snoremac posted:

all things should be expressed in 3 emojis or less

sirtommygunn posted:

Perhaps there is some form of content to a novel that makes it worth the length to read. No, clearly it's just that using more words is inherently superior. I am smart.

Heath posted:

Also I'm going to respond to this because this drives me insane. Good writing is not simply brevity, nor is it just getting your point across. We're fortunate enough to be able to communicate in this rich and vivid, if often silly, language, and one of the great shames of things like Twitter is that it has a flattening effect on not just the diversity of language but also of voice - there's something to be said for having a distinguishing voice, not only for the writer but for the reader. One of the great aspects of reading, say, challenging novels is that it nourishes (one of my favorite words) the mind of the reader and fleshes out the mental palette from which the portraits of our imaginations are painted. Using a diversity of words and expanding upon ideas at length focuses and sharpens the mind, creates room for nuance of thought, and is the stuff from which we make the grout that fortifies our mental structure. Reading things like Twitter and the incessant flow of half-formed snippets of ideas is wearying to the mind - fine in short bursts, but it's not conducive to that. It's kind of like how doing nothing all day can be as exhausting as, say, doing yardwork, but your muscles atrophy and shrink and you get weaker. You're still tired at the end of the day, but you're even less able to handle actual work when it needs to be done, so you settle for the path of least resistance and convince yourself that doing something that requires more effort is pointless because it may have used more time.

To be even more metaphorical, I'm big on drinking tea for a lot of reasons, not least of which being that tea is the kind of thing that can be done very lazily with Lipton teabags and some hot water, or you can be more precise in your measurements and put a little more effort into it to have something special, even if it isn't perfect. One guy I watched talked about using a higher leaf-to-water ratio to get a better diversity of flavor, saying that adding more leaves was like adding more instruments to a symphonic lineup. One trumpet playing a note will sound one way, but six will produce a much richer sound, even if they're all playing the same note - it creates depth. Same for words, and for many other things.

You may have gleaned my point from having used a lot of words to make it, because I could have just as easily called you a dumbass and been on my merry way, but here we are.

The Kingfish posted:

This Hollywood show is unbelievably bad oh my god.

Jonas Albrecht posted:

The Netflix one? Yeah it's bad.

The Kingfish posted:

It’s like Mad Men if everybody in the office was woke. Absolutely dreadful. Just got to the point where they decide to ruin the end of their movie so that it will be more inspirational. Baffling.

sirtommygunn posted:

I agree with you, there is value in adding emotional or technical depth to your writing even if it isn't strictly necessary to make your point. I just feel that what Amber has done, in that specific article, didn't add much value, and large sections of it could have been deleted outright in editing to make a better article. I was exaggerating when I said it could have been a tweet, which I should have said when people starting calling me out rather than having a meltdown over it where I reduced the argument to its simplest possible state of "more words good v more words bad". Thank you for taking the time to make a good post in response to my shittiest argument so there could be some actual communication here.

The Kingfish posted:

It’s like Mad Men if everybody in the office was woke. Absolutely dreadful. Just got to the point where they decide to ruin the end of their movie so that it will be more inspirational. Baffling.

PostNouveau posted:

Oh my god a review of Aaron Sorkin's masterclass is like "drop everything and listen to it immediately" kind of podcast title

Race Realists posted:

Heath posted:

Also I'm going to respond to this because this drives me insane. Good writing is not simply brevity, nor is it just getting your point across. We're fortunate enough to be able to communicate in this rich and vivid, if often silly, language, and one of the great shames of things like Twitter is that it has a flattening effect on not just the diversity of language but also of voice - there's something to be said for having a distinguishing voice, not only for the writer but for the reader. One of the great aspects of reading, say, challenging novels is that it nourishes (one of my favorite words) the mind of the reader and fleshes out the mental palette from which the portraits of our imaginations are painted. Using a diversity of words and expanding upon ideas at length focuses and sharpens the mind, creates room for nuance of thought, and is the stuff from which we make the grout that fortifies our mental structure. Reading things like Twitter and the incessant flow of half-formed snippets of ideas is wearying to the mind - fine in short bursts, but it's not conducive to that. It's kind of like how doing nothing all day can be as exhausting as, say, doing yardwork, but your muscles atrophy and shrink and you get weaker. You're still tired at the end of the day, but you're even less able to handle actual work when it needs to be done, so you settle for the path of least resistance and convince yourself that doing something that requires more effort is pointless because it may have used more time.

To be even more metaphorical, I'm big on drinking tea for a lot of reasons, not least of which being that tea is the kind of thing that can be done very lazily with Lipton teabags and some hot water, or you can be more precise in your measurements and put a little more effort into it to have something special, even if it isn't perfect. One guy I watched talked about using a higher leaf-to-water ratio to get a better diversity of flavor, saying that adding more leaves was like adding more instruments to a symphonic lineup. One trumpet playing a note will sound one way, but six will produce a much richer sound, even if they're all playing the same note - it creates depth. Same for words, and for many other things.

You may have gleaned my point from having used a lot of words to make it, because I could have just as easily called you a dumbass and been on my merry way, but here we are.

sirtommygunn posted:

Yeah guys it's a lot better to to write in a way that repeats the same point over and over. You see how I'm saying the same thing multiple times? That means the writing is better. Repeating the same points does not grate at all on the reader, it's good actually. In fact, this post has been improved significantly because it's long. Yes, this post is indeed much better than it could have been, because I used many more words to convey the exact same amount of thought. Anyone who thinks this is bad writing is a baby, a dumb stupid baby, an incredible moron who probably can't read.

multijoe posted:

Really wish I could relate to sight of *too many* people wearing PPE lol

slicing up eyeballs posted:

yeah I'm probably not the target audience for that article; I've not run into anyone who thinks all this does anything but suck rear end. and further, where's virgil

Jeep posted:

I haven’t been following the pod for a while, can someone summarize “new Matt” and also virgil’s disappearance for me

slicing up eyeballs posted:

yeah I'm probably not the target audience for that article; I've not run into anyone who thinks all this does anything but suck rear end. and further, where's virgil

ZenMasterBullshit posted:

One person going to their lovely retail job that got reclassed as essential told amber to put on a mask and she's writing a big long article about how it's scolding and actually morally evil to do such.

It's no different that the kind of poo poo they make fun of the podcast usually and that's at least funny.