The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
Via Verge‘s best-of-2012 list, here’s an essay by Meghan Daum about the lakes of vitriol that make up so many online comments sections.
She compares the unfavorable reaction to a somewhat naïve piece she wrote about safe sex in the ’90s to the daily attacks she now receives on her “looks, marital or reproductive status, and standing on the bitch-o-meter”—and then considers the verbal skirmishes of the Founding Fathers.
...moreChoire Sicha writes about the visual evolution of the internet over at The Awl.
Sicha discusses the fact that advertisements are being woven into the content of websites, such as promoted tweets from a corporation being plopped to the top of one’s twitter feed.
...moreMargaret Atwood, author of The Handmaiden’s Tale, the last book Jenna Le loved, tells us about writing with the internet as part of PEN’s Dialogue Series.
“For me the experience of writing is really an experience of losing control.… I think it’s very much like dreaming or like surfing.
...moreIn an article at NewStatesman about sexist abuse online, nine bloggers reveal their experience with abusive, mysoginist comments, as well as rape and death threats.
Blogger digby added an interesting perspective on the subject, explaining that when people assumed her pseudonym “represented a male,” insults had a starkly different tone.
...moreDo you know about the Precession?
Judd Morrissey and Mark Jeffrey’s project is pioneering new digital landscape, making the act of writing into a visually-stimulating performance piece, combined with the personal act of reading work on the Internet. It is a collaborative performance piece, a social commentary and ready for you to experience at any time.
...moreAll of us Wikipedia users are constantly reaping the benefits of massive information-based collaboration. This essay, published in the Awl, considers why this resource is so essential in our digital age. Anybody who has ever accidently cited Wikipedia on a college paper as a freshman can now liberate themselves from the shame–Wikipedia is deconstructing the personal ownership of ideas, transforming our material world and creating a new unity.
...more“‘One of the most important reasons to write, to make art, to make music, to be an artist of any sort, is to connect. To show others, ‘I too have felt this way, share it with me.’ If you try and connect with anyone in a way that is not earnest, it isn’t a connection.
...more“Like quilting, archiving employs the obsessive stitching together of many small pieces into a larger vision, a personal attempt at ordering a chaotic world.”
This essay provides some edgy perspective on archiving, folk art and collectors as artists. Also, how the internet has intertwined the act of archiving and creating.
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Some people wait a lifetime to find a website full of cool-looking old cassettes. (via John Gall)
This tumblr collects “funny tombstones from around the world.” (via Jason Arias)
To commemorate the Giants winning the World Series, McSweeney’s is selling a cool limited-edition poster of Giants-related Dave Eggers drawings.
...more“But somewhere in that transition from a social site meant to deepen interpersonal relationships to a self promotional, commercial tool, Facebook lost its appeal.
“The various facets of my life merged into a web of connectivity where I could no longer clearly create distinct relationships with friends, foes, and fast food — either because I can’t figure out how or because Facebook is preventing me outright.
...moreThe author of the forthcoming My Life with the Lincolns asks what happens when you type Abraham Lincoln into Etsy. The answer is pretty awesome.
Anyone interested in fiction and the Internet should read this now.
...moreA couple weeks back, I was in a bad way. I’d recently joined Twitter, was always on Facebook, and checked my email (and I don’t exaggerate) about 75 times a day. I couldn’t stand it, but I also couldn’t stop. I spent more than half my waking hours on a screen.
...moreGoing through the book blogs every week, I read a lot about how the Internet is ruining everything — from publishing to our attention spans to investigative journalism to our social lives. But every once in a while, I hear about an online project that’s so necessary and does so much good that I flash back to what it was like when all this technology was brand new and we thought it would turn the world into some sort of tech-happy utopia.
...moreHappy 40th birthday to the internet. Just don’t go buying a Harley to prove you’re still vibrant.
In what may be the most counter-intuitive finding in recent years, the internet might actually make people smarter, which frightens the hell out of me, considering what you can find online.
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Tao Lin’s characters are constantly connected, yet physically detached. The technology they live and breathe often seems less mechanical than its users.
Brandon Scott Gorrell’s debut collection, During My Nervous Breakdown I Want to Have a Biographer Present is an anxious, ambivalent ode to Internet culture.
It’s summertime. BookExpo is in the past. Writers have taken a little break from accosting critics. The book blogs finally have some free time.
And like most people, they are spending that time poking around the Internet and finding lots of things that are a little bit brilliant, from a homeless book club to a web site that asks gifted authors to write on slightly ridiculous objects to something called “possibilianism.” That, plus a “failed interview with Marilyn French,” giving up on vampires, and Middlesex on TV, all below the fold.
...moreThat’s the claim of a BBC News article which quotes the study’s lead researcher, Bill Heil, as follows: “Twitter is a broadcast medium rather than an intimate conversation with friends,” and “it looks like a few people are creating content for a few people to read and share.” That’s no great surprise, but there are a couple interesting items in the data.
...moreJust in case you were looking for a compelling 5-part documentary series to watch for free over the weekend, consider The Machine that Changed the World, a history of computing jointly produced by WGBH Boston and the BBC in 1991.
...moreWe’re distracted, our attention is shot, we are under surveillance, and we don’t care! We like being linked and friended by strangers who may or may not be who they say they are.
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Two years before I founded The Rumpus.net I spent a month offline. I published the result in Poets and Writers but since it’s not available online we’re publishing it here as a Rumpus Reprint.
...moreJay Smooth is the founder of WBAI’s Underground Railroad, New York’s longest running hip-hop radio show. Like nearly all other bipeds, he has a blog. What differentiates Smooth from the pack is that his video posts on ill doctrine are amusing and articulate, blending intellectual commentary and blistering spoken word. Even for those completely removed from hip-hop culture, Jay Smooth is likeable and relevant, almost like an upgrade of D.L.
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