What happens when you say that writing for free is wank
On Twitter, that disgusting tool for middle-class bloggers, young enough to vote Lib Dems, but about to start voting Tory, Surreal Football was dismissed for saying that writing for free is bad. What ridiculous people Surreal Football are, the blogging “community” suggested.
The opinion was dismissed as trying to be cool. As Surreal Football often is. But that, of course, is how to deal with an argument which you cannot tackle head-on – suggest that it isn’t a valid argument somehow. Or it was dismissed as unrealistic – Twitter’s amateur writers declared that there was no better way to become professional than to write for free.
That is the extent of the ideological victory for big business. The people they exploit defend them against those that speak to expose it. Fucking hell.
ECanalla:
November 9th, 2011 at 11:43 pm
You do have a point, but you’re acting like a cry-baby, which discredits you just a little bit.
SurrealFootball:
November 10th, 2011 at 12:00 am
You wouldn’t like people to talk about you the way they have been talking about us. Behind our backs, of course, because these fuckers aren’t up to the fight.
'POOL SUCKS:
November 10th, 2011 at 12:10 am
All is well and good, and fuck the pólice, btw, but let us not forget the crux of the argument: FUCK SERGIO BUSQUETS.
Kalman:
November 10th, 2011 at 12:33 am
Brilliant piece. Dirty shit blogging twats. Their writing is absolute wank, and they only talk to the others so that they feel like people are reading their work- so who gives a fuck what they think. Cunts.
Liam:
November 10th, 2011 at 7:06 am
If you are any good at writing stuff lots of people will read it so you will make some money out of it. If you are rubbish at writing then no one will read it and you won’t make any money either way. Following this hypothesis through I conclude that those bloggers giving you a hard time are not very good writers.
Chris:
November 10th, 2011 at 11:09 am
It’s not just the fact that people appear happy to sign their work over for free, it is that they do so with organisations they wouldn’t normally give the time of day to.
And it’s not just the written form. Skype users acting as “guests” on not just internet shows, but mainstream broadcasters as well.
Driving content, which appeases advertisers or stringent budget holders; which keeps those lesser organs afloat – and for what in return? Your Warholian event where your internet connection robs you of the most profound moment?
“I’m sorry, we’re going to have to lose you there”
Dizzy:
November 10th, 2011 at 7:45 pm
That’s fucking horseshit, if you don’t mind me saying so, and with as much respect due as you can give to someone whose ideas you’ve just called fucking horseshit. The amount of unadulterated bollocks that gets spewed out in national newspapers every day, with the authors getting a barrow-load of money per louse-ridden edition, speaks volumes about the inverse correlation between something being good and the amount of money you make.
1 million retarded clowns read the Daily Mail every day, and yet its output would only be considered good by the people who can’t understand big words and arguments with more than one proposition and an incomplete conclusion. But think they’re still selling 1,000,000 newspapers every single day, and Melanie Phillips and Richard Littlejohn still get hundreds of thousands of pounds every year to run with the appalling, dumbed-down ideological shit they do.
Dizzy:
November 10th, 2011 at 7:58 pm
I stopped working for free, by the way, when I realised that the bullshit lines weren’t working on me anymore. After about two published articles in one particular newspaper and the news that the particular organisation had made $140m that financial year. And it wasn’t doing me any good – it was taking my work and framing it with a bunch of adverts so they didn’t have to go to a payable freelance (former hack with a contact) and give them money to write something which would have been of infinitely worse quality. My opinion, of course, but they publish shite.
And I wasn’t enjoying it, because they kept editing my stuff to take the punch out of it; they wouldn’t ask serious questions of themselves; and what appeared was a watered-down version of what was intended, which made me look bad.
But if you’re enjoying it, then you should do it anyway, regardless of who reads it or where it gets published. Writing is supposed to be a claim to be read, but as long as you love what you do then you don’t have to be read by anyone.
And really – who thinks writing is about making money? And then when you do make money and getting a popular audience, normality is a really dangerous, winding path – one that’s really easy to trip and fall on, and go flying over the precipice of the batshit insane. Most people hover around this event horizon anyway, so getting paid for writing and being read is bound to kill off any semblance of normality in anyone. Do I have to listen to you? No! I’m paid for my ideas, and you’re some kind of plebeian anus polyp.
Well done.
Jude:
November 11th, 2011 at 7:38 pm
Could’ve sworn I wrote a reply to the above comment earlier…
Andy:
November 13th, 2011 at 5:20 am
you seem aight
Jude:
November 13th, 2011 at 9:54 pm
Think you’re confusing bad writing and tabloid writing. It’s horrible to read, but it’s not bad writing. It’s very clever.
Dizzy:
November 14th, 2011 at 9:51 am
No it’s not. It’s bad writing. It’s pure lowest common denominator stuff. It’s not an example of great writing to leave out half the information, selectively quote people and present a purely two sided view of complex situations. It’s not great writing to do that, and then reduce your vocabulary and resort to simple sentences to get sales. It’s reducing your capacity for the sake of selling to an audience who wants to hear exactly the same crap they think.
It’s exactly the opposite of clever writing, because you don’t have to take into account any factors except “us good, them bad” so you appeal to the same kind of closed mind your audience presents. You don’t need to do any research except that which supports your point of view; you don’t need to develop any nuanced arguments to persuade your readership; you don’t need to educate yourself, and you don’t need to inform others; and you certainly don’t present more than one side to an argument. And don’t get me wrong: I know this is not just a tabloid problem, but the tabloids are the most glaring example of it.
Clever. Yes. Just like Lady Gaga is clever.
Jude:
November 14th, 2011 at 3:47 pm
What’s not clever about taking a woman who’s talentless and ugly, and turning her into a global superstar in about a year?
Dizzy:
November 15th, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Nothing. Not when you own the industry and you have the power to saturate all popular communication channels with your artist. Nothing, not when the culture industry and all the networks are at your beck and call. Not when you can actually hire a half decent producer and then add some kind of postmodern transgendered twist to things. Nothing when all you do is repeat the same formula as before. The cleverest part about Lady Gaga is the technical standards the music is produced to.
The industry is getting better and better at avoiding failure, because they’re learning from their mistakes, not because they’re clever, not because this is smart. Cats don’t run away after you say ‘boo’ the fifth time not because they’re clever creatures, but because habituation is the simplest form of learning.
There’s nothing clever about popular culture. Power, in this case, is not the application of intelligence.