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Diversity is strength – yes, even in writing. If you do not like the New Yorker's long form and quirky diaeresis, then do not read it. Other people (myself incl

Diversity is strength – yes, even in writing. If you do not like the New Yorker's long form and quirky diaeresis, then do not read it. Other people (myself included) like the occasional long read with a cup of coffee on a foggy morning, where the prose winds its way slowly to build to a satisfying crescendo only after sufficient investment from you, the reader. I personally do not like Hemingway's skeletal, scientific style – it feels to me like the writing of someone who does not revel in the pleasure of writing. However, I recognize that's a personal preference, and under no circumstances would I embark on a crusade to have fewer people read him or suggest that Hemingway do something different to satisfy me. Perhaps I feel so strongly about this because I come from a country that would forcefully insist on designated styles of art - Soviet realism is the only acceptable art style, Pravda has the official and only acceptable journalism. It's wrong.

labster 6y ago
One of the things necessary for a free society is free critique of art as well. Even if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not all art is the same quality. If you don't believe me, spend a few hours on fanfiction.net. I tried with the New Yorker. I subscribed last year, and it got to the point that no one in the house wanted to read it. We'd look at the cartoons, apply the universal captions to them ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10262979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10262979 ), but articles felt like chores. That's nothing against long form journalism, just that they don't try to make their articles accessible. It's like going to movies without a seeing a preview or knowing the genre. Sometimes that works really well, but if you get 15 minutes in and start wondering why you should care about any of these people, it's time to move on. It's great that this never happened to you. But it just so happened that their house style causes my text parser to fail all the way up the stack. My fast english reader throws an exception, and asks my foreign word region of the brain to see if it has a match. Heuristics say it's English, English says it's not a word, which then throws an exception that bubbles up to my top level of consciousness to decide what it means. It takes all of five seconds, but in the process it interrupts the flow of reading. Which gives the conscious mind time to ponder -- why am I reading this anyway? The answer too often came back negative. Nothing wrong with you liking the magazine, or other people. But to me, the diaereses are the Jar Jar Binks of the New Yorker -- something designed to take me out of the action because the writer couldn't kill his darlings. And I don't think it's wrong to complain about specific aspects of art that make it unenjoyable.
- tropdrop 6y ago
  I agree, of course free critique of art should be encouraged, and not all art is created equal, with the bookends of the quality spectrum particularly discernible. But the reason people keep down-voting you is because those kinds of meta-discussions have a time and place. No, I'm not trying to erode someone's freedom to speak their mind whenever they would like - it's just talking about anything outside of scope is counterproductive and wastes everyone's time (not to mention that some people you could have rallied to your cause are going to be displeased enough by the conduct to not ever become an ally). A post on Hacker News titled "Why The New Yorker has those funny dots above some letters" is a great place for this kind of discussion. Or a post about orthography. Or even "What can print publications do to stay relevant in the age of the Internet?" (New Yorker's answer: bold, archaic choices in style. Your answer - wrong decisions! You have had it with their nonsense!) But discussing the same topics under a post that celebrates a particular artist's work (and the host of that article just happens to be The New Yorker) tends to be unwelcome, and for good reason. It's like attending a Chemistry 101 lecture and then, when the professor finishes explaining the first five shapes of atomic orbitals, raising one's hand to say "Well, first off, the problems with this university are..." People are going to be irritated.

labster 6y ago

One of the things necessary for a free society is free critique of art as well. Even if beauty is in the eye of the beholder, not all art is the same quality. If you don't believe me, spend a few hours on fanfiction.net. I tried with the New Yorker. I subscribed last year, and it got to the point that no one in the house wanted to read it. We'd look at the cartoons, apply the universal captions to them ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10262979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10262979 ), but articles felt like chores. That's nothing against long form journalism, just that they don't try to make their articles accessible. It's like going to movies without a seeing a preview or knowing the genre. Sometimes that works really well, but if you get 15 minutes in and start wondering why you should care about any of these people, it's time to move on. It's great that this never happened to you. But it just so happened that their house style causes my text parser to fail all the way up the stack. My fast english reader throws an exception, and asks my foreign word region of the brain to see if it has a match. Heuristics say it's English, English says it's not a word, which then throws an exception that bubbles up to my top level of consciousness to decide what it means. It takes all of five seconds, but in the process it interrupts the flow of reading. Which gives the conscious mind time to ponder -- why am I reading this anyway? The answer too often came back negative. Nothing wrong with you liking the magazine, or other people. But to me, the diaereses are the Jar Jar Binks of the New Yorker -- something designed to take me out of the action because the writer couldn't kill his darlings. And I don't think it's wrong to complain about specific aspects of art that make it unenjoyable.

tropdrop 6y ago
I agree, of course free critique of art should be encouraged, and not all art is created equal, with the bookends of the quality spectrum particularly discernible. But the reason people keep down-voting you is because those kinds of meta-discussions have a time and place. No, I'm not trying to erode someone's freedom to speak their mind whenever they would like - it's just talking about anything outside of scope is counterproductive and wastes everyone's time (not to mention that some people you could have rallied to your cause are going to be displeased enough by the conduct to not ever become an ally). A post on Hacker News titled "Why The New Yorker has those funny dots above some letters" is a great place for this kind of discussion. Or a post about orthography. Or even "What can print publications do to stay relevant in the age of the Internet?" (New Yorker's answer: bold, archaic choices in style. Your answer - wrong decisions! You have had it with their nonsense!) But discussing the same topics under a post that celebrates a particular artist's work (and the host of that article just happens to be The New Yorker) tends to be unwelcome, and for good reason. It's like attending a Chemistry 101 lecture and then, when the professor finishes explaining the first five shapes of atomic orbitals, raising one's hand to say "Well, first off, the problems with this university are..." People are going to be irritated.