Tag: Vox Can Suck It

My Personal Struggle To Understand Why Vox Grates On My Nerves


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ahhh, Vox. Something about Vox — or, specifically, its video presence on Tik-Tok and its general media coverage — really, really, REALLY FUCKING GRATES ON MY NERVES.

But I honestly don’t know why.

I’m even reading — and enjoying — Ezra Klein’s “Why We’re Polarized” book. It’s really good and I highly recommend it. It’s very insightful. And, yet.

I’ve given it some thought and I think it’s that on Tik-Tok the highly educated elites who dabble in the service want to come across as some sort of hip youth pastor to the rubes like me. At least with, say, traditional mainstream media on TV there’s an established construct of authority. But on Tik-Tok, these people who are very, very smart and very, very well educated want to turn their chair backwards and talk about how Shakespeare is really rap.

Oh, please.

There are plenty of people who are doing a great job on Tik-Tok presenting the news but Vox ain’t it. They need to ditch the pretense. We aren’t equal — and least I suspect they don’t think I’m their equal — and if they came across an idiot like me in real life they would do everything in their power to get as far away as possible.

Vox’s media coverage is even worst. It comes across as the distillation of every woke — and high — late night college freshman conversation. All art is reduced to its tropes, microaggressions and perceived slights to this or that part of the world of identity politics. Whatever happened to enjoying a good story and worrying about THAT? Or, put another way, instead of bitching and moaning about if a story has two women talking about something other than a man at some point, how about…telling me is it a good story? Does it convey emotion? Do I care about these characters?

I guess some of this comes from be being too old — and poorly educated (went to a public college, natch) — to quite fit Vox’s intended demographic, and, yet, generally otherwise digging what they have to say. So, this leads to a certain amount of cognitive dissidence.

My Nightmare Would Be My Heroine Being Seen As ‘Manic Pixie Dreamgirl…With A Gun’


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Well, it’s times like these that being aware of the Vox worldview where all art is reduced to tropes and you can’t just have fun because of the Big Ideas associated with being A Very Serious Person who speaks with Authority on their Tik-Toks.

I am WELL AWARE that because I’m a man, pretty much it’s impossible for me to not be judged if I have any type of heroine. I’m not even suppose to try. I’m just a member of the patriarchy and, as such, just want to “fridge” female character that I construct simply to have sex with them in my mind.

UGH. Fuck that!

My heroine is unique. And if you add to this the fact that I simply don’t take myself very seriously, then there’s a real chance that my heroine may come across as a manic pixiedream girl…with a gun.. to the Vox people who are on a hair trigger to find some sort of trope in any work of pop art. In all honesty, my heroine isn’t meant to be my interpretation of a manic pixie dreamgirl, but rather my imaginary wilful child!

So, you should be seeing her as me thinking up a really cool — if difficult — daughter that I have to struggle with, rather than me constructing some sort of ideal woman for me to fuck.

But I understand why Vox might say she’s nothing more than a manic pixiedream girl…with a gun. Ok, ok, I get it. But I will say that such thinking is how we got Trump. Can’t there just be pop culture for pop culture’s sake? Do we all have to limit ourselves to one Twitter comic no one’s heard of that passes the Vox litmus test?

I guess what I’m saying is I’m working so hard to create a really unique person that you want to hang out with and root for, but I’m hypersensitive to accusations of her just being a manic pixie dreamgirl…with a gun. I’m so paranoid about this, that I’m thinking up every possible way to give the character depth.

It makes you think — to Vox, is ANY interesting female character some variation of the manic pixie dreamgirl trope? And yet not only am I suppose to write strong, interesting women, I can’t ever actually be successful because of identity politics? What the what?

But “publish or perish” as they say. Gotta finish a first draft and soon.

Vox Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Vox, that pillar of Twitter Liberal conventional wisdom, never ceases to get on my fucking nerves. Since I don’t write for Vox, this is not going to be a blog post that meets the metrics of a successful “thought leader” in Manhattan. I’m just going to ramble off the top of my head from my general impression of the site.

First, one thing that is amusing is the “received English” of the people who do their videos. No normal English speaker uses the very specific diction combined with a deep speaking voice of these Vox people. Add to it a somewhat sing-songy lilt to it all and it grows very grating on my nerves. There’s something smug and organically condescending about this received English. It makes me think to myself, “This is why we got Trump.” I’m extremely empathetic to Vox and they still manage to make me want to scream at the top of my lungs that nothing’s right or wrong, but thinking makes it so.

Then there are the Vox Website posts. Their authors seem determined to drain any sort of humanity out of whatever it is they’re covering. It’s all about the metrics of identity politics, or “slaying the patriarchy” telling me that there is some sort of neo-liberal received truth that I have to believe. I’m still smarting from their post about tropes used in fiction. In my imagination, the writer of the post was a 26-year-old graduate of Bard College who got the gig because her parents knew someone. Ugh. So frustrating.

The hits keep coming.

Just recently, I heard from Vox’s media critic that pretty much all comedy in the Trump Era is shit and there’s only one Twitter comic that we we’re allowed to think is funny. It’s all very strange to me. Vox goes to extreme lengths to shit on any type of mainstream fun. I guess that’s their thing, but it still annoys me to no end.

It’s sites like Vox that make me want to start my own Website like Gawker. But, sadly, I think the days organic growth for a Website are long, long over. Twitter now serves the function that Gawker once did. The Web is a mature medium now.