katherine st asaph

cureforbedbugs:

Here’s an old-school rant in need of some healthy pushing back (like most of my recent writing it’s all polemic with few concrete or useful examples), but I’m asking people to actually come back to “my house” to fight about it or like it or whatever else. New Echo comments are terrible, but I can’t seem to get rid of them without deleting the most important Bedbugs comments threads.

I’ve genuinely enjoyed meeting new people on Tumblr, but it’s too comfortable for me to be comfortable here, if that makes sense. Will continue blogging here and keeping up with people who are on Tumblr.

It feels wrong to respond to this on Tumblr, but the comments system over there is clunky. (More clunky than Tumblr’s reblogging system. I waited about 10 minutes for a comment to not post before I gave up and took it here.)

The part of this I take issue with is the part about complaining about SEO/trollgaze/clickbait/etc. Most of the people making these accusations are people in the online publishing field — people who know exactly what they’re talking about and how prevalent it is. I mean, “trollgaze” was coined by Maura, and I’m fairly sure she knows standards and practices for music blogging.

And yes, it’s usually valid. Recent example: Chris Brown at the Grammys. Any guesses how many media outlets went easy on him out of “objectivity” or “measuredness,” in part or in whole a proxy for not pissing off the Chris Brown stan constituency? It’s not just about tone, either; it’s about what gets written about and how much, which often looks more like a cost-benefit analysis than what people connect with. Yes, that’s how business works. Yes, there are plenty of exceptions. It’s still a valid observation.