annotations: everything is the same now

Soraya Roberts' "On Flooding"; humans ruining the superbloom and the world 🙂; and other things I read

annotated: “On Flooding: Drowning the Culture in Sameness” by Soraya Roberts, Longreads

A 37-meter-long floating sculpture by U.S. artist Kaws in Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong, March 2019. (Imaginechina via AP Images)

In 1995, the Emmy nominees for Best Drama were Chicago Hope, ER, Law & Order, NYPD Blue, and The X-Files. In 1996, the Emmy nominees for Best Drama were Chicago Hope, ER, Law & Order, NYPD Blue, and The X-Files. In 1997, the Emmy nominees for Best Drama were Chicago Hope, ER, Law & Order, NYPD Blue, and The X-Files. That is: Two cop shows set in New York, two medical shows set in Chicago, and some aliens, spread across four networks, represented the height and breadth of the art form for three years running.

I literally just copied that entire first paragraph from a Deadspin article written by Sean T. Collins… as copied by Soraya Roberts in her smart, resonant essay on “flooding” (“unleashing a mass torrent of the same stories by the same storytellers at the same time, making it almost impossible for anyone but the same select few to rise to the surface”). Copy-ception, a neat trick that I’ve officially made terrible by replicating here.

I think about this idea of “flooding” a lot, especially coming from an audience development background, in which traffic (sorry, “audience”) is the job, and in which the main justification I have at my disposal to pitch news story ideas is to feebly cite Google Trends or to say, “I’m seeing this on my TL, this will get good Twitter traffic.”

It’s become a race to the bottom, of sorts, tracking which stories are trending and then shuffling editorial resources to churn out your outlet’s take on the news of the day, as quickly and as keyword-laden as possible, with the hopes of being the one to go viral on Twitter, make it to #1 on Reddit, claim a coveted Top Stories slot in search results. Every publication that is seeking scale (that eventually converts to profit) participates in this practice, to some degree: the Times, CNN, Cosmopolitan, search favorite Heavy.com—no one is immune.

I know because this has been part of my job. My place of employment is good about assigning stories whose primary purpose is editorial satisfaction, with traffic secondary-ish, but even a magazine like Slate is not immune to the search promise of articles like “How to watch the Super Blood Wolf Moon” (I learned a lot about supermoons this year). The trick, as always, is the balance: how to publish things that editors and writers can be proud of, while continuing to shovel coal into the monstrous furnace that is the traffic machine.

The Awl, the Toast—these independent websites that did not play that game no longer exist. There’s Popula, which is reader supported, but which also always seems to give off the impression of being on the verge of running out of money (Popula, please tell me if I’m wrong). There’s The Outline? Maybe? “Part of how I’ve tried to approach The Outline’s coverage is thinking, ‘What if we didn’t have to write about the same things everyone is writing about, at the same time everyone’s writing about it?’” tweeted The Outline’s culture editor Jeremy Gordon in response to Roberts’ piece. It’s an admirable mission, and I’ve liked a lot of The Outline’s mix because of that, but wait: isn’t this the publication that was just acquired by the guy whose current flagship media property is built off of underpaid labor churning out content that serves readers who primarily access the site by typing search queries on Google?

Outline… godspeed.

Pulling back from the minutiae of media and publishing, Roberts’ idea of “flooding” also raises questions about our collective cultural consciousness. Going back to the TV/Netflix example: There are now so many things to watch on so many individual platforms—and yet, it’s the nostalgic juggernauts (Friends) and the algorithm-strong-armed originals (Bird Box) that float to the top of the flooding streams. Everything an optimized reconfiguration of something else. “This is why every best-of list is identical,” as Roberts writes.

Wes @ZhouChauster

American pop culture is just an IV drip of nostalgia pumped into a dying husk

𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘢 ☂︎ @daenerey

is this supposed to mean something 👀 https://t.co/BUqXaz1Exd

Who can we blame for this? Idk, is it too much of a cliche to say capitalism (maybe even late capitalism)??? According to Roberts: “Maybe the web was originally created for everyone, but under capitalism it has clearly prioritized the individual star, preferring a sure thing for that one chance at one click, which necessarily means drowning out the rest.”

There are caveats and exceptions, I imagine. Of course there are. But the media landscape in which relative unknowns could build followings and careers from writing about whatever on smaller blogs is no longer broadly there, I think. And when you look at the purely search-driven coverage dedicated to something like Google Doodles (the Google logo/banner illustration that changes every day), idk, it’s hard not to feel morose.

Anyway, HERE ARE MY ANNOTATIONS. There are a lot of them, and they focus more on the substance of Roberts’ argument than the form this time (that’s because it’s a really good argument!). Please read, respond, add your own annotations, debate me, etc.

read

• Sarah Miller’s essay on Miami’s simultaneously rising sea levels and rising condos is really something. [Popula]

• That rare profile that’s so fascinating and well written, you don’t even have to know who the subject (artist Peter Sacks) is to enjoy it (like I did). [The New Yorker]

• Here’s an excellent interview with the person behind an anonymous IG account who’s trying to stop influencers from ruining public lands like California’s Walker Canyon poppy fields. [Jezebel]

• Can’t get enough of superbloom content!!! April Glaser has a thoughtful report on how sharing—that linchpin of the internet—is not always the answer: “When we share an image online of a place or a bird or a flower that we love, we are sharing our experience with it. But even as we aim to spread beauty, we must also reckon with the truth about the human-induced fragility of our ever-deteriorating natural world. And that might sometimes mean not sharing everything.” [Slate]

• Luke O’Neil’s newsletter is great. His most recent one, about what it’s like to watch your family be stolen from you by the rot that is Fox News, is really good. [Welcome to Hell World]

• I had never heard of Courtney Stodden, but I enjoyed this profile by Scaachi Koul because of the clear compassion the writer has for the subject. [BuzzFeed Reader]

• A lot of older people in the comments are mad at this BuzzFeed News story about elderly folks and misinformation, resulting in very funny responses like this:

“It makes you a domestic terrorist sonny.” — Mike Birdsell, pirate

• An OLDIE but GOODIE that I read for the first time recently: What if a women’s magazine editor edited a BBC news story about Syria? [The Hairpin]

• For cramped New York, an expanding dining scene. [LA Times]

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jgz (@jennygzhang)