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Completely false, very narrow minded perspective that pretty much works backwards from its conclusion using lots of anecdotes. The Personal-Essay Boom is just
by 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 agoI 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.
- glangdale 9y agoThis is a strange response. You talk about yourself personally and then go on to generalize: apparently no-one with a "fulfilling, busy, exciting and interesting life of their own" will ever be interested in other people's experience. Apparently the explanation of why other people have tastes that are different to your own is that their lives suck. A less preposterous (and less self-congratulatory) idea might be that "people like different things".
- gpawl 9y agoThank you for sharing your personal essay here. But I don't understand why you would write it, since nobody interesting would read it, as you argue.