Mean People Suck

in the past few days, i finished reading "you shall know our velocity" by dave eggers. i will talk about that later. the important thing is, that i told someone i was reading it and she rolled her eyes at me. "dave eggers," she said.

--yeah?

--he is so overexposed. that whole mcsweeney's thing is over.

now, i won't go into the numerous ways that this offends me. but i will start by saying that i think it is a completely unecessary thing to say. even if it were all true, it's just mean. for no good reason. but it isn't even true. neither part of that statement means anything. "overexposed" is a completely useless phrase, for if you are an author wishing to sell books, i can't imagine a point where there could be too much exposure to you or your ideas. and as for "mcsweeney's being over," that's obviously not based in any reality, rather simply a malevolent wish on the part of this person, this coolness cop. this person smugly trying to make me feel lame for liking this book i'm reading. but i am not here to defend dave eggers, mcsweeney's, or this book.

because dave eggers already did that, long ago:

"Oh how gloriously comforting, to be able to write someone off. Thus, in the overcrowded pantheon of alternarock bands, at a certain juncture, it became necessary for a certain brand of person to write off The Flaming Lips, despite the fact that everyone knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that their music was superb and groundbreaking and real. We could write them off because they shared a few minutes with Jason Priestley and that terrifying Tori Spelling person. Or we could write them off because too many magazines have talked about them. Or because it looked like the bassist was wearing too much gel in his hair.

One less thing to think about. Now, how to kill off the rest of our heroes, to better make room for new ones?"

(For those of you still reading this at yankiwi.com - first of all, stop, and change your link to strangecurrency.com, and secondly click here to find the rest of this entry.)

"We liked Guided by Voices until they let Ric Ocasek produce their latest album, and everyone knows Ocasek is a sellout, having written those mushy Cars songs in the late 80s, and then - gasp! - produced Weezer's album, and of course Weezer's no good, because that Sweater song was on the radio, right, and dorky teenage girls were singing it and we cannot have that and so Weezer is bad and Ocasek is bad and Guided by Voices are bad, even if Spike Jonze did direct that one Weezer video, and we like Spike Jonze, don't we?

from an interview with the harvard advocate in 2000.

i find the last part the most striking. lately people round the round have been talking about hostility and feeling fearful or excluded. i think that to a large extent it is because they have no security that the people they feel closest to will not turn and attack them at the first opportunity. i hear them say they are afraid to speak their honest thoughts and i know it is the fear of censure or retaliation. those who are guilty will protest but their justifications are meaningless to those of us who have been its witness.

i don't believe in wishing because i don't think there is anyone out there who hears wishes. still, i hope that in some near future the true essence of those who mistreat others will be revealed to all, and every person will have the courage to speak without hesitation in a voice that does not falter and is never silenced, with the support of those who stand around them in a more honest kind of friendship. a friendship that can hear criticism, that has integrity, that does not lie, and does not seek to tear down others to boost its own popularity and power.

Wednesday 01-Jan-03