some model where content creators and publishers could get paid, but after the 90,000th time of getting stuck on some stupid ad saying I’d been selected for something something where there was no way to go back to the damn thing I was trying to read, I did it, I installed an ad blocker.
I sorely wish Google would ding the page rank of any site that served JavaScript with ads. Let’s go back to AdWords and animated gifs. I’ll turn my ad blocker off if you promise not to use ads to mine bitcoin.
posted by advicepig at 6:13 PM on January 16, 2018 [9 favorites]
I sorely wish Google would ding the page rank of any site that served JavaScript with ads. Let’s go back to AdWords and animated gifs. I’ll turn my ad blocker off if you promise not to use ads to mine bitcoin.
posted by advicepig at 6:13 PM on January 16, 2018 [9 favorites]
This makes me sad because The Hairpin was a very refreshing feminist concern :( seriously.
posted by Kemma80 at 6:19 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by Kemma80 at 6:19 PM on January 16, 2018
I have a white-hot hatred for Medium, because in the guise of helping people blog, it's (imo, I have no stats, this is me griping) ruining independent blogging. So I'll happily assign a chunk of the blame to their shit platform.
RIP, Hairpin. I loved you during the Edith/Nicole/Mallory/Jolie/Anne Helen/Jane Marie heyday.
posted by kimberussell at 6:27 PM on January 16, 2018 [11 favorites]
RIP, Hairpin. I loved you during the Edith/Nicole/Mallory/Jolie/Anne Helen/Jane Marie heyday.
posted by kimberussell at 6:27 PM on January 16, 2018 [11 favorites]
I have a white-hot hatred for Medium, because in the guise of helping people blog, it's (imo, I have no stats, this is me griping) ruining independent blogging. So I'll happily assign a chunk of the blame to their shit platform.
I still blame Google for killing Google reader in a boneheaded move to try and recreate Facebook via plus and force it on people. They could have done more within Reader, but nope. You had it guys, and you killed it. And the web along with it.
[/beating a dead horse]
posted by [insert clever name here] at 7:25 PM on January 16, 2018 [11 favorites]
I still blame Google for killing Google reader in a boneheaded move to try and recreate Facebook via plus and force it on people. They could have done more within Reader, but nope. You had it guys, and you killed it. And the web along with it.
[/beating a dead horse]
posted by [insert clever name here] at 7:25 PM on January 16, 2018 [11 favorites]
Drinking a negroni in their honor.
posted by kenko at 7:36 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by kenko at 7:36 PM on January 16, 2018 [2 favorites]
I had just started reading The Awl and recommending it. Dang!
posted by Oyéah at 7:52 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by Oyéah at 7:52 PM on January 16, 2018
and then there is Lisa Finck, who has other avenues, but, still... damn.
posted by kozad at 8:10 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by kozad at 8:10 PM on January 16, 2018
•
omg
Edit after writing what follows: This comment has now turned into an elegy. RIP, Awl.
I used to have commenting account like No. 1001, I think it was, back when that was a thing there, before they changed the system they were using. The Awl was once that rare place where you could have real conversations with the writers and editors in the comments. In the comments, by God! One or two of those guys hung out here! They used exclamation marks sometimes! Or a lot!
My first bookmark of the site in Pinboard: April 22, 2009. So it was also that rare thing I started reading from the very get-go, and I almost feel...some odd kind of ownership stake in it by dint of longtime fandom and readership? (I was recently musing on the notion of ownership as it relates to beholding one's works.) I have 461 Awl-related bookmarks in Pinboard spanning the years between then and now. So many trains of thought sparked by that site. So many wonderful tags and URL slugs. On a bookmark from August 2009: "
I might have to spend some time going through and backing up that content. Anyone know whether there are plans to make sure it's all preserved somehow and hosted somewhere, e.g., through Medium still, or on archive.org? I see there are archives, but I wonder if they're complete. Some of the original links already 404 (and perhaps long have?). The old about page also 404s for me, but it used to say this: "Welcome to The Awl, the last weblog. The Awl was started in 2009, at least four Internets ago." (That was what it said as of May 13, 2016, when I saved a link to it for some reason, probably because it's beautiful. Is it another internet yet? I guess we're all on Slack. Remember that time when we all tried to guess the media outlet by its tweet?)
It's been a long time since I thought about Benson the carp. (My tags on that one: "
Looking back through some of the links, things stand out. I like how, uh, enthusiastic David Carr's original headline was about The Awl, a year and a half in: "The Awl Finds Some Level of Online Success." (The title of the article appears to have changed at some later date, heh.) Nieman Lab suggested "The Awl wants to win on the web with great writing, not SEO tricks." I wonder how long that remained true, or if it changed at some point of necessity. Then there was that time they wrote about the rise of sites like Medium—there are some great quotes in that thing. (I recall being as surprised as they were at the time that Anil Dash was arguing for subsuming all content into these systems. "Wasn't he all about having your own stuff on your own server? Or is that over now?" I pondered at the time.) The Verge profile was good.
Some of my favorite sentences from The Awl over the years (or at least ones I liked enough to save in my bookmarks) are as follows, with surely-soon-to-be-defunct links.
★
posted by limeonaire at 8:17 PM on January 16, 2018 [38 favorites]
omg
Edit after writing what follows: This comment has now turned into an elegy. RIP, Awl.
I used to have commenting account like No. 1001, I think it was, back when that was a thing there, before they changed the system they were using. The Awl was once that rare place where you could have real conversations with the writers and editors in the comments. In the comments, by God! One or two of those guys hung out here! They used exclamation marks sometimes! Or a lot!
My first bookmark of the site in Pinboard: April 22, 2009. So it was also that rare thing I started reading from the very get-go, and I almost feel...some odd kind of ownership stake in it by dint of longtime fandom and readership? (I was recently musing on the notion of ownership as it relates to beholding one's works.) I have 461 Awl-related bookmarks in Pinboard spanning the years between then and now. So many trains of thought sparked by that site. So many wonderful tags and URL slugs. On a bookmark from August 2009: "
ah the art of writing sentences in tags field." Awl Twitter has always been good too.I might have to spend some time going through and backing up that content. Anyone know whether there are plans to make sure it's all preserved somehow and hosted somewhere, e.g., through Medium still, or on archive.org? I see there are archives, but I wonder if they're complete. Some of the original links already 404 (and perhaps long have?). The old about page also 404s for me, but it used to say this: "Welcome to The Awl, the last weblog. The Awl was started in 2009, at least four Internets ago." (That was what it said as of May 13, 2016, when I saved a link to it for some reason, probably because it's beautiful. Is it another internet yet? I guess we're all on Slack. Remember that time when we all tried to guess the media outlet by its tweet?)
It's been a long time since I thought about Benson the carp. (My tags on that one: "
wait so the fish died and you're going to pick it up") It's barely been any time at all since I thought about Rivers Cuomo. Remember when we worried the internet was getting the best parts of us?Looking back through some of the links, things stand out. I like how, uh, enthusiastic David Carr's original headline was about The Awl, a year and a half in: "The Awl Finds Some Level of Online Success." (The title of the article appears to have changed at some later date, heh.) Nieman Lab suggested "The Awl wants to win on the web with great writing, not SEO tricks." I wonder how long that remained true, or if it changed at some point of necessity. Then there was that time they wrote about the rise of sites like Medium—there are some great quotes in that thing. (I recall being as surprised as they were at the time that Anil Dash was arguing for subsuming all content into these systems. "Wasn't he all about having your own stuff on your own server? Or is that over now?" I pondered at the time.) The Verge profile was good.
Some of my favorite sentences from The Awl over the years (or at least ones I liked enough to save in my bookmarks) are as follows, with surely-soon-to-be-defunct links.
• "It never occurs to rich people that their floors would be cleaned more effectively and their yards would be manicured more carefully if the people who did this work did not have to drive 100 miles every day."I leave you with these thoughts from Paul Ford related to The Awl in "Real Editors Ship," which still seem incredibly apropos today and really shaped my thoughts about the connection between editors and I guess what we're now calling product types.
• "What is a 'power broker,' exactly? Does that go on someone’s business card?"
• "A new study out of Florida followed 262 middle-aged obese women and the results were… I dunno, surprising? Sure, let’s go with surprising! ... You want to look more attractive so that people will want to do sex to you."
• "This is obviously the best possible way to treat employees."
• "It's almost like they want you to give up."
• "I mean, left to my own devices my fashion sense is to wear the shiniest thing possible. Ideally it would be blinking or on fire."
• "There was always a sense that there was a time before the then-current one. Loss? That there was some moment that would have been a more natural fit? At any rate, a sense of displacement, an acute awareness of being displaced, out of time, of being too late. Of being equipped to fully thrive in a paradigm that was the immediately previous paradigm."
• "I certainly didn't actually need or even want to see another death video or extreme butt-related gross-out video. But it seems shocking that you're not forcing it upon me by surprise. The professionalized web has its delights but it definitely lacks the element of surprise."
• "There are no good excuses for avoiding emails, either. When someone says, 'Oh, I never answer my phone,' you nod admiringly at that person's forward-thinking, tech-savvy ways. 'This person is so modern that they have completely dispensed with a technology that still ties much of humanity together,' you think. But 'I never read my email'? An obvious lie. 'Overzealous spam filter'? Even more insulting. Telling someone that their note must have gone to spam is essentially telling them that you do not respect them enough to come up with even a barely plausible excuse, like your hard drive got totally fried or you suddenly developed temporary night blindness that also afflicts you during the day. It's just bad form."
• "But still, they come. Each day brings an ever-increasing pile, adding to the guilt and desperation. The crushing sense of pervasive dread I feel each time I refresh my inbox (which, as discussed, I pretty much do all the time) is the stuff of Russian fiction. Your emails are a sack of adorable babies floating down the river, crying out for salvation. I cannot save all the babies! How can I save all the babies? WHY ARE YOU PUTTING THIS MUCH PRESSURE ON ME?"
There seem to have been a couple quotes removed from that one, too, or maybe I imagined these sentences, 'cause I had them along with that bookmark in Pinboard.• "There is one reason and one reason alone to follow up on an email quick, and it is if I owe you money."• "When asked about 'those sheep-bangers out in D.C.,' most respondents registered negativity. 43% said they should all be killed; only 18% said they shouldn't all be killed. ... The poll has an error margin of +/- 15%, and was entirely conducted among the aging population that still has landlines. Then they called a bunch of cellphones and only the freaks who pick up random calls on their cells were interviewed. Pollsters just hung up on people who didn't 'sound like' they spoke English very well."
• "There's a special ring of hell for pretty much anyone that can't immediately leave a thing alone. Any old thing. You ALREADY SENT IT NOW STOP AND DO SOMETHING ELSE WHILE YOU WAIT. The worst is the Call-then-voicemail-then-immediate-re-call."
• "Happy World Oceans Day! How are we celebrating? 'Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) said it was investigating the power outages at its No. 1 and No. 2 reactors in the Daiichi plant in Fukushima, badly damaged by the devastating March earthquake and tsunami. The company is also considering dumping low-level radioactive water into the sea from another nearby plant slightly damaged by the March disasters...'"
• "Los Angeles is becoming a city of choice."
• "It hurts to lift that one foot you have in the spirit world and come back to earth, to keep both feet in reality, to become earthed."
• "An existential crisis in Boston: Now that the Bruins have won the Stanley Cup, what do the region's whiny sports fans have to complain about anymore? I mean, apart from actually having to live in that fetid hellhole."
• "Anthony Weiner gave a press conference in which he quit his job in Congress: 'and most importantly I can continue to heal from the damage I have caused' is something that he said, and well, okay? Wait, what? So long and good luck. See you in your new job on MSNBC soon most likely. Blech."
• "Bonus bit, from the chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business: 'We don’t have 11 million unemployed farmers today because over time farmers and their children transitioned into different sectors.' True! We have 2 million farmers who live in a completely bizarre hybrid socialist-corporatist country of their own."
• "You know what I find most interesting about this video? The fact that there is almost certainly someone out there who is masturbating to it right now."
• "Stuff is so messed up, it could be any number of things really. The paper says 'on intensifying investor fears about a slowdown in global economic growth' and that's such a huge load of baloney."
• "Their nagwall appears after a good amount of browsing—you can read quite a bit without being harassed. And then it asks you to consider giving one of two different kinds of currency: it wants you to share the site with a friend or to straight-up give money. Equal value! It also gives you something most paywalls don't have: a big option to 'ignore.' It'll crop up again, eventually. And they also built something wonderful, which looks like they've commented-out in the code right now, so it's not happening (you try building an actual magazine website from scratch in 48 hours), but they built it so that, if users clicked through to give money via Paypal, and then didn't actually follow-through, a friendly message would acknowledge that choice. The thinking behind this idea seems really sound to me! It's a direct ask for something people can give. It's definitely not a demand. It's good-humored. And it's a relatively simple interface. I'd love to see what people build on from there."
• "It should come as no surprise then that, with this amount of data sitting on our desktops, nestled away in our pockets, we channel our existential angst through the search box, believing that somewhere in that tangle of information must be stored some crucial piece of advice."
• "It was better to do Dorm Crew at the end of the year, I think—you found all the stuff people left behind after moving out of their dorms. A friend found that Burberry scarf once; people would leave crazy stuff, couches, televisions, appliances. I think I got an Ethernet cable. I was juiced. Those things were $10!"
• "Paying for a wedding can be like wearing a hair shirt—after a while, writing a four-figure check (or five-figure, or six-, all depending on your level of insanity) stops feeling like flesh-scouring pain. ... Messy conversations are what you are signing up for, and what you will bump up against regularly for the remainder of your lives together."
• "'[A] new study finds that people who get out of bed by 7 a.m., on average, do better in the workplace and have a lower chance of being depressed, stressed and overweight.' They also probably think life is worth living and stuff. Sigh. I'm going back to bed."
• "Yeah, that's a terrific idea! I can't think of anything to worry about on this score. Let's get busy making robots that are self-aware!"
• "Nor did anyone explain what this new commenter system is like. It runs apparently on magic, and will increase pageviews magically."
• "Consumers who feel powerless reach for extra-large portions of food in an effort to increase their social standing in the eyes of others, a new study suggests..."
• "Asked what he thinks of the comparisons between the Tea Party and #occupy movements, Schmuki jumped. 'That’s absolutely false,' he said. The #occupy protests 'are anarchists and communists.' For Schmuki, the primary difference is that the #occupy protesters 'are paid to be there' while 'the Tea Party, from the inception, never had paid members. We've never had people who were paid to be at events.'"
• "Michigan Bigfoot Definitely Not Jewish: A Michigan woman says she feeds a bigfoot family blueberry bagels."
• "Vote for Nobody. Nobody will keep campaign promises. Nobody will listen to your concerns. Nobody will help the poor. Nobody will bring the troops home. Nobody cares. Nobody tells the truth. If nobody is elected, things will be better for everyone."
• "That TV show you like might not be coming back."
• "Worried about your livelihood printing these posters that you didn't create? Keep calm and fuck off." (This screenshots this MeFi comment.)
• "They suggest falling asleep before their partner may be a non-conscious way for men to ‘foreclose’ any conversations about commitment." Right, non-concious." (Also heh, no one fixed Balk's typo in 6 years?)
• "I would go along and I would see people building a bridge, or they'd be making a new road, and I thought, they're crazy, they just don't understand, they don't understand. Why are they making new things? It's so useless. But, fortunately, it's been useless for almost forty years now, hasn't it? So I've been wrong about it being useless making bridges and I'm glad those other people had the sense to go ahead."
• "As with all terms in advertising, it's a word that doesn't make much sense on its face. (Ask me about "stock and flow" someday.)" (Is now the time?)
• "It turns out nice weather does not make you any happier. You know why? Because NOTHING makes you happier. And why would it? You're on a treadmill of poor choices and mistakes until your legs finally give out and the whole thing mercifully comes to a stop. I'll concede that it's probably more pleasant to grind out your quotidian routine of suffering and regret under cloudless skies, but let's not kid ourselves that there's really anything that makes it worthwhile."
• "Have heard two different bros talking about their divorces within ten minutes on Court St. So it begins." (I had this line saved, and I think it must've been in the original somewhere, but it's not there now.)
• "But another contributing factor to the Obama victory is the fact the people see us as the party of rape, and that is no longer the net positive it used to be." (Wow, this is prescient. Except apparently he underestimated how much some people like the party of rape?)
• "And then something ruptured in me and I started screaming at the window. 'Bitch, I'm the bitch who's in this house! You're the bitch outside of this house! You need to fucking leave! Get the fuck away!'"
• "But while I am willing to cut 'Serial' enough slack to regard it as an experiment in form, I am still disturbed by the thought of Koenig stomping around communities that she clearly does not understand, digging up small, generally inconsequential details about the people inside of them, and subjecting it all to that inimitable 'This American Life' process of tirelessly, and sometimes gleefully, expressing her neuroses over what she has found."
• "Look, I know at this point we are all tired of winter, and the fact that it is freezing and there's still snow right now and more snow in our future—even as March is so close that we are already coming up with excuses to cancel on the plans we halfheartedly agreed to earlier in the month—is at the very least disheartening if not downright depressing, it is important to remember that life is terrible, that nothing will ever get better and that we are all perched precariously on top of a giant, slippery pile that, any appearance to the contrary aside, is actually shit all the way to the bottom and there is no way we can forestall our inevitable rapid descent down its suppurating slope. Our entire existence is a poorly-constructed contrivance of false promise and empty achievement, and the unease we feel in unguarded moments is merely our brains acknowledging the terrible truth we spend so much time attempting to conceal from ourselves. I guess what I am saying is I am not sure that a little snow makes things all that much worse."
• "It upsets me when we are talking and playing that sometimes one of you will run, unprompted, and get my phone and bring it to me, because you want me to be happy. Here's your phone, Daddy. As if I was looking lost without it."
• "It happened in Chicago. Is your town next?"
• "The math is even starker for smaller publications and individual bloggers, who rely more heavily on display advertising—and who have already been battered by shifts in the advertising market; some longtime professional bloggers, like Heather Armstrong, have given up writing their blogs full-time." (Heh, my comment on this one: "An em dash and a colon, really, Awl?")
• Josh Dean, a frequent contributor to outlets like GQ and Bloomberg Businessweek, wrote 'The Life and Times of the Stopwatch Gang' for the Atavist Magazine because it would have been 'gutted' at eight thousand words, the maximum length he would have gotten at a print magazine."
• "'Foodie' has become as nearly meaningless as 'hipster' or 'bro,' for nearly the same reasons."
"Editors ship. There's no place to hire the nerdier ones because the Awl won't set up a job board. That's sad. The web is changing and it needs more editors. Do not dispute me. I love you. Goodbye."Actually no, maybe I should leave you with their own premature goodbye thoughts from May 20, 2011.
• "We guess this is it. Goodbye forever! Here’s some of what we’re glad to be skipping. ... The last print publication: Daily Beast Newsweek n+1 Cat Fancy"Also here's what replaces newspapers. Even the water will be more blue! Sadly, I'm not sure what replaces The Awl, or if anything can. I'm going to miss weather reviews so much.
★
posted by limeonaire at 8:17 PM on January 16, 2018 [38 favorites]
Correction: Now that I think about it a little more, I think I had commenting account No. 1011. That seems right. Sigh. ☹️
posted by limeonaire at 9:51 PM on January 16, 2018
posted by limeonaire at 9:51 PM on January 16, 2018
> General Malaise:
".
But if I'm being honest, most of my interactions with the site in the past couple of years has been marking all as read in Inoreader. The switch to Medium was awful, Choire was too big a loss for them to have come back from, and the quality since has had a pretty worse signal-to-noise ratio, even with a significant drop in quantity.
The year-end FAKES series was pretty good, though, and I'm happy that the last thing I actually read on the site (before the announcement) was this."
That was good.
.
posted by Samizdata at 12:21 AM on January 17, 2018
".
But if I'm being honest, most of my interactions with the site in the past couple of years has been marking all as read in Inoreader. The switch to Medium was awful, Choire was too big a loss for them to have come back from, and the quality since has had a pretty worse signal-to-noise ratio, even with a significant drop in quantity.
The year-end FAKES series was pretty good, though, and I'm happy that the last thing I actually read on the site (before the announcement) was this."
That was good.
.
posted by Samizdata at 12:21 AM on January 17, 2018
Also...
∞
.
(That's a period with a hairbow, for The Hairpin.)
posted by Samizdata at 12:24 AM on January 17, 2018
∞
.
(That's a period with a hairbow, for The Hairpin.)
posted by Samizdata at 12:24 AM on January 17, 2018
You joke, but there's a reason everyone is pivoting to video.
Tactical sacrifice of users to secure advertising of a type that theoretically still pays money.
Don't worry, YouTube is trying to kill that, too. I got my 'you're too small to be monetized' email this morning.
posted by AzraelBrown at 4:21 AM on January 17, 2018
Tactical sacrifice of users to secure advertising of a type that theoretically still pays money.
Don't worry, YouTube is trying to kill that, too. I got my 'you're too small to be monetized' email this morning.
posted by AzraelBrown at 4:21 AM on January 17, 2018
It's been all downhill since we lost suck.com.
posted by mikelieman at 5:43 AM on January 17, 2018 [6 favorites]
posted by mikelieman at 5:43 AM on January 17, 2018 [6 favorites]
.
For all y'all who miss blogs & blogging, there was a MeTa not too long ago: Who Are The Bloggers of Metafilter.
posted by fraula at 5:47 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
For all y'all who miss blogs & blogging, there was a MeTa not too long ago: Who Are The Bloggers of Metafilter.
posted by fraula at 5:47 AM on January 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Edith Zimmerman era hairpin is what got me back into following blogs, not just for the writing but also for the community.
RIP
posted by teamKRL at 6:33 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
RIP
posted by teamKRL at 6:33 AM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
Oh, YouTube is totally where the people who want YouTube shouters go. That's why Pivot-to-video while retaining your own site is doomed.
As for the shouters themselves, i could care less if they get paid less because, as noted above, they are almost entirely nazis and the content is almost entirely drivel.
posted by Artw at 6:54 AM on January 17, 2018
As for the shouters themselves, i could care less if they get paid less because, as noted above, they are almost entirely nazis and the content is almost entirely drivel.
posted by Artw at 6:54 AM on January 17, 2018
Man, limeonaire's list is both remarkable and really driving home what a bummer this is. The Awl was my dream poetry publication outlet. There's nothing like it.
Also, how will I ever know how the ongoing saga of Jared Kushner and his daughter the shadow president ends? I looked forward to those posts every week.
posted by torridly at 7:30 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Also, how will I ever know how the ongoing saga of Jared Kushner and his daughter the shadow president ends? I looked forward to those posts every week.
posted by torridly at 7:30 AM on January 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
I blame Fake News. It seems more difficult now to support arguments if you're not citing The NYT or The Atlantic or The BBC.
posted by Brocktoon at 7:55 AM on January 17, 2018
posted by Brocktoon at 7:55 AM on January 17, 2018
Ahhh this blows.
I loved writing for The Awl, and I will always be immensely proud that my work appeared alongside the kinds of pieces that limonaire highlighted above. One of the major sentiments I've seen floating around twitter is the idea that "The Awl let writers write the pieces they always wanted to write but could never find a home for (@freedarko)," "The @Awl let good writers write about what interested them, and gave them a little bit of money, and surrounded them with other good writers, and made sure someone read it (@dankois) and I agree with that so hard. I cannot describe how thrilling it was for a person like me, with no established writing out there, to pitch a goofy little idea and have the response be so enthusiastic - not only from the editors but also the audience.
I'm always thinking about starting up Fun with Maps again, and now I fear that opportunity has been lost. I should have taken better advantage when I had the chance.
.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 10:58 AM on January 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
I loved writing for The Awl, and I will always be immensely proud that my work appeared alongside the kinds of pieces that limonaire highlighted above. One of the major sentiments I've seen floating around twitter is the idea that "The Awl let writers write the pieces they always wanted to write but could never find a home for (@freedarko)," "The @Awl let good writers write about what interested them, and gave them a little bit of money, and surrounded them with other good writers, and made sure someone read it (@dankois) and I agree with that so hard. I cannot describe how thrilling it was for a person like me, with no established writing out there, to pitch a goofy little idea and have the response be so enthusiastic - not only from the editors but also the audience.
I'm always thinking about starting up Fun with Maps again, and now I fear that opportunity has been lost. I should have taken better advantage when I had the chance.
.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 10:58 AM on January 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
The Awl and the Hairpin’s Best Stories, Remembered by Their Writers
posted by rewil at 12:08 PM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by rewil at 12:08 PM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
I am now driving myself crazy because I can't find the "Ask a Bird" one-off column in the Hairpin. Pretty sure it was by Edith Zimmerman. It was so dumb and made me laugh so very loudly.
posted by queensissy at 4:16 PM on January 17, 2018
posted by queensissy at 4:16 PM on January 17, 2018
Oh God, I forgot to search my bookmarks for The Hairpin. I have 52 of them. Some highlights are as follows.
• Women Laughing Alone With SaladAnd then there's this, which is also as much of an elegy for them as anything.
• "Occasionally when I have time after watering my houseplants I'll slip into my church flats and something smart. It makes ironing my ambiguous service job uniform feel like more of an activity and less of a chore."
• The Baby-Sitters Club: Where Are They Now?
• "How does one expel a penis ghost?"
• "That is the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me. You know all my secrets, too! I wish they were juicier lately, but now that I’m getting wifed they’re more like 'Edith: I am buying wedding shoes right now. Here look at them.' Which is the boringest possible chat to send someone. Sorry."
• Snackwave: A Comprehensive Guide To The Internet’s Saltiest Meme (Aw man, I was going to do a front-page post on this at some point and I never did.)
• The Magic Trick
• "Remember when you were young and it felt like women were poised to take over the world?"
• "Doggo"
• Chola Makeup
"'Centipede' is Latin for 'I'm not even joking it had literally a hundred legs.'"
• What If a Women's Magazine Editor Edited a BBC News Story About Syria? (This one gave me flashbacks and made me laugh until I cried.)
• "Oh yeah, because that’s the other rule of being a person online: everything disappears, and don’t be surprised when it does. It’s the agreement we all signed the moment we created AIM usernames, even if we didn’t know it. AIM gave way to Gchat, which gave way to Slack, which gives way to something else entirely. Something we can’t predict yet — and if we can’t predict it, we can’t fence it or privatize it, or in any way protect it."posted by limeonaire at 4:42 PM on January 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
The Awl was a place for good and great poetry, as evidenced by "Rape Poem" of course, but there were so many others. It was nice to find good poems in a place I did not go to to find poems.
posted by old_growler at 10:10 PM on January 17, 2018
posted by old_growler at 10:10 PM on January 17, 2018
I’m seeing talk of mass layoffs at Buzzfeed UK all over Twitter. Definitely a business model going down in flames.
posted by Artw at 10:01 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 10:01 AM on January 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
Further appreciation from Jo Livingstone at The New Republic.
posted by torridly at 10:24 AM on January 18, 2018
posted by torridly at 10:24 AM on January 18, 2018
« Older Lord Help Me to Improve My Debt Collection Skills | Frankendata Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by mosst at 1:22 PM on January 16, 2018