Idiots who get paid to write badly

[mizal]

Sorry for getting back to the original topic, I know that's frowned on here, but I've been following that stabbing case since the beginning, and I have to say without a doubt it's the most hilarious almost-murder I've ever heard of. I mean, I feel terrible for the victim and for the trust issues she's likely going to have her whole life now that she knows her friends were planning to murder her since February and she had absolutely no idea...but on the plus side she's now learned that she's impervious to knife wounds and will hopefully grow up to be some kind of invincible super warrior.

I'd never heard of the Slender Man before and had to look him up. Confused me throughout the article. Of course, now there will be copycat murders, interviews, crime novels, and if we're really lucky a cult. The forum user who created the Slender Man can cash in if he plays his cards right.


I need to get in on this thing. I think I could be really good at blaming crimes on internet memes, and it's not like we're going to run out of either anytime soon.

The guy who actually photoshopped the first pictures is looking into copyrighting the concept, but unfortunately since he basically just made images and it's all the random people on the internet with no lives who are responsible for sort of organically creating the details of the Slenderman mythos or the Slenderverse or whatever the nerds are calling it, as far as I understand it it's more of an open source dealy now and would be hard to copyright. Too bad though...if there are ever any actual good movies or games or murders that come out of this, he could have made some mad bank. I bet he's kicking himself now for not doing it a long time ago. Thank of the merchandising opportunities alone! Slenderman t-shirts, Slenderman diet plans, Slenderman socks to wear on your face, Slenderman sacrificial knives (Slenderknives? ...man, I shoulda got a job in marketing...)

Before all this I actually only knew Slenderman as 'that meme from that one thread that was kind of amusing until reddit got ahold of it and ran it into the ground, also there were some shitty flash games that nerds would pretend to be scared of'. I've lurked on the Something Awful forums a couple years now and not really seen any references to that meme. (SA's official response to the tragedy)

But seriously though, I guess ol' Slendy's been doing really well for himself, I'm really impressed--I mean, just a few years ago the only work he could find was posing in the background of grainy black and white photos, and now I hear he's got a sweet forest mansion in Wisconsin. Really moving up in the world!

There's absolutely no way he'd have anything to do with these girls, though. Please, the man has standards...if you're dumb enough to stab someone over poorly written creepypasta fiction, and inept enough that your victim can run away after you stab them 19 times, (holy shit those girls were bad at stabbing...) you're nowhere cool enough to hang with the Slender, sorry. Maybe they can try again when they're older, and do it right this time.

Anyway, I have to laugh at how all the schools are blocking the creepypasta site from their computers now...and I'm sure a bunch of panicked parents are doing the same. 'herp derp we can't be bothered to teach our kids the difference between fiction and reality, guess we'll just ban all fiction, that seems easiest'

Oh and meanwhile, whoever pulled this off, also in rural Wisconsin, is probably chillin and havin a beer with Slendy right now. See girls? This is how you do it right. (P.S. entire world, the 29 year bartender of the Como Inn closes up three nights a week by herself, and it's uncommon for residents to lock their windows. If anyone else is interested in impressing Slenderman, there are still plenty of opportunities in Wisconsin...)

[dreamshell]

now that she knows her friends were planning to murder her since February and she had absolutely no idea...

Jesus. o_O; Clearly, the answer there is to never, ever make friends ever.

Man, Slenderman and something that sounds straight out of Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer. I am never going to Wisconsin now. ...Wait, I never was.

'herp derp we can't be bothered to teach our kids the difference between fiction and reality, guess we'll just ban all fiction, that seems easiest'

But if people started taking responsibility for themselves and their children, we'd have less of these wonderful travesties to make dumb jokes about on an obscure internet forum in our downtime! Now, wouldn't that be the real tragedy? Be honest.

[mizal]

Jesus. o_O; Clearly, the answer there is to never, ever make friends ever.

I know, right? And I mean clearly it's the parent's fault, that's what they get for letting their child go outside and make friends.

But if people started taking responsibility for themselves and their children, we'd have less of these wonderful travesties to make dumb jokes about on an obscure internet forum in our downtime! Now, wouldn't that be the real tragedy? Be honest.

I still think it's silly. Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to just ban 12 year old girls?

[dreamshell]

Okay, I read that one suitcase murder article.

"You don't like finding corpses in your neighborhood," he said Friday.

All these people's names and their quotes, the 'grass-choked' ditches, rural roads, tall grass, 'a close-knit town,' a place called In the Drink for Chrissake... how did all these people NOT expect a horrifyingly gruesome murder or two to happen around them? It's like they're all living in a dime-store suspense thriller and don't know it!

But wait, 'bold' and 'brazen'? Ol' Grammy Todd sounds suspiciously... impressed by all this.

[mizal]

You know, back in my day, I was reasonably certain horrifyingly gruesome murders only happened in close-knit rural communities in Maine. Did Stephen King move to Wisconsin while I wasn't paying attention?

[dreamshell]

I was going to cite King specifically, but I felt his strong ties to the Pine Tree State would immediately force someone to call bullshit on my allusion.

Hell, even the town's name has the sort of lowbrow irony a horror author would take to. Geneva? Like the place in Switzerland renowned for its peace and diplomacy? But wait! BRUTAL FAWKING MURDER.

[End Master]

Wisconsin has always been fucked up. Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer both lived there.

[Usoki]

You know, back in my day, I was reasonably certain horrifyingly gruesome murders only happened in close-knit rural communities in Maine. Did Stephen King move to Wisconsin while I wasn't paying attention?

Either that, or Jessica Fletcher. Take your pick.

[Vesnic]

Wisconsin has always been fucked up.

I spent a summer in Madison and my clearest memory is of the awesome Saturday farmers markets, when all the Hmong farmers would come in before dawn to set up their vegetable stalls, usually selling out every last delicious cut-price tomato before noon. Hardly a badass association.

However, on my way down to Chicago, the Greyhound stopped for a few minutes in Milwaukee. I got off in order to grace this remarkable city's sewer system with my splendid ones and twos. While I was sitting on the throne contemplating the meaning of life, a little shiver ran down my spine as I realized that I had in fact arrived in Chocolate Dahmerland. The movie with Jeremy Renner was much sexier than it had any right to be, so I was kind of hot, sweaty and bothered by the time I climbed back on that bus and escaped to the much safer Windy City.

[Vesnic]

Right, so, back on track...

Case 3: A Rooting Interest: Edith Wharton and the Problem of Sympathy
Purveyor of The Stupid: Jonathan "Picklepuss" Franzen

I am not a Jonathan Franzen fan. I don't like most of his writing. I don't like his arsenic attitude. I don't like his stupid little face or his snail-shaped glasses.

Raging sexist? You bet. In the above-mentioned article, he listed Edith Wharton's lack of good looks as her "one potentially redeeming disadvantage". He accuses her of being rich, snooty, butch, cold, and worst of all in a female, unsympathetic. This is the same guy who was withdrawn from Oprah's book list because he was scared that having her label on his little masterpiece would deter male readers. Is it really any surprise then, that he has nothing better to say about Lily Bart, the graceful, sad, genuinely artistic heroine of Wharton's exquisite The House of Mirth than to dismiss her as a "party girl"? My eyes just about switched places when I read that line for the first time. This is not new news, as the article dates from 2012. His name came up somewhere recently though, and I found myself balling up my fists again as I thought back on this article, realizing it would be a good fit right here.

Franzen's snide treatment of the feminine traits (or perceived lack thereof) of both Wharton and her heroines is a problem, a problem like a hemorrhoid that just won't go away.

The bigger issue, however, is Franzen's appalling lack of literary understanding. Who has elevated him to the modern pantheon? How could such an obviously self-absorbed, affected blunt instrument like him be considered one of America's finest thinkers? Have we really sunk so low?

The House of Mirth is without a doubt one of my desert-island books. When that inevitable day comes when I should find myself stranded without human company, yet oddly provided with fresh spring water and Taco Bell, then I hope I find this book in my emergency satchel, together with Mr. Tubby (remember him?) and a few other necessaries. In this book, beautiful thirty-year-old socialite Lily Bart finds herself in that most classic of Whartonian dilemmas: the suffocating social straitjacket. Far from utilizing her prose as "punishment of the pretty girl" per Franzen's moronic posturing, or indeed even considering Lily's beauty to be some sort of moral failing for which she must atone, Wharton's treatment of her is delicate and sympathetic. Lily's faults and limitations are always apparent and do much to hinder the qualities of the natural artist which are so prominent in her. This is the stuff of tragedy in Wharton's simultaneously impersonal and shockingly intimate world, as it should be in our world as well. Is that not one of life's great disappointments, to never become that which you were destined to be? Franzen can sneer all he likes, but he will never encounter the glorious depths of one famous passage from the book where Lily stands steeped in thought as she looks out to sea; he will reel in only the brine and the salt, leaving the many mysteries untouched.

Franzen says of Wharton: "She was deeply conservative, opposed to socialism, unions, and women's suffrage, intellectually attracted to the relentless world view of Darwinism, hostile to the rawness and noise and vulgarity of America."

She was American. So she was critical of her own country? Join the club. As for the rest, I always find it to be a particularly weak and annoying tactic when critics decry long-deceased authors' lack of political correctness. It is absurdly taken as a real strike against them that they weren't quite smart enough to get on board with the right broad-stroke political issues of their day or to anticipate every peril the future held in store. Those who look back with the grace of hindsight can always attest to the superiority of their own perception with smugness and infallible certainty. They cannot forgive the great minds of the past for not having been right about everything, always. The only claim here which might carry a grain of truth is that of Edith Wharton's antisemitism. Again, though, we are talking about a novelist, not a motivational speaker. If we start formulating critical categories based in anything other than pure literary merit or artistic prowess, then all we are really doing is chipping away at the foundations of our own creative traditions.

It never occurs to Franzen that women then were much like women now. They carried a variety of opinions and were informed by many different educational and socioeconomic backgrounds. Edith Wharton may not have marched in parades and her politics were indeed conservative. However, one needs no more than five minutes in the company of Lily Bart to discover that Wharton was indeed a feminist, a much subtler sort of feminist. She may not have given Lily the vote, but she did give her grace, poise and an undeniable spirit of such beauty as to outshine any mere physical attributes. Lily is destroyed by a society which refuses to honor any of her real qualities (remind you of someone?) or even to acknowledge her human dignity.

If that's not a profoundly feminist critique of the world, then I don't know what is.