Charmed.
My instruments alerted me to a story that will appear in this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine entitled Exposed. (I can remember how, when I worked in the halls of book publisher, we would receive parts of the Sunday paper mid-week, all fresh smelling and glistening with the dew that the cognoscente would discuss over afternoon cocktails in cool, dark lounges.)
Bethatasitmay, I received the alert that the New York Sunday Times magazine will feature a story by one Ms. Emily Gould. Ms Gould's reputation precedes her and then there was this rather ... humid ... photo illustration.
So I arrived at the article prepared to cringe at yet another amazed and naive account of Life On The Internet Thing As Understood By The New York Times, that would set back the Our Cause by another year. (Internet? Hmpf. People with tattoos and STDs chattering about absolutely any random thing that occurs to them. Hmpf. You can't be serious.) I heard myself saying, "I've invested twenty years into this internet thing and we're right back to Big Brother and MySpace and internet = wasteland. Damn.
But then I read the article and was absolutely charmed. This is the first time that I can remember that The New York Times has run a story where the internet is a part of the story but not the novelty of the story or the morale of the story or the glittering brand-new toy of the story. Here are some parts I liked:
Emily writes ...
When, at age 24, she decided to move to New York, she had two career options: Columbia Journalism School or Gawker. She chose Gawker. Two years later, every magazine editor in town knew her name, and she was hired as the online editor of Vanity Fair. Maybe the days were over when young comers were slowly mentored as they prepared to assume their bosses’ titles, covering community-board meetings or fetching coffee.
Indeed. Don't forget the cream and extra sugar. Emily does an excellent job of capturing the climate and choices of New York media, the juxtaposition of cardboard coffee cups and sitting next to Anna Wintour.
Then, Emily describes what it's like to be an online celebrity. For me the sub head captures it whole: "Famous for 15 People." This is something I've observed with great interest during the past couple of decades: How celebrity manifests itself in the online world. There, we can find almost affinity groups circling around almost anything or anybody. I have watched, in rapt fascination, the rise and fall of many people on Live Journal, and antecedents like the Well and elsewhere who are famous because... and that's the most fascinating part of all.
They are famous because they are maestros of the medium and it is this specific talent that propels them.
I can cite two very different examples and experiences. On Live Journal, I am a "friend" of someone who I've never met in real life. I read her journal , listen to her telephone posts, and follow her through her life step-by-step because she pretty much chronicles her life in that much detail.
So, at first, I'm self-conscious about this as it made me feel like some sort of voyeur. Afterall, what is my real connection with this person? And then I noticed that she made me think about things in a new way and that I would take things from her and use them in my own life. And feel good about it. I am informed, entertained and educated. So what is this experience?
I had a very different experience involving someone who wasn't there. Again, on Live Journal, I began to observe someone who was presented with Great Challenges in her life. Her story unspooled over more than a year. There were spiritual, mental and physical setbacks that culminated in what appeared to be an attempted suicide. And I had a moment, like that we might have experienced in reading fiction, when one becomes aware that there is a story-teller telling a story about the story-teller. Such like: And then the whale rammed our ship and we all died. I realized that I had become enmeshed in a work of fiction that, in technique, was no different from Bram Stoker's famous work.
3 May. Bistritz. __Left Munich at 8:35 P. M, on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible.
We will read this text and become involved in it and then at some point we might become self-conscious of the fact that the author of this diary ... wait, it isn't really a diary, it's a work of fiction akin to the epistolatory novels of, say, Samual Richardson (see Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady
Basically, what I'm reaching for here is that Ms. Gould tarries exactly on the cusp of our life / our fiction and the porosity of the boundary between them. And she accurately captures the results of actually becoming the protagonist of your own life.
Kudos, Ms. Gould, and thanks for oversharing.
