A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

SLOUCHING TOWARDS MYSPACE: Joel Stein at the LATimes is pining for an age when columnists weren't expected (at least by management) to confront (or appear to confront, or appear to be open to confrontation with) their readers through the interactive matrix of the interweb tubes. It's funny, if you like curmudgeonly rants. As an aspiring curmudgeon, I do like me a good rant. Here's Joel (Reg. Req.):

I get that you have opinions you want to share. That's great. You're the Person of the Year. I just don't have any interest in them. First of all, I did a tiny bit of research for my column, so I'm already familiar with your brilliant argument. Second, I've already written my column, so I can't even steal your ideas and get paid for them.

There is no practical reason to send your rants to me. If you want to counter my opinion publicly, write a letter to the editor. If you want me fired, write a letter to the publisher. If you want a note back, write a letter in lipstick on the bathroom mirror. Or you could just write mean things about my column on some blog. Don't worry, I'll see them. I have a "Joel Stein" RSS feed that goes straight into my arteries.

Joel Stein! Welcome to ALLOT5MA, a congenial corner of the interwebs where we eagerly take the mainstream media at its word! (We particularly appreciate your adjectival candor about the degree of research you devote to the topics you address in print.)

*ahem*

More seriously, the particularly great part is that what's causing the chaffing for Joel is the half-step interactivity that results from putting an email address at the bottom of his columns. Management has effectively saddled writers like Joel with all the bother of having readers respond to their musings, but without the magic comment boxes that permit those readers to engage one another in the process of cobbling together a community. Deprived of this outlet, poor Joel laments, readers with recourse to the interwebs will try to take out all their richly deserved free time on an article's author.

So Joel demands, and receives, exactly what he's been missing: a comment box. He's now fully interactive! Web-enabled! A virtual community unto himself. However, having taken care to initiate a process that will produce vinegar rather than wine, the results are predictable: an avalance of disjointed venom, a smattering of encouragement, a lot of earnest but irony-deficient pronouncements and a gaggle of uncompensated keyboardists flogging their blogs. Joel can now happily conclude that internet communities are horsesh*t and retreat to the good old days when media did not feel pressure to be more than one-way conduits of information. It's a good stunt; one which appears to prove his point while missing the actual point of new media spaces entirely.

I don't want to sound unsympathetic. In fact, I agree with Joel Stein: Take the poor man's email off of his columns and let him do what he does best. I'm sure folks who feel like being "talked at" will continue to attend his every word. I'll be grateful to be somewhere else, talking with people, and probably not about him.

Hat tip (and worthy related perspective): The Escapist.