7 ms·

The Personal-Essay Boom Is Over

77 points by lermontov 9y ago

golemotron 9y ago
> “The boom in personal essays—at Salon, at least, but I suspect other places—was in part a response to an online climate where more content was needed at the exact moment budgets were being slashed.” That makes those essays the literary equivalent of Reality TV.
paulpauper 9y ago
no it's not over. the personal essays have moved to Medium
briholt 9y ago
This is an interesting meta article, but it skirts the bigger picture. "Personal essay" seems to be a euphemism for "first world feminist problems." Note all of the examples in the intro are wealthy(ish) women drumming up trivial problems somehow related to womanhood. There are no listed examples of men having equivalent problems (let's say having a mishap with his pant zipper), and there are no listed examples of lower class problems (let's say a dishwasher who gets type 2 diabetes). The sexual assault essays go both ways - some are genuine and useful to understanding crime, some are authors desperately exploiting other people's victimhood for their own self aggrandizement ("stare rape"). The author's failure to acknowledge the topic of the personal essay boom may stem from her own employment at Jezebel, a publication largely devoted to first world feminist problems. Personally, I welcome this change. I've been very disheartened by what has been an obvious attempt at the Western upper classes to redirect money attention away from the needy and towards themselves. Sadly, I've seen a fair share of this on HN as well.
- burkaman 9y ago
  It's right in the first paragraph: "These essays were mostly written by women. They came off as unseemly, the writer’s judgment as flawed. They were too personal: the topics seemed insignificant, or else too important to be aired for an audience of strangers." Also, as far as I can tell none of the examples in that paragraph have anything to do with feminism.
  - TillE 9y ago
    "A woman did it, therefore feminism" is an idea oddly shared by both middle-class liberals (see "lean in") and cultural conservatives.
- paulpauper 9y ago
  the problem is the 'dishwasher who gets type 2 diabetes' probably is not very educated and may not be able to articulate his story as fluently as, say, a liberal arts master's degree holder. So all we hear are the problems of the well-connected and educated.
  - briholt 9y ago
    Absolutely. It's a NY/LA/SF media-socialite elite echo chamber. The rest of the country is screaming for these people to get some perspective, but they frankly have no incentive to do so. Publishers know dishwashers don't surf Twitter so there's no money in pandering to them. Writers know arriving early to the anti-first-world-victim party will only earn them ostracization.
  - qq66 9y ago
    There used to be well-connected educated people who were spectacular at telling, genuinely and without condescension, the stories of the dishwasher with Type 2 diabetes. The all-time greatest was Studs Terkel.
  - lacampbell 9y ago
    the problem is the 'dishwasher who gets type 2 diabetes' probably is not very educated and may not be able to articulate his story as fluently as, say, a liberal arts master's degree holder. IME the difference is usually that the dishwasher knows he's not all that smart, while the liberal arts degree holder has a very inflated sense of their own intelligence.
    - gpawl 9y ago
      Browse any unmoderated forum to disabuse yourself of the boundaries of self-unawareness of stupidity.
      - lacampbell 9y ago
        I don't find un-moderated forums to be any more low brow than moderated ones.
- wmf 9y ago
  I have seen tons of low-quality tech-related "My $WHATEVER Journey" Medium essays posted to HN, presumably many of them written by wealthy(ish) men. I wouldn't expect a New Yorker writer to have seen them, though.
  - briholt 9y ago
    "My boring tech-related journey..." isn't quite analogous to the "cat hair in my v----a" type article. I was going to search Medium for articles about animal hair on male genitalia, but then I thought maybe I'll just leave that question unanswered.
    - monknomo 9y ago
      I'm sure some website has guys talking about their epic burrito induced shit. They probably mostly don't tie it into gender relations, because the people who benefit from privilege don't think about their privilege; it's one of the inherent perks in privilege.
      - tnone 9y ago
        Spot the contradiction: - the patriarchy teaches men to bottle up their feelings - in the patriarchy, women's issues are systematically ignored in favor of men Men generally don't hang out on sites to talk about their burrito shits, they don't bond over their gender, lacking a mechanism for in group preference based on it. They bond over shared interests and hobbies. Unlike women, for whom "X For Women" is inevitably created as an end in itself. If you want to talk about privilege, the fact that your gender has a political movement, media sector and academic faculty dedicated to it is probably relevant. As does the general ability to damsel, act childlike, and shy away from conflict without paying a price in respect. When you turn all this privilege theory back onto the originators, the result is loud and vicious protest, and the insistence that you just shut up and let women speak. Backed and enforced by sympathetic ears in the halls of power. It doesn't add up.
        gpawl 9y ago
- exelius 9y ago
  I think that yours is a typical viewpoint on this topic among white men. I don't mean this as an insult in any way; since that's most likely your entire life experience. But when you constantly have your competence questioned when people don't do the same to coworkers, you feel unfairly boxed in. It'd be great to solve the big problems of the world; but most women / people of color have to fight to prove that they belong in the conversation. It's a daily frustration, so we complain on blogs about it. The shitty thing about it is that you really don't know when it figures in. All you see is your white male coworkers advancing in their careers while you're left to wonder "Was he promoted because he goes fishing with the boss? Or is he doing something I'm not?" Never mind that the boss doesn't invite you fishing because you're female and his wife won't allow it. It's that constant, nagging "What if?" that bothers us. It's not that I don't care about the problems of other people in the world; it's that I'm constantly reminded how little little power I have within my immediate sphere of influence that I don't feel I have anything to contribute outside of it. There is a small but influential political base in this country that actually believes women are second-class citizens (watch how many people the Daily Show was able to get to un-ironically admit that they thought Trump was a better option than Clinton because he was a man -- even other women). But at the same time, this has caused a backlash against "political correctness" that we first world feminists have to defend against that have very real consequences (abortion rights, family leave, etc). So yeah, the narcissistic essays are gone, but there are still problems to address -- both at home and elsewhere (ignoring the entirely patronizing idea that the world outside western democracies need our help...)
  - dsacco 9y ago
    > I think that yours is a typical viewpoint on this topic among white men. I don't mean this as an insult in any way; since that's most likely your entire life experience. Well that's presumptuous.
    - exelius 9y ago
      Not so comfortable when the shoe is on the other foot? Edit: I see I'm getting downvoted for this. I stand by it because this is the exact same type of presumption that is made of women ("Oh, she's 30 -- we shouldn't hire her because she's probably going to get pregnant soon") all the damn time.
- camgunz 9y ago
  > I've been very disheartened by what has been an obvious attempt at the Western upper classes to redirect money attention away from the needy and towards themselves. Don't ascribe motive. Everyone gets a voice, and everyone can use it however they want. Sometimes people have high-minded ideals and they write about them. Sometimes gross shit happens to them and they write about that too. Besides, just because bad things are happening doesn't mean we can't talk about trivial things. If that were really the case we'd never be able to talk about anything.
6stringmerc 9y ago
Completely false, very narrow minded perspective that pretty much works backwards from its conclusion using lots of anecdotes. The Personal-Essay Boom is just getting started, because now people are sharing more interesting things in more interesting ways in the past. Dishing on former employers. Describing personal journeys. Letting people experience a slice of life that they otherwise would not come across. The only problem with Personal-Essays is that anybody without any training or practice can sit down and give it a try, which is why 95%+ will read like a Sophomoric diary entry based on literary merit (if lucky) or Ranting (overloaded with emotions), or just not as interesting as the Writer thinks. So, to contrast the anecdotes and conclusion I disagree with in the article, I will happily cite that on my Medium.com page, where I have 70 publications, the highest viewed, most shared, and apparently most liked are Personal Essays. They are about interesting subjects - Film, Music, Writing - not, as the Writer uses as a comparison - some kind of nuveau-critique about life as told through the lens of a Tampon. The signal to noise ratio has always been a problem. That's the role of Copy Editors (RIP, really they're seemingly extinct in the US outside of Top 1%) and Publications to get things into shape. Or, to re-frame the discussion in terms of guitar and me experience with it, "Anybody can pick up a guitar and make noise, but making beautiful music is going to take a lot of time and effort." Personal Essays also follow this axiom.
- BadassFractal 9y ago
  I personally cannot relate to reading other people's journeys unless I'm trying to get actionable information out of those reports. E.g. you're someone who achieved a good degree of success somewhere, let's say a Derek Sivers, in which case I WANT to know how you did it. I don't enjoy being a passive consumer, I'd rather have the experience instead of reading about it. And yes, it takes a lot of work to get yourself in a position where you can have an interesting lifestyle, which is why most people would much rather passively dream of those experiences. Reminds me of how every person on Instagram has to show the world how great of a time they're having, how amazing of a vacation they're on, and how much they've grown from the experience every day. Some of that is done to build an audience for later advertising revenues, sure. I however have no reason to look at any of it. The way I see it, nobody with a fulfilling, busy, exciting and interesting life of their own will consume that kind of content. People are fundamentally selfish and self-centered, they don't care about other people's experience nearly as much as we think.
douche 9y ago
I wonder if it has something to do with trends in education. It seems like the only thing my generation ever did in high school English classes was learn how to write college application essays, the more personal, the better.
Aloha 9y ago
The phrase "personal essay economy" drove me nuts. The personal essay largely to me seemed like posting a blog in the paper, I'm not sure why you'd want to, but sometimes they're interesting to read.

77 points by lermontov 9y ago

> “The boom in personal essays—at Salon, at least, but I suspect other places—was in part a response to an online climate where more content was needed at the exact moment budgets were being slashed.” That makes those essays the literary equivalent of Reality TV.

paulpauper 9y ago

no it's not over. the personal essays have moved to Medium

briholt 9y ago

This is an interesting meta article, but it skirts the bigger picture. "Personal essay" seems to be a euphemism for "first world feminist problems." Note all of the examples in the intro are wealthy(ish) women drumming up trivial problems somehow related to womanhood. There are no listed examples of men having equivalent problems (let's say having a mishap with his pant zipper), and there are no listed examples of lower class problems (let's say a dishwasher who gets type 2 diabetes). The sexual assault essays go both ways - some are genuine and useful to understanding crime, some are authors desperately exploiting other people's victimhood for their own self aggrandizement ("stare rape"). The author's failure to acknowledge the topic of the personal essay boom may stem from her own employment at Jezebel, a publication largely devoted to first world feminist problems. Personally, I welcome this change. I've been very disheartened by what has been an obvious attempt at the Western upper classes to redirect money attention away from the needy and towards themselves. Sadly, I've seen a fair share of this on HN as well.

burkaman 9y ago
It's right in the first paragraph: "These essays were mostly written by women. They came off as unseemly, the writer’s judgment as flawed. They were too personal: the topics seemed insignificant, or else too important to be aired for an audience of strangers." Also, as far as I can tell none of the examples in that paragraph have anything to do with feminism.
- TillE 9y ago
  "A woman did it, therefore feminism" is an idea oddly shared by both middle-class liberals (see "lean in") and cultural conservatives.
paulpauper 9y ago
the problem is the 'dishwasher who gets type 2 diabetes' probably is not very educated and may not be able to articulate his story as fluently as, say, a liberal arts master's degree holder. So all we hear are the problems of the well-connected and educated.
- briholt 9y ago
  Absolutely. It's a NY/LA/SF media-socialite elite echo chamber. The rest of the country is screaming for these people to get some perspective, but they frankly have no incentive to do so. Publishers know dishwashers don't surf Twitter so there's no money in pandering to them. Writers know arriving early to the anti-first-world-victim party will only earn them ostracization.
- qq66 9y ago
  There used to be well-connected educated people who were spectacular at telling, genuinely and without condescension, the stories of the dishwasher with Type 2 diabetes. The all-time greatest was Studs Terkel.
- lacampbell 9y ago
  the problem is the 'dishwasher who gets type 2 diabetes' probably is not very educated and may not be able to articulate his story as fluently as, say, a liberal arts master's degree holder. IME the difference is usually that the dishwasher knows he's not all that smart, while the liberal arts degree holder has a very inflated sense of their own intelligence.
  - gpawl 9y ago
    Browse any unmoderated forum to disabuse yourself of the boundaries of self-unawareness of stupidity.
    - lacampbell 9y ago
      I don't find un-moderated forums to be any more low brow than moderated ones.
wmf 9y ago
I have seen tons of low-quality tech-related "My $WHATEVER Journey" Medium essays posted to HN, presumably many of them written by wealthy(ish) men. I wouldn't expect a New Yorker writer to have seen them, though.
- briholt 9y ago
  "My boring tech-related journey..." isn't quite analogous to the "cat hair in my v----a" type article. I was going to search Medium for articles about animal hair on male genitalia, but then I thought maybe I'll just leave that question unanswered.
  - monknomo 9y ago
    I'm sure some website has guys talking about their epic burrito induced shit. They probably mostly don't tie it into gender relations, because the people who benefit from privilege don't think about their privilege; it's one of the inherent perks in privilege.
    - tnone 9y ago
      Spot the contradiction: - the patriarchy teaches men to bottle up their feelings - in the patriarchy, women's issues are systematically ignored in favor of men Men generally don't hang out on sites to talk about their burrito shits, they don't bond over their gender, lacking a mechanism for in group preference based on it. They bond over shared interests and hobbies. Unlike women, for whom "X For Women" is inevitably created as an end in itself. If you want to talk about privilege, the fact that your gender has a political movement, media sector and academic faculty dedicated to it is probably relevant. As does the general ability to damsel, act childlike, and shy away from conflict without paying a price in respect. When you turn all this privilege theory back onto the originators, the result is loud and vicious protest, and the insistence that you just shut up and let women speak. Backed and enforced by sympathetic ears in the halls of power. It doesn't add up.
      - gpawl 9y ago
exelius 9y ago
I think that yours is a typical viewpoint on this topic among white men. I don't mean this as an insult in any way; since that's most likely your entire life experience. But when you constantly have your competence questioned when people don't do the same to coworkers, you feel unfairly boxed in. It'd be great to solve the big problems of the world; but most women / people of color have to fight to prove that they belong in the conversation. It's a daily frustration, so we complain on blogs about it. The shitty thing about it is that you really don't know when it figures in. All you see is your white male coworkers advancing in their careers while you're left to wonder "Was he promoted because he goes fishing with the boss? Or is he doing something I'm not?" Never mind that the boss doesn't invite you fishing because you're female and his wife won't allow it. It's that constant, nagging "What if?" that bothers us. It's not that I don't care about the problems of other people in the world; it's that I'm constantly reminded how little little power I have within my immediate sphere of influence that I don't feel I have anything to contribute outside of it. There is a small but influential political base in this country that actually believes women are second-class citizens (watch how many people the Daily Show was able to get to un-ironically admit that they thought Trump was a better option than Clinton because he was a man -- even other women). But at the same time, this has caused a backlash against "political correctness" that we first world feminists have to defend against that have very real consequences (abortion rights, family leave, etc). So yeah, the narcissistic essays are gone, but there are still problems to address -- both at home and elsewhere (ignoring the entirely patronizing idea that the world outside western democracies need our help...)
- dsacco 9y ago
  > I think that yours is a typical viewpoint on this topic among white men. I don't mean this as an insult in any way; since that's most likely your entire life experience. Well that's presumptuous.
  - exelius 9y ago
    Not so comfortable when the shoe is on the other foot? Edit: I see I'm getting downvoted for this. I stand by it because this is the exact same type of presumption that is made of women ("Oh, she's 30 -- we shouldn't hire her because she's probably going to get pregnant soon") all the damn time.
camgunz 9y ago
> I've been very disheartened by what has been an obvious attempt at the Western upper classes to redirect money attention away from the needy and towards themselves. Don't ascribe motive. Everyone gets a voice, and everyone can use it however they want. Sometimes people have high-minded ideals and they write about them. Sometimes gross shit happens to them and they write about that too. Besides, just because bad things are happening doesn't mean we can't talk about trivial things. If that were really the case we'd never be able to talk about anything.

6stringmerc 9y ago

Completely false, very narrow minded perspective that pretty much works backwards from its conclusion using lots of anecdotes. The Personal-Essay Boom is just getting started, because now people are sharing more interesting things in more interesting ways in the past. Dishing on former employers. Describing personal journeys. Letting people experience a slice of life that they otherwise would not come across. The only problem with Personal-Essays is that anybody without any training or practice can sit down and give it a try, which is why 95%+ will read like a Sophomoric diary entry based on literary merit (if lucky) or Ranting (overloaded with emotions), or just not as interesting as the Writer thinks. So, to contrast the anecdotes and conclusion I disagree with in the article, I will happily cite that on my Medium.com page, where I have 70 publications, the highest viewed, most shared, and apparently most liked are Personal Essays. They are about interesting subjects - Film, Music, Writing - not, as the Writer uses as a comparison - some kind of nuveau-critique about life as told through the lens of a Tampon. The signal to noise ratio has always been a problem. That's the role of Copy Editors (RIP, really they're seemingly extinct in the US outside of Top 1%) and Publications to get things into shape. Or, to re-frame the discussion in terms of guitar and me experience with it, "Anybody can pick up a guitar and make noise, but making beautiful music is going to take a lot of time and effort." Personal Essays also follow this axiom.

BadassFractal 9y ago
I personally cannot relate to reading other people's journeys unless I'm trying to get actionable information out of those reports. E.g. you're someone who achieved a good degree of success somewhere, let's say a Derek Sivers, in which case I WANT to know how you did it. I don't enjoy being a passive consumer, I'd rather have the experience instead of reading about it. And yes, it takes a lot of work to get yourself in a position where you can have an interesting lifestyle, which is why most people would much rather passively dream of those experiences. Reminds me of how every person on Instagram has to show the world how great of a time they're having, how amazing of a vacation they're on, and how much they've grown from the experience every day. Some of that is done to build an audience for later advertising revenues, sure. I however have no reason to look at any of it. The way I see it, nobody with a fulfilling, busy, exciting and interesting life of their own will consume that kind of content. People are fundamentally selfish and self-centered, they don't care about other people's experience nearly as much as we think.

douche 9y ago

I wonder if it has something to do with trends in education. It seems like the only thing my generation ever did in high school English classes was learn how to write college application essays, the more personal, the better.

Aloha 9y ago

The phrase "personal essay economy" drove me nuts. The personal essay largely to me seemed like posting a blog in the paper, I'm not sure why you'd want to, but sometimes they're interesting to read.