1) When my one (art school) colleague who wears (women's clothes) and I were trading yet another online article back and forth by text about a pop culture figure who we discuss -- this time, he had sent an article to me -- I read it, and I couldn't believe how shoddy it was. Major major venue of a "BIG THINK" publication, and a staff writer, but it was just a viewpoint re-hashed from social media without any real alteration of "the take" or even engaging with any real basics of the artistic output that they were supposedly discussing. Just lazy lazy lazy, and interpretatively unjustifiable in some very basic regards, to boot. Like, you don't have to like or praise a cultural object, but at least engage it and acknowledge what it's obviously trying to do, yo.
And, when I said as much to him by text, he agreed, and then he said that nowadays what he thinks has been happening is that as publications decay and fewer things are published and fewer people have access to them as writers, what gets published a lot of times is stuff that's chasing what's already been said on social media without any real critical evaluation or added content.
Like, the publications are just following and repeating what social media is already saying, and not breaking any new ground or saying anything different.
2) Two (young) (white) (college-educated) (female) (vegan) customers at the restaurant and I were talking about articles like that, and the one said that in her experience, stuff in major publications is just not that interesting nowadays, and the better stuff is always on Substack.
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