Monday, March 24, 2008
MEDIA WORLD NOT LIKED
British teenager and part-time TV writer Max Gogarty lately lit out for India and Thailand, in the manner of his kind. The Guardian thought Max’s commonplace jaunt worthy of a weekly travel blog:
I’m not entirely sure what appeals to me about travelling. Maybe the lack of work or study? The mayhem? The imagined company of beautiful girls ... all very good reasons to travel.
Guardian readers - who deduced that Max is the son of occasional Guardian travel contributor Paul Gogarty - were outraged:
• “who’s son is max then? terrible terrible terrible, shame on you guardian”
• “You are everything I hate about everything.”
• “the guardian have removed the picture link to this article from the front page and travel section ...”
• “whoever allowed this tedious nepotistic bollocks to be commissioned - you should all be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves. You won’t be, of course, but you should.”
And so on, and on. Just when things began to calm down, Max’s television producer friend offered this helpful line:
His dad worked very hard for him to get into journalism.
All that hard work for nothing. Stung by the 500 comment pile-on, Max immediately quit the site. “He has said to me that he doesn’t like the media world now,” Max’s father said. “He doesn’t want to go into it any more.” (This all happened more than a month ago; apologies to readers who are Maxed out.) Some thoughts:
• The Guardian, a newspaper with a poor record when it comes to predicting online responses, is mostly to blame for this. Dumping an over-confident teen in a massively busy site with a conflict-primed audience is a recipe for rage.
• Online is a bad place to be if you’re sensitive to criticism. In fact, it’s probably the worst place.
• If you’re a blogger concerned about who might read your work, remind yourself what “www” stands for. Look it up, if you have to.
Contemporaneous responses from Pete Ashton and John Brownlee.
(Via Allan J.)
UPDATE. Bloggers at the New Yorker avoid being read by the simple tactic of being unreadable.