Week 1: You jayus gotta read that definition a little closer next time, babe

[dont_be_first]

Note: Before posting angry / butthurt comments on this and/or whatever, please read my postscript in the comments prior to doing so. Actually, I'd prefer if you maybe try at least reading what I'm up to IN THE ENTRY before immediately deciding that I am Hitler reincarnate and/or just a bad person with bad ideas and gosh golly are you ever gonna let

Comments

[welfy]

Sigh. I will never be first!

[veronica_rich]

Me either. Mostly because I'm slow and usually (a) asleep or (b) working when Gary posts.

[elledanger]

Firstly, I'd actually really love to get this kind of brutal feedback. It's a rare thing to be able to trust friends and fellow writers to be honest, and a rarer thing for them to also have the technical chops to be able to provide useful critique.

However, in terms of style, I think it's the comedy-roast presentation that others are reacting to and reading as a 'personal attack'. If you're not familiar with a roast they can seem very aggressive. And in terms of formatting, the use of hyperlinks for each mention of the original authors name makes it look worse than it is.

But other than that, entertaining, and I look forward to seeing more.

[dont_be_first]

On the potential value of "brutal feedback" - liiiike, I know, right? There are definitely positive aspects to this little experiment, and although I'm sure I won't be believed when I say so (or at least not right away like this), I'm actually not a total asshole, nor do I have any intention of becoming or acting like one in the process of writing these things.

Glad to hear you like things so far, and I appreciate the positive / thoughtful feedback myself.

[dont_be_first]

Let me ask you legit for a bit of concrit, since you offered a point I'd already been considering - how horrible does it look to drop a user's name without using [lj user], at least after the initial reference?

I agree that it somehow ends up seeming more harsh when the same user gets LJ-linked again and again in the course of an "analysis." But on LJ, your login is your "name," and I sort of felt like using the subject's handle without consistent lj-metatagging looked pretty amateur-hour. Agree / disagree?

I could also just use "s/he" more in place of the subject's username, but that's often even worse.

[emo_snal]

I think I feel like in the back of my memory there's a time when I was more prone to try to get people's goat, and lj-tagging their name repeatedly was part of my goat-catching technique. I would use the lj-tag the first time (if for no other reason than it should notify her when that happens -- I get notified any time anyone mentions ME anyway (but maybe that's more of an unholy summoning curse), and the firster ought to be notified that they're getting roasted after all), and after that just type it out without the tag to lessen the goatherding.

I for one would try to get a first entry up but well the fact is that I actually like to put thought in my entries.

[eternal_ot]

:P..brutal..i'm staying far away from posting first the entire season...;)

[blergeatkitty]

Okay, now that I know what your awful schtick is, you've saved me from having to take the time to read any of your posts again. With 200+ entrants, saving every little bit of time helps. So thank you.

[dont_be_first]

You forgot to imgdrop hitler.png.

[superhappytime]

That seems lazy. Shouldn't one read every entry if they're going to play the game as opposed to ruling one person out because you don't like the idea or what they're doing? It's not "best creative fiction idol" or "most tragic personal narrative idol." If I stopped reading every entry this week based on which jokes actually made me LOL, I'd have a pretty short list going forward.

[whipchick]

To place you in the canon -

Against Decoration

[dont_be_first]

As I'm not a paid user of Byliner (and my fetish-site subscription budget is already well past blown for the month), I can't read past the first paragraph to see what connection you're making. My best guess is that you're saying I am the "machine-gunning detractor" which completes the notion of LJI as a "movement," but Karr's statement on what it takes to "qualify" something as a movement is problematic on multiple levels when taken at anything approaching face value, don't you think?

I also don't know much about poetry nor neo-formalist poetry and I'm particularly weirded out to find that a movement that just seems to enjoy structure is necessarily associated with, presumably from the opening shot here, Reaganism. In my mind, "neo-conservativism" from the 80s on is actually a closeted form of anarchism. If these people loved structure so damn much, they wouldn't be obsessed with the notion of deregulating everything.

[dont_be_first]

Oh yeah, and of course I'm not the first "machine-gunning detractor" in the midst of LJI, but whatever, I'm really not sure what I was supposed to read in what little I could read of this. :)

[whipchick]

Oh, I was just thinking of how Mary Karr changed poetry criticism by naming names. She won a Pushcart Prize, but a lot of people still don't like her.