Just this once, I’m going to break character and become angry with the readers.
Any of my devoted readers, if any such creatures exist, will tell you that I don’t give a single fuck about the quality known as “readability”. Wikipedia may tell us that
In 1947, Donald Murphy of Wallace’s Farmer used a split-run edition to study the effects of making text easier to read. They found that reducing from the 9th to the 6th-grade level increased readership 43% for an article on ‘nylon’. There was a gain of 42,000 readers in a circulation of 275,000. He found a 60% increase in readership for an article on ‘corn’. He also found a better response from people under 35.
but I don’t write for Wallace’s Farmer or the hick-ass farmers who read it, so I don’t care.
Scratch that. I wish I wrote for Wallace’s Farmer and the hick-ass farmers who read it all the way back in 1947 because I would bet you cold hard cash that the average pig farmer from Iowa had a stronger sense of reading comprehension than today’s mega-student-loan, MacBook-Air-in-the-campus-Starbucks jerkoff.
Exhibit A is the above-captured comment thread on R&T’s Kinja page, referring to something I wrote titled The Miata Files For Its Man Card. You don’t have to go read it, I’ll tell you what it’s about. It purports to be the transcript of a speech I gave to CAPRI (Cool Alphas Preferring Roadsters Intentionally), a group I made up a few months ago in a column called Of Midgets And Men. In this speech, I tell the members of CAPRI that the Miata is finally a “man’s car” while owners of previous Miatas throw lug nuts at me.
How much fucking awareness does a person need to possess to understand that there is probably no actual CAPRI and that we don’t actually have meetings at the Kiwanis Club or wherever? Is this what any sane individual would consider believable? Was this idiot’s grandfather one of the people who panicked when “War Of The Worlds” was performed over the radio in 1938? How can anybody read this and think that it represents a serious transcript of a serious speech somewhere in actual space?
But it’s not enough that this fool is stupid enough to believe everything he reads. He then decides that he needs to post some sort of fucktarded feminist-ally rant about how there’s no such thing as a man’s car. His OUTRAEG has apparently blinded him to the fact that none of the things in the story actually happened, even as his laziness keeps him from reading the predecessor CAPRI article to see that I actually agree with him about removing the various derogatory labels from sporting roadsters.
It’s at this point that I want to do what I always told my contributors at TTAC when they griped about stupid readers misunderstanding what they wrote: I want to ask myself if I could have made it any more clear without destroying the integrity of the piece. If I could have made it any more readable, any more obviously satirical, without titling it in Upworthy moron-style THIS IS A SATIRE AND HERE’S WHY THERE’S A PROBLEM. But I can’t do it. I’m too angry.
I’m angry that people like this halfwit dominate the public discussion on nearly everything. I’m angry that when I write something for my favorite readers, the people who can read at a high school level and understand moderately complex concepts, someone like this always comes along to shit on it. I’m angry that our society places so little value on demonstrating intelligence or comprehension that “StevenG” feels pride, not shame, at moaning that he can’t understand the satirical nature of a very basic article.
In short, I’m angry that the lunatics have taken over the asylum and left me in the position of Wonko The Sane, pretending that there’s still a place for civilized discourse in this culture.
So, if I’m wrong about my article, you’ll have to let me know, okay?
You’re not wrong Jack .
-Nate
#yesallwomen
🙂
Deep breaths, Jack. Deep breaths.
You are not wrong, the article was funny and clearly satire. First rule of the internet right? Ignore the idiots and don’t feed trolls.
That’s what you get talking like a fag.
One of the most annoying things on the internet are “/sarc” tags in threads and posts. The idea that we have to point out sarcasm surely defeats the purpose of sarcasm to begin with, no? If you take the context of irony out of it the joke just becomes surrealism. Its insane to think sarcasm of all things should be dumbed down so people don’t miss the joke…
By the way one of the most interesting thing is how presidential speeches have gotten dumbed down over the ages- before 1980 no president ever used “folks” in an address, now it’s all that they ever do.
Most idiots commenting on articles anymore tend to be more concerned with trolling or getting the first comment in. They rarely actually read the article, and even then they read to a point where they can find some angle to argue about, since they are a faceless entity, and they may get some attention this way. Forget them, ignore them, call them out for what they are etc. In the end, please don’t let it affect your writing. Some of us do actually enjoy it and read the whole damn thing.
I was thinking the same thing. He probably just read the headline, got outraged, and headed straight for the comments.
you think the “grow a dick” guy really works at NASA? (actually one time I met a real meathead who works for them, building spacesuits or something. maybe that’s him)
Ever watch Idiocracy? We’re getting closer every day.
100% right my friend.
Jack - if someone broadcast an updated version of War of the Worlds I’d wager about 53% of the country would panic. Maybe we should set that up just to try and thin the herd some.
Read it at work this afternoon, enjoyed it. I’m amazed someone could no get the satirical aspect
Reminds me of the TTAC fiction piece I wrote in 1st person where the protagonist died at the end, and people thought it was a true story.
Oh, so all farmers are ‘hicks’ from Iowa Jack? What a gros overgeneralization.
I will have you no that both my grandparents we’re farmers and they worked very hard everyday and my grand father went to college with a 3.8 grade. and they weren’t from iowa they we’re from Missouri! although you probably think they are both the same state because your just some jerkoff ‘smart culture’ engineer from Ohio that likes to right about shoes and shirts like some kind of poof and you drive a Honda because you love looking at hentai cartoons.
You know I got pretty much that response, line-for-line, on a recent TTAC piece I did regarding Ford trucks?
With similar spelling, punctuation and capitalization, no doubt.
Arbuckle is actually genius. He employed reverse satire. At least, that’s the benefit of the doubt I’m allowing in this instance (I’m always the optimist).
Glad to see someone else uses that spelling of compleat 🙂
I sincerely believe people like StevenG are in the minority, but what they lack in numbers they make up for by shrieking the loudest and the most often.
yeah, I was involved in a side discussion with him about station wagons, where he bemoaned the fact that Ford isn’t selling the Focus wagon or the Mondeo (Fusion) wagon here, and that if they’d just offer them people would buy them in droves. I pointed out that not too long ago you could buy a Taurus, Focus, Accord, Camry, Corolla, and several other cars in wagon form.
His response was “well I wouldn’t have bought any of those, I don’t like those cars.”
Which- unbeknownst to him but knownst to me- summed up perfectly why there are very few wagons being sold new here.
Terminal Optimism… A few more trips around the Sun will cure you, Jack.
Write for your audience, Jack, the rest don’t count and will never get you. Don’t waste your energy on them.
As for the ‘Manly’ thing about Miata’s, I owned Miata’s for years and never once heard there was a perceived ‘manly’ issue with it until I started reading comments on blogs. I quickly relegated that sentiment to a sandbox mentality.
Read your R&T piece, pretty obviously satire and good satire at that. Pure fun, not a mean bone in it.
Off topic, but relevant to the piece that generated this one, regarding the styling of the several generations of Miata’s and in aggregate, I have liked them all, with no issues whatsoever. And, the new MX5 definitely moves the ball down field, styling wise, but that doesn’t diminish the styling of the other generations. And, the heart and soul of the MX5 is refreshed for a new era. Its a Win! Win!
Jack, you know the first rule of writing for the Internet is do not, under any circumstances, take the comments seriously.
Yes, I see the irony of me saying that in the comments. But the rule holds.
I am in the final testing of a program that I will be offering for sale to the operators of blogs and any other website that allows comments. It will be known as the Butt Hurt Detector XP-9 and will work as follows;
When Butt Hurt is detected in a post, an immediate message will be sent to the poster’s device that consists of the following, a full screen flashing extended middle finger with the invitation to “Pull on your big girl panties and get over yourself” and immediate termination of posting privileges. Any attempt to establish another posting account from the same device, will result in a self destruct command to be sent back, hopefully resulting in a fiery explosion of said device(I’m still working on that part).
(I’m assuming that here, I don’t need to mention that this is satire, but just in case)
YOUR DEVICE IS HURTFUL AND UNNECESSARY
oh wait.
I’m a Spaniard reading you from overseas. I could clearly see that it was satire. From paragraph four. Clearly. No doubts about it. I’m not particularly brilliant and English is not my mother tongue so probably you should just sit down and relax because if us, Spaniards, can get you almost anyone else will.
And whenever another StevenG shows up, just grab a beer, relax and join us at “TAMITFITW” (There Are More Idiots Than Flies In The World).
Greetings from Madrid.
Thank you for reading — and you have my unfettered envy for living in Madrid!
Out of every 10,000 lovers there is always 1 hater. I agree that the one hater always seems to have the loudest voice and has a huge following. These whiny bitches that have the loudest voice always seem to overpower the majority. This minority, and I’m not talking about black people or Asians, always seem to get their way no matter what the cost. That squeaky wheel syndrome and our desire to not deal with it, is why our world is falling apart. It doesn’t just happen in automotive articles, it happens every single crevice that exists. The only way to (at least) maintain this world is to continue standing your ground and speaking from the heart. you do a good job of that, Jack. I have found that I agree with most everything that you say and you have a forum (and a bigger pair than I do) and are able to actually say what the majority is thinking. Keep up the good work!
That took half an hour longer to read than it should have; I blame the power outage. And it was worth more than a few customer-worrying chuckles in those paragraphs. Thank you very much for the links to both articles.
While I occasionally miss the point of satire - but rarely for very long - it’s pretty damn easy to tell the difference between the modern ad hominem/reductio ad absurdum/ad verecundiam/ad populum crap which indicates it’s going to be one of those discussion threads, and when someone is directly lampooning the class of commenters who aren’t happy until you’re not happy.
It’s been close to 15 years since I chased away a new face on an old irc channel by channeling Eoin Colfer while he was discussing JKRowling, but my introduction to the new generation of thin (skinned), yet thick, users was a rude awakening which I quickly became inured to.
The Miata is still gay. Oops.
Where it goes from merely annoying to actual concern is when they take it offline and target you. If I’m not mistaken, a disgruntled reader once tried to screw with JB’s day job.
We’re not allowed to even give their feelings the slightest bruise by pointing out their manifold hypocrisies but they’re such moral avatars that they crowd source burning the witch.
If by “disgruntled reader” you mean Jonny Lieberman and Ed Loh of Motor Trend trying to get me fired from my day job, then yes.
Wait… They tried to do what!? I’m not sure if this is something I missed or something you only wrote about privately. Any chance you could share the details?
For the record you are a far better writer than either of them, especially Mr loh.
The details are like so:
I got into an argument with Jonny and Ed on Facebook. At the time, I was doing a one-year contract as a senior sysadmin for Honda of America’s production operations. So Ed apparently called Honda PR in Torrance and told them to fire me. That request was relayed to Honda Manufacturing, who told them to mind their own business. But it did get me a nice little chat with a senior Honda official at 6:30 in the morning.
Thanks for the reply, sorry I missed it. I have to say that really, truly, lowers my opinion of Mr. Loh as a person and a journalist. I now assign less weight to his opinion on all matters, and am less likely to read anything he is associated with. These things matter, and I say that as someone who could definitely lose their job based on a complaint about internet commenting.
Apparently that’s a very large and amusing club to be in. I haven’t butted heads with either, but know plenty of folks who have.
I modestly propose we eat guys like StevenG so they are not a burden on the publick.
I hate the charge to water (dumb) down content to better satiate an increasingly sloven “readership.” Switch to podcasts or video. “Microblog,” only publish on the big networks to build an audience. Barf.
I’ve been writing for 5 years now. It’s clear there no money in long form, edifying content. Anything longer 300 words is simply too much to ask if you make your “living” with lowest common denominator CPM crap.
Getting harder and harder to find quality automotive content worth actually reading. Jack is the exception, unfortunately not the rule. “The best and the brightest” prove themselves less so with each multi-syllabic word beyond 300.
Never stop, Jack. Press on regardless.