Friday, February 15, 2008

Man Writes Words, Others Respond, Whole Thing Utterly Draining

Holy Moly points out the shitstorm that brewed when this travel blog appeared on the Guardian's website, purportedly by Max, the son of the travel editor. It's so excruciatingly bad, it's beyond parody, and while many commenters harrumphed in an often amusing way about blatant nepotism in the Guardian (as if that's anything new, as readers of Private Eye will know), the more perceptive ones have figured out it could be some kind of horrifying viral marketing for the new series of Skins.

So far, so terribly, terribly ugh. Whatever it is, it cannot possibly be written with any sense of earnestness. Whether it is actually written by Max himself in a weak self-parody I don't know, but I bear him no ill will; I knew thousands of these apparently overprivileged barstewards at university and they were just as miserable as the rest of us, which is just how the world should be. But, oh...it's all just so cynically smug. It's transparent page-view grabbing, and I fell right in the trap, and in fact I'm perpetrating it by linking and talking about it (but no-one's reading - ha! Who wins, Guardian? Who wins?! ..Oh) All these commenters have raged and railed and frothed at the mouth for nowt, and the creators of this masterpiece of cross-promotion are no doubt rolling around the bars of Farringdon laughing, and laughing, and laughing. And the worse the actual writing in the blog is, the more violent and vitriolic the reaction, and the more attention it will get! Lord! Utter evil genius. But SO smug. Stop it, Guardian. I'm already worrying about my innate right-wingness bubbling to the surface. Don't give me a hearty shove in that direction.

I shall leave the last word to someone called Cassle, whose comment I think kinda misses the point but made me hoot like a drain anyway:


"In the same way that children who are caught smoking are made to smoke a whole packet to teach them a lesson, the Guardian should be made to go through with this, in the hope that it learns its own lesson. I suggest that the Guardian be required to publish:
1) a daily blog by Max, for the rest of his natural life
2) daily blogs by all his children thereafter
3) annual compilations (in hardback) of the best of Max's entries, together with the best of the comments, in time for the Christmas market
This should continue until Alan Rusbridger personally admits that his editorial team are lazy talentless nepotists, and promises never to allow this to happen again."


Nice.

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