
The Personal-Essay Boom Is Over - lermontov
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-personal-essay-boom-is-over
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briholt
This is an interesting meta article, but it skirts the bigger picture.
"Personal essay" seems to be a euphemism for "first world feminist problems."
Note all of the examples in the intro are wealthy(ish) women drumming up
trivial problems somehow related to womanhood. There are no listed examples of
men having equivalent problems (let's say having a mishap with his pant
zipper), and there are no listed examples of lower class problems (let's say a
dishwasher who gets type 2 diabetes). The sexual assault essays go both ways -
some are genuine and useful to understanding crime, some are authors
desperately exploiting other people's victimhood for their own self
aggrandizement ("stare rape").

The author's failure to acknowledge the _topic_ of the personal essay boom may
stem from her own employment at Jezebel, a publication largely devoted to
first world feminist problems.

Personally, I welcome this change. I've been very disheartened by what has
been an obvious attempt at the Western upper classes to redirect money
attention away from the needy and towards themselves. Sadly, I've seen a fair
share of this on HN as well.

~~~
exelius
I think that yours is a typical viewpoint on this topic among white men. I
don't mean this as an insult in any way; since that's most likely your entire
life experience. But when you constantly have your competence questioned when
people don't do the same to coworkers, you feel unfairly boxed in. It'd be
great to solve the big problems of the world; but most women / people of color
have to fight to prove that they belong in the conversation. It's a daily
frustration, so we complain on blogs about it.

The shitty thing about it is that you really don't know when it figures in.
All you see is your white male coworkers advancing in their careers while
you're left to wonder "Was he promoted because he goes fishing with the boss?
Or is he doing something I'm not?" Never mind that the boss doesn't invite
_you_ fishing because you're female and his wife won't allow it.

It's that constant, nagging "What if?" that bothers us. It's not that I don't
care about the problems of other people in the world; it's that I'm constantly
reminded how little little power I have within my immediate sphere of
influence that I don't feel I have anything to contribute outside of it. There
is a small but influential political base in this country that actually
believes women are second-class citizens (watch how many people the Daily Show
was able to get to un-ironically admit that they thought Trump was a better
option than Clinton because he was a man -- even other women).

But at the same time, this has caused a backlash against "political
correctness" that we first world feminists have to defend against that have
very real consequences (abortion rights, family leave, etc). So yeah, the
narcissistic essays are gone, but there are still problems to address -- both
at home and elsewhere (ignoring the entirely patronizing idea that the world
outside western democracies _need_ our help...)

~~~
briholt
Those white male retired coal miners living on welfare in trailer parks and
dying of black lung will never understand the plight of middle class office
politics.

~~~
dismantlethesun
Are you a white coal miner dying of black lung?

I think the issue here is simple. Some women make complaints about events in
their daily lives, and connect it to a wider conflict/issue about the rights
and status of women. Let's call these women group A.

On the other hand, it seems rare for men to complain in the same way.

I've seen men complaining about group A merely having discussions.

I've seen men complaining about the treatment of men whom they are not
connected to (e.g. coal miners, kindergarden teachers, nurses).

However, I rarely see _personal_ gripes.

I'd invite you to actually make a personal gripe, because it will be more
topical than dragging up an age-old trope.

~~~
exelius
Yes. This.

My theory is that Silicon Valley (aka "white men" in the most air-quotes way
possible) have moved on to solving the problems of the whole world (whether
the world wants them to or not) because they don't have acute social obstacles
they have to deal with.

The rest of us have things that bother us every day: we work on fixing those.
There's no app for that: it takes the hard work of millions of women and
people of color every day. Hard work that is assumed as a "given" by most
companies.

And this is _in no way_ a critique of white men for not working on these
problems: they're not your problems to solve. Just _please_ don't tear us down
when all we're trying to to is claw our way up to your level. A little support
(even purely verbal) goes a long way.

~~~
chongli
_My theory is that Silicon Valley (aka "white men" in the most air-quotes way
possible) have moved on to solving the problems of the whole world (whether
the world wants them to or not) because they don't have acute social obstacles
they have to deal with._

I think it's a mistake to assume that anybody who isn't complaining about
something doesn't have anything to complain about. Look at somebody like Robin
Williams. Who expected him to kill himself? Nobody.

In general, men are discouraged from complaining about their problems in
public. It's unseemly and unmasculine. So to be fair to everyone, we should
not assume that the volume of complaints is any reflection on how hard
people's lives are.

~~~
oh_sigh
Yes. The big company i work for has a new popular mailing list where anonymous
happenings related to sexism/racism are sent, and weekly summaries are sent
out. Frequently you see something like "I (female) was asked by my manager to
not work on anything that he wasn't aware of"

It's really hard to imagine that this is an instance of sexism, or that men
aren't sometimes treated similalrly. Yes , we don't see equivalent "I (male)"
statements, but maybe because men generally don't want to complain, or think
that it is a personal issue and they don't generalize it to a gender issue

------
6stringmerc
Completely false, very narrow minded perspective that pretty much works
backwards from its conclusion using lots of anecdotes.

The Personal-Essay Boom is just getting started, because now people are
sharing more interesting things in more interesting ways in the past. Dishing
on former employers. Describing personal journeys. Letting people experience a
slice of life that they otherwise would not come across.

The only problem with Personal-Essays is that anybody without any training or
practice can sit down and give it a try, which is why 95%+ will read like a
Sophomoric diary entry based on literary merit (if lucky) or Ranting
(overloaded with emotions), or just not as interesting as the Writer thinks.

So, to contrast the anecdotes and conclusion I disagree with in the article, I
will happily cite that on my Medium.com page, where I have 70 publications,
the highest viewed, most shared, and apparently most liked are Personal
Essays. They are about interesting subjects - Film, Music, Writing - not, as
the Writer uses as a comparison - some kind of nuveau-critique about life as
told through the lens of a Tampon.

The signal to noise ratio has always been a problem. That's the role of Copy
Editors (RIP, really they're seemingly extinct in the US outside of Top 1%)
and Publications to get things into shape. Or, to re-frame the discussion in
terms of guitar and me experience with it, "Anybody can pick up a guitar and
make noise, but making beautiful music is going to take a lot of time and
effort." Personal Essays also follow this axiom.

~~~
BadassFractal
I personally cannot relate to reading other people's journeys unless I'm
trying to get actionable information out of those reports. E.g. you're someone
who achieved a good degree of success somewhere, let's say a Derek Sivers, in
which case I WANT to know how you did it.

I don't enjoy being a passive consumer, I'd rather have the experience instead
of reading about it. And yes, it takes a lot of work to get yourself in a
position where you can have an interesting lifestyle, which is why most people
would much rather passively dream of those experiences.

Reminds me of how every person on Instagram has to show the world how great of
a time they're having, how amazing of a vacation they're on, and how much
they've grown from the experience every day. Some of that is done to build an
audience for later advertising revenues, sure. I however have no reason to
look at any of it.

The way I see it, nobody with a fulfilling, busy, exciting and interesting
life of their own will consume that kind of content. People are fundamentally
selfish and self-centered, they don't care about other people's experience
nearly as much as we think.

~~~
glangdale
This is a strange response. You talk about _yourself personally_ and then go
on to generalize: apparently no-one with a "fulfilling, busy, exciting and
interesting life of their own" will ever be interested in other people's
experience. Apparently the explanation of why other people have tastes that
are different to your own is that their lives suck.

A less preposterous (and less self-congratulatory) idea might be that "people
like different things".

------
golemotron
> “The boom in personal essays—at Salon, at least, but I suspect other
> places—was in part a response to an online climate where more content was
> needed at the exact moment budgets were being slashed.”

That makes those essays the literary equivalent of Reality TV.

------
douche
I wonder if it has something to do with trends in education. It seems like the
only thing my generation ever did in high school English classes was learn how
to write college application essays, the more personal, the better.

------
paulpauper
no it's not over. the personal essays have moved to Medium

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Aloha
The phrase "personal essay economy" drove me nuts.

The personal essay largely to me seemed like posting a blog in the paper, I'm
not sure why you'd want to, but sometimes they're interesting to read.

