The Long Take: Write Like A Normie
Plus The Movie of The Week and the Noah Berlatsky Award for Terrible Take
Advice from a Failed Writer: You Should Avoid Online Beefs
If you’ve read my last Reaction Shot, which was about a prominent entertainment critic’s contribution to the Substack controversy, I mentioned that whoever is feuding has some impact on me, not well known as anybody who is on the top of the platform’s Most Popular Board. I believe that anyone on the platform, whether they are an established rebel like Matt Taibbi or Glenn Greenwald or a center-right platform like The Dispatch, is doing quite well because they provide the kind of content that potential readers want to read. Substack’s critics have been mistaken when they claim that these people trafficked in garbage moralizing outside of a respectable outlet while doing the same thing within those places, whether they are editors or writers.
If I had more words to put in that newsletter, I’ll go beyond saying I’m not popular as them, because I forgo whatever’s out there to self-promote. Link it on my Twitter, and attempt to accumulate a following. Being a writer is hard, but being a successful one in this decade is pulling a Sisyphus. It’s easy to be pessimistic since the game of internet writing - once described by Alana Newhouse as ‘flatness’ - accelerates instantaneous gratification, and everyone online eschews hierarchies because they are free to make any choice without set boundaries. People who are far more popular stay popular. Those who are less so… you get the point. What’s further challenging is the guts you get to becoming a writer, which is being open to inquiry and rejecting any sense of dogma.
This rang a bell when I read Freddie Deboer’s advice to young writers. I recommend checking that out in your leisure, but to summarise his point: given that the media market is dire, the best thing you can do, in order to make it, is to be weird. That advice sounds pretty obvious before you realize that the cultural hegemony of big media insists that you conform to whatever seems fashionable and stick with it for a while.
To give you one example, let’s look at a topic like WAP, a song that has been a culture war. You gander at Vox or Junkee, to see that identity politics is an incentive to churn out all possible defenses of a mediocre song, because it inspires women of color to not just have sexual autonomy, but to own their oppressors. On the other hand, you take a peek at The Daily Wire or The Federalist to see that Cardi B and Meghan Thee Stallion performing what looks like a hens night at the Grammys, is threatening Western Civilisation. They don’t just shudder at the song’s existence and the music community’s excessive liking to it but are scared at the idea that this is the next declining step in the future of music.
In situations like this, we could bemoan that it is all exhausted and performative. But simultaneously, we can be appreciative of the concepts being weaponized, because they are actually weird. Intersectional feminism is weird. Conservatism, whether it’s of the Tucker Carlson or Ben Shapiro variety, is weird. Women in hip-hop are weird; the idea of finding a song like WAP popular is weird. Me being a conservative film critic is so peculiar, it makes a lot of people angry. It’s a paradox that seems like an absolute win for writers to assert their identities when nothing has even changed and the incentives are lower than ever. Ask anyone not online, about this and they’ll look at you thinking that you are taking Minecraft way too seriously. Ask anyone familiar with the logistics of writing, and they understand that this is perhaps normal.
This is why, if I’m asked about how to make it as a writer, my advice for any aspiring pen-pickers is to be normal. Follow the advice that other writers make to their younger peers - study beyond whatever you’re good at, be aware of the game you’re playing are the most common ones. But most importantly, conduct yourself on social media in a manner that gets people who aren’t strong enough to have an opinion of one another, following you. It’s also an antidote to the validation victories people are really addicted to.
There was a beef among several Film Twitter personalities, one of whom has bylines published in hip media entities like Pitchfork and Vice. It all started because the guy with the many bylines lashed out at another person - who thinks that tweeting in lower-case is classless - for having ‘reactionary’ and misogynist followers. The same guy then lashes out at another prominent Film Twitter personality, over a Yukio Mishima T-shirt, since he thinks he’s a fascist. I say this because this person has claimed that the site I prominently wrote for was funded by the CIA and was an alt-right mission. When I bemoaned about him, he screenshotted my Quillette article I pinned on my profile, so that he and his thousands of followers can have a laugh.
My article was normal enough to be in Quillette (and on the site that was previously published). It was about canceling a movie, and it’s probably the most read essay I’ve ever written. Promoting the article alone, wouldn’t be a lot of use if it wasn’t for the faith of my editors spreading it as well and that cancel culture is indeed a legitimate issue. Having it described as a ‘Cinestate to Quillette’ pipeline months later, by some asshole who always picks a fight with someone, was the best compliment it ever received, since it’s fairly accurate. Unfortunately, it did not substantiate to people getting really interested in the work referenced, because I’m a nobody. Nobody knew about Cinestate. Nobody knew the history then. So he wins.
The point is that you should never be a cop. Such a situation like this made me realize that participating in online feuds is stupid if you choose not to take advantage of it. Hence, who really matters are the people who will trust you to do the right thing, knowing that you got other important things to do besides getting into a pointless beef with an anonymous groyper. I also learned that the hard way elsewhere, when I told an editor I knew that his colleague was mean to others on the internet, barring my pitches from ever being published on his website. To quote from Neil McCauley, if you want more opportunities, don’t let yourself get attached to anything you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you feel the heat around the corner.
I also have another suggestion: learn more about the people you fundamentally disagree with. Not simply whether they think Citizen Kane was the greatest movie ever made, I’m talking about people approaching them in such a way that led to having such an opinion. When Vox Lux - the Natalie Portman vehicle about an aging pop star - came out years ago, I was surprised that Armond White, Ben Shapiro, and a few conservative film critics had championed it, in contrast to the mixed reception anointed by Rotten Tomatoes columnists. Don’t ask why are they here and bemoaning their existence. Inquire what made them think that way.
I would be happy to describe myself as a failed writer. I only get published in a few places, and before that, I had a regular gig for a website that went bust, because of a huge scandal affecting its parent company. After that, I have no interest, besides those few places, to write for The Atlantic or Little White Lies, because of the vapid culture that results in a lot of unreadable articles. As of writing this, I’m looking for proper work, and a newsletter like Lack of Taste, after sporadic posts, is back. At least, for now.
Movie of the Week: Uncut Gems (2019)
Stressful is a word frequently used to describe Uncut Gems, but probably the better word for that is ecstatic. The camera swings whenever Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) makes a move, however clumsy they are to get him in trouble. It doesn’t take a break until the Passover scene. Even the quietest moment has greater tension, where Howard recites the ten plagues.
The Safdie Brothers make it a typically intense experience, but Uncut Gems has the most heartfelt relationship in their oeuvre, where it’s between Howard and his voluptuous side chick Julia (Julia Fox). Howard makes a lot of awful choices and bets at the expense of his partners and family, but they are so bold and he enjoys the tension so much, that you are able to see what could happen. Julia, meanwhile, is an influencer who isn’t portrayed as an obstacle, not because she loves her sugar daddy, but because she’s less constraining compared to Kevin Garnett’s championship ring being loaned off for another parlay.
I watched this film seven times and have to admit that its subtext of Americans taking advantage of Ethiopians and their black opals, even when they share a Jewish diaspora with their merchants is a bit boneheaded. This is because the cycle is depicted as an endless structural hole, rather than the result of individual choices. Those choices are purely driven by self-interest and materialism, which constrains the film from making a substantial critique. Put to fact that this whole path is just voyeurism masquerading as something profound, it introduces me to the directors’ worst tendencies thus far. And it’s a shame because the Safdies did a better job conveying its own altruistic subtext in Good Time.
Adam Sandler makes the performance of the decade, but the Safdies are talented at casting actors and non-actors that they shine as well. Second-best is Eric Boghossian as his loan shark (and brother-in-law), Arno. In some ways, Arno is the opposite of Howard: a deeply frustrated man beholden by his ranks as a crooked collector, only to be burdened by his antics. As Howard is stripped bare and shoved into his car’s trunk, Arno’s glaring eyes turn into sadness before he gives an order to his henchmen. Also, I’m not quite sure if the guy who played the jewel carver actually has a career in acting, but he’s definitely playing the most likable character in the film.
Uncut Gems has been a Netflix release outside of America, so this long weekend will see the film play in a theatre for the first time in my city. If you gandered at Film Twitter, it’s the kind of film that would be instantly canonized by film bros, and is tolerable among the e-girls, in spite of its indiscretions.