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.

“My favorite all time comment has to be the fellow who complained, ‘You wrote a lot better before you came out as a woman.’”

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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.

“The multiple elements of the duo’s practice — travel and experience, writing, programming, performance, and documentation (both of experiences and performances) — suggest the act of making art as a powerful analog for action in the world: civic action, exploration, and participation in the world, and the subsequent creation of community.”

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Our very own managing editor, Isaac Fitzgerald, offers some eloquent perspective on honesty, the internet and art in this KQED article about forging real life connections versus promoting our internet personas.

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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. (via Ubu Web)

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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.

The headline for this is, “Nicaragua Raids Costa Rica, Blames Google Maps.” What a world! Also, that website is called Search Engine Land. That’s where my family and I summer!

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“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.

“For me, the overwhelming connectivity to everyone and everything, without much control over those ties, feels like I’m no longer connected to anything, and meanwhile, outside groups benefit.”

Laura McGann has deactivated her Facebook account and here’s why. (via Bookforum)

I’ve been hearing lots of arguments about how we should all quit Facebook. From countless privacy issues to F.B. hiring former Bush administration stooges, lots of well-intentioned folks have made strong cases for quitting while the next moment logging in to make a comment about their friend’s Youtube post. Facebook’s addictive nature is the strongest reason for deactivation, at least in my opinion.

But I still won’t do it. . . not until my friends do it. See, it all goes back to peer pressure, the only thing I really learned in grade school.

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Anyone interested in fiction and the Internet should read this now.

Sappho and banjos! (via Bookslut)

“Why does everyone hate the small bookstore?” (via Bookninja)

In the age old rivalry between Batman and Superman, Batman comes out on top by $75,500.

Dear Martin Amis, Just stop. And no more palling around with Hitchens. Someone’s gonna get hurt.

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It’s not heroin. I should have been able to stop myself. But I couldn’t. Really. I wasn’t getting any writing done. I was ignoring my girlfriend and my friends. I was reading George Packer’s musings on how all this technology needs to stop and tearing up. I read this article about heavy web users being depressed. I agreed. I checked my email again.

And then, I found this essay at The Millions about a student who had to go to a corner of the Coop in Harvard Square where the wireless didn’t work  to get writing done, and, after chuckling at the irony, I decided to do what he did.  I had heard about a coffeeshop called Borderlands Cafe, affiliated with Borderlands Bookstore, that had opened just a couple months ago here in San Francisco.

Not only do they not have wireless, but they don’t have music, and everything is remarkably well lit. 

By the time I left the coffeeshop, I’d cleared my head and written 3,000 words. With the Internet and music to distract me, it would take me a month to write that much, and I would have ended the day more panicked then when I started. I also couldn’t help but notice how many people were buying magazines and coffee. Even more striking was how many people thanked the barista for the store’s policies.

I was grateful, too. Not having wireless or music was a brave move on their part. So I sent Alan Beatts at Borderlands Cafe an e-mail (from another coffee shop down the street) with a few questions about their policies, and he was kind enough to respond.

Rumpus: Why did you decide not to have wireless or music and to keep the place so well lit?

Alan Beatts: The question of wireless was one that I considered for quite a long time. Even up to the last month before we opened I was on the fence. But, during the process of writing our mission statement, I realized that our focus on creating a social space rather than a work-space and my desire to encourage people to interact with each other made the decision about WiFi pretty clear. I’ve observed and been told many times about how the availability of Wi-Fi creates a space where people are wrapped up in their own, solitary world and not interacting with each other. That was not the kind of place I wanted to own or work in.

The question of lights and music both came from my intention to make the literary world an intrinsic element to the cafe. Since I come from bookselling and the cafe is a child of my bookstore, it was a logical fit. Most of the writers that I know do not work to music (at least not music with vocals) and I know that I can’t write when someone else’s words are rocketing around in my head. That, combined with the social element that I’ve mentioned both argued against music (it’s hard to talk when the music is loud and, if lots of people are talking, you have to turn the music up if it’s going to be heard). All that said, it’s possible that we may have music playing at sometimes in the future, since there’s also an attraction to a bustling, noisy space on, let’s say, a Friday night. But most times, the cafe will probably be pretty quiet.

And as for the lighting, it’s hard to write and impossible to read in the dark. And, I personally like well lighted spaces to work in.

Rumpus: Have you encountered many customers who are upset by your policies? Have you encountered many who are grateful?

Beatts: Not many (are upset), really. And most of them don’t become customers. They walk in, ask if we have WiFi, get a negative answer, and walk out. But for each person like that, we probably get ten or more who say how much they like the absence of it. And probably half of those people comment positively on the absence of music. I know for a fact that there are two writers (friends of mine) who really appreciate being able to concentrate on  writing rather then getting distracted by email, instant messages, and the web.

In closing, I should probably point out that I love music and noisy cafes as well as having nothing whatsoever against Wi-Fi or the Internet in general. I’m constantly grateful when I travel that there are cafes with Wi-Fi out there in the world and I think it’s a very valuable service that the owners of those places offer the public. And hell, I used to run nightclubs — I adore a loud place with a million conversations bubbling in the background and music thumping down. But, I wanted Borderlands to be a bit different and conducive to pursuits that benefit from some calmness and limited distractions. And it seems, based on the feedback, that there are a fair number of people who appreciate it.

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Today, I found one of these projects over at Galleycat’s Morning Media Menu. On Thursday, they featured an interview with Ruthie Ackerman, the founder of the hyperlocal web site Ceasefire Liberia.  The site is “a multimedia project which aims to document the Liberian experience on both sides of the ocean.” It is also an example of what writers and journalists can do with the Internet if they look beyond the assumption that they, by virtue of being professional writers or journalists, have a monopoly on writing about the communities they’re interested in.

Ackerman explains that she went to Liberia to write a book about what was happening there after the war, but while doing research, she came across the story of the many Liberian immigrants here in the US. She became increasingly frustrated by the fact that she was the one telling “the story” when there were so many different stories to be told.

“I didn’t like this idea,” she says, “in journalism that there’s one person, the journalist, who comes in and tells the story. The people in the communities I was writing about should be able to share their voices and share their stories as well. I thought … Ceasefire Liberia would give the people I was writing about an opportunity to talk back, to dialogue with me, to create a larger story or get to a larger truth.”

If you go over there and check out the site, it is really incredible how it has taken off. An entire community has popped up, and they’re doing all sorts of good things for citizen journalism and freedom of the media on both sides of the pond.

There is something beautiful about what projects like this do to the job of the writer: it is not only the writer’s job to create storytelling authority for herself, but also to share that authority with the people she’s writing about. And that, I think, is made easier by the Internet. It’s also a very good thing for the future of writing.

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