Mobs
Something I have noticed lately about things I enjoy reading: their potential audience has grown narrower and narrower. Not in the sense that fewer people appreciate X piece of writing today than did yesterday, but in the sense that day by day I find writing which more closely hews to my narrow experience.
Or, by example. I enjoyed a piece Paul wrote, called Flash. When I finished reading it, I thought I might link to it from my website (in fact I have now done this) or put it in my away message. This is what I generally do when I find things which interest me or make me happy.
But I hesitated. In order to understand Flash, one has to first know about so-called flash mobs—the means by which they propagated, the type of people who embraced them, the ensuing backlash, perhaps the role of personal websites. This information is all contained in Paul’s piece, he even starts with a pretty thorough definition, but it is there in such a way that it won’t help you get the piece unless you already had it. You can’t be told unless you already knew. (Imagine seeing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead before knowing the plot of Hamlet. It’s all in there, yes, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to grok the play without knowing it in advance.)
And there is more. For one, I think you have to know Paul to appreciate what’s going on in Flash. (At least in the sense in which I myself know Paul, which I concede is not much.) For one, you have to know that he would not in fact plant a bomb in Central Park. This is probably obvious but even the obvious is easily lost when there is a change of context. Remember about that Onion article that a Chinese newspaper took for fact and reprinted.
But moreso, you have to know Paul to know that maybe, just maybe, he himself is one of the people he writes about blowing up—jaded, detached, shielded from the world by wit and irony. Paul, as I know and the casual reader may not, is big on irony. Maybe with his bomb story he is trying to tell us that he regrets this about himself, that he doesn’t want to be counted among those people. He is in some ways part of their group but nonetheless above them, or he pities them, or he pities himself for falling in with their lot, or he loathes himself. Big internal conflict. I don’t purport to understand it all myself; it’s just that you have to know all this background information to even get a foothold.
Okay, so what? So I find myself fascinated by things which I know to be accessible only to people quite similar to me. Is there a problem with that?
I think there might be. What is the culmination of this trend? Will I reach a point where everything I read is so narrowly-targeted, so dependent on prior knowledge that there is no one with whom I can share it? And shouldn’t writing be the other way around, be crafted to make the barrier-to-entry for readers as low as possible? That is, shouldn’t writers aim for that which is universal more than that which is eclectic?
Of course this misses the point. I like what I like precisely because it is eclectic, because I like to feel as though I am “in on the joke” with the author, am part of some special niche audience. And in this way I am just like everyone else, exactly alike in my desire to be unique.
Anyway, go read Flash. You might enjoy it. (But then again, probably not.)
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Comments
For what it’s worth:
All I know about flash mobs I learned from Doonesbury.
And I don’t know Paul - at least, I didn’t before this morning. Came to his blog from Everything Burns, read three pieces, of which Flash was the third.
And it works for me: understanding comes gradually, first that the mob isn’t what it seems, then that the bomb is not some artistic metaphor but literally a bomb and - therefore - fictitious…
Maybe the barrier-to-readers is not so much in what you need to know, as in how much effort you need to make to understand?
Or, of course, from your insider vantage point (we can all do irony, can’t we?) maybe I’m fooling myself, and I don’t really “get it” at all…
Posted by Jean at November 26, 2003 6:02 AM :: LinkPost a comment
Comments for this entry have been closed. Try e-mailing me instead.
Paul’s work is great, especially Flash. Not only should you all read the article, read the archives.
I’ll comment on this entry later. Too drained right now.
Posted by Ryuko at October 29, 2003 12:17 AM :: Link