it led to a conversation
steve roggenbuck:
me:
honey, you were far too loud for far too long. you deserve everything i said and so. much. more. i am glad you make people happy, sugar, and i hope you’re happy, but you stage massive aggressive attacks on actual culture, like your google bombing nonsense, and then don’t even back your play. you’re constantly walking away from the last thing you did, and every new project is”the most important thing you’ve done,” and you’re leading a bunch of kids through every medium of creative work, one by one, and making pointless boring pieces and then calling them groundbreaking. you have done nothing that would matter if you guys weren’t so loud about it, no memorable lines, nothing that moves anyone besides other bored white kids. but you are loud, and have loud friends, and you guys make so much noise that places that show know better, places like metazen, and housefire, and everyday genius, and yale, they pay attention to you (briefly, sure) and your minimal effort that you won’t even defend as poetry anymore becomes a part of what poetry/literature/journalism is. you create copy-cats. you high five each other across the internet until everyone is making those stupid poems out of facebook links, and everyone is posting gchats as if they mean anything. you are a marketing kid, an aggressive, manipulative marketing kid. honey, you don’t love me, you don’t know me, and the first thing you said to me was “how do you love me,” as in steve roggenbuck, because in the end it is about your ego and you feeling good about yourself. you can tell the internet you acre about them, but it doesn’t make it true. you didn’t invent anything, and none of your friends invented anything, you’re just playing pretend because you’re too bored to try anything, or simply unable. the sad thing is that there are real writers in your group, some i even made fun of, who will one day outgrow this and there will be an embarrassing internet trail with your name all over it. {BLANK} is one prime example. you and your pals have dirtied his name and now he’s knee-deep in an identity crisis because you made it about the marketing, the both of you, and never the art.
i feel fine sugar, but you and your friends have been the elephant in the room for a long time, and i’m just saying that you’re there. i know real writers, real artists, who talk because they have something to say, and with all your racket people don’t listen as much as they would if you weren’t there mucking up what it means to be an internet poet.
you have made an impressive little cult, and i commend you, but that’s not real connection, and one by one people will realize this. i hope you aren’t the last one.
good luck, honey.
hazel
…more to come?…
