Just unsubscribed from my Jezebel e-mail subscription. I was asked to give a reason in the form thing. This is what I wrote:
Before I signed up, I thought Jezebel would be interesting. Good luck to you, and all that, but the level of intelligence and insight in the articles I've been receiving is lamentably low. Maybe it's a cultural thing – it just seems to me like a group of people rabidly trying to define and redefine how good and right they are in relation to their chosen enemies.
Jezebel is basically none of my business, and I subscribed without knowing what I was getting into. They can do whatever they like with their lives, obviously. But I do, officially, for the foreseeable future, despise them, and may give reasons later, whether or not they are of interest to anyone.
good of you to take the trouble to say why… for their edification. i do that too. i always have time to give a piece of my mind.
Thanks.The whole ‘unwittingly subscribing, reading the articles, becoming familiar with a new cultural world, deciding I didn’t like it and unsubscribing’ curve has been quite interesting for me. I think sometimes one stumbles into someone else’s war. The feeling I get on such occasions is as if someone has just demanded, “Who goes there, friend or foe?” I can’t really say I’m a friend, as I don’t know the people, but they only give two alternatives.
I’ve just been reading this:http://jezebel.com/5972788/no-one-is-entitled-to-sex-why-we-should-mock-the-nice-guys-of-okcupidThe great unifying theme of the curated profiles is indignation. These are young men who were told that if they were nice, then, as Laurie Penny puts it, they feel that women “must be obliged to have sex with them.” The subtext of virtually all of their profiles, the mournful and the bilious alike, is that these young men feel cheated. Raised to believe in a perverse social/sexual contract that promised access to women’s bodies in exchange for rote expressions of kindness, these boys have at least begun to learn that there is no Magic Sex Fairy. And while they’re still hopeful enough to put up a dating profile in the first place, the Nice Guys sabotage their chances of ever getting laid with their inability to conceal their own aggrieved self-righteousness.Nice Guys of OkCupid provides an excellent opportunity to reiterate a basic truth: there is no right to have sex.I laughed. Very Chris Morris-esque.
I’ve never actually found any of Jezebel funny in a ‘laughing with you’ (come to think of it, even a ‘laughing at’) kind of way, except the occasional one-liner. The author of that, Hugo Schwyzer, also wrote this:http://www.xojane.com/sex/on-digging-out-my-ex-wifes-tamponI don’t generally have a problem with narcissism, but when it’s this solemn, and this sanctimonious, it’s a bit much. What it actually reminds me of is the first twenty minutes or so (all that I watched) of this film:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_John_%282010_film%29I watched the DVD of that in a room with two other people – a lady a little older than me, and a teenage girl. No one in that room could bear more than twenty minutes of its tedious sanctimony. That’s three different demographics it failed for. Apparently it did good box office in America, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_lawWould this be relevant? I often get that feeling on the internet… like I’ve fallen for something like a complete ‘noob’.
I suppose I have little sympathy for people who stand up for being healthy and normal, and with great satisfaction put down those who are not, as I’ve never felt healthy or normal.
I’ve just checked to make sure, and I still hate Jezebel.