Tendency trouble
Poor Blackberry photo.
It's bizarre and soul killing to hear Dave Eggers hate the Web. During his ASNE talk today, I tweeted, "He can make me a print-first person for an hour; I'm okay with that." But six hours later, I'm not as okay.
I knew full well Eggers was going to say what he said. He's all on the record. And to the credit of the current mindset around ASNE, many of the news execs to speak up during the session said pro-digital things. And it's not like I'm the biggest Eggers fan in the world. But I found his work through McSweeney's Internet Tendency. I came to read it daily and bought its books to support 826's kid work. I sent links to friends. And here was one of my favorite Onion heds of all-time: "McSweeney's Rejects Mike Mussina's Seventh Consecutive Submission." Perfection.
What bothers me the most, I think, is how Eggers instills in his readers belief in the tools of creativity. That, through exposure and awareness and passionate engagement with the story's fabric, we can construct different narrative and connect to audience never otherwise affected.
Such consumer belief is valuable and necessary for a creative culture. Like in democracy, literacy of the workings builds better society. It's a shame Eggers' belief ends where my medium begins. So much to do.
April 12th, 2010 at 11:53 PM
That Mussina piece is so weird! Never seen it before. Thanks for sharing. :)
April 27th, 2010 at 8:33 AM
[...] know how anyone could find it less than fascinating. So, upon discovering McSweeney's (apparently begrudging) Internet Tendency's Interviews series, I'm [...]
January 24th, 2011 at 8:17 PM
[...] We know Dave Eggers hates the Internet. [...]