Jason Scott rips into Joe Clark. I have learned a number of things from Joe Clark, and I still find reason to link someone to i let u b u at least once per quarter. But I can’t find much fault with this assessment of his words and his worldview.
A sizable slice of technology experts are the caustic sort — Clark, Mark Pilgrim, and Jason Scott himself come to mind. They get away with being assholes because they’re also funny and correct, for the most part.
But Scott makes a useful distinction: who receives your snark? Is it the swath of the world that should Know Better? Or is it the sliver of the world that knows already, tries, and comes very close? The former is inclusive, because it implies that anyone clueful enough to be reading your work in the first place is not the subject of your wrath. The latter is alienating, because the reader senses she could find herself under the magnifying glass at any moment.
Curmudgeons are often useful, because the chips on their shoulders give them drive and purpose. But blanket misanthropy isn’t a virtue.
Comments
While I am, as you admit, a curmudgeon (almost a hackneyed description by now), two things I’m not are an asshole and a misanthrope. Love you too, kiddo.
Please check around: I spend a lot of time correcting the totally clueless, not only the near-misses, as you seem to suggest.
Look me up next time you’re in town. Or just talk to some people who know me personally. Guess what: Online persona ≠ real-life persona.
Anyway, who’s this Jason fellow? Important in some way?
“It is now possible to create your own DVDs on a PowerMac. Apple would like you to believe you are also qualified to subtitle and dub your new DVD. Well, you’re not. Budding desktop cinéastes require a training program to teach them how to do accessible media the right way. But no such training program exists.”
How much worse the world is made with such an outlook. The world needs more Bre Pettis and a little less Joe Clark. I recuse myself on its need or lack of need for Jason Scott.
Joe, I certainly am not qualified to comment on you as a person, but my online persona is allowed to give its impression of your online persona. We use our own blogs to speak in absolutes because it’s too tiresome to hedge — to prepend each sentence with “In my opinion… ” or “It appears to me…” — in an area where one holds sole editorial control.
Anyway, I could have stated my point a bit better: I’m glad you’re preaching to the clueless as well, but I’m more concerned about making “perfect” the enemy of “good.” I don’t share Jason’s intensity of emotion, let’s say, and I only wrote about all this in the first place because I have respect for you both.
Jason is “important” in the sense that anyone in our weird little universe is important. He’s an Internet historian and documentarian. And his cat has 200,000 followers on Twitter.
Apparently important enough to merit a blog post a year ago.