Wow, well, Internet, you’ve really done it again this time. I read some of the stuff lobbed at NatashaVC for her post on Gwkr about “Pool Films,” which I thought was exactly what a great blog post could be: good concept, plenty to argue with, creates its own rubric/logic to plug in information into and get results out of. And now I’m just ashamed, though pretty sure nothing I’ve ever written about anything or anybody has been near the ad-hom mud slung her way.
She didn’t write one dickheaded item over her entire tenture there - something that’s more or less in the job description, and that I’m deeply invested in the art of perfecting - and the bullshit lobbed at her was immensely different than anything I’ve ever seen. It’s been over a year since I saw that kind of thing.
Maybe the reason the masthead there’s devoid of women is because of the scrutiny they’ve recieved since the post Spiers/Coen/Oxfeld area (when “early” adopters were reading blogs).
Remember: Gould, Shafrir, Shnayerson and McClear. The reception they got, often regardless of what they wrote, was visably different - from management, readers, and other media outlets - than anything the boys ever caught. This goes without mentioning the fact that Coen got some shit email from the same dude every day she worked there, each one as bad (if not worse) than the last, so maybe it was always there: insecure internet nerds taking out their Freudian shortcomings on girls who were smarter, sharper, funnier, witter than them. And honestly: generally out of their league.
I’m the newest and lowest on the totem pole, and sometimes it’s like I’m trying to fuck up, so the shit lobbed against me is maybe understandable (and, because of my massively overcompensating ego and/or generally oblivious disposition, flies right by me. Also, I’m a raging fuckface sometimes, so, there’s that).
But NVC’s smart and funny and doing good work and is a humble, decent person. So to see the ridiculous non-chance she was given by the aforementioned parties is utterly infuriating. Especially because she’s good.
Fuck you, Internet. I’m going to bed pissed. And regardless of what happens, take a look at that list* of ladies, ‘Tash: as far as writers go, that’s pretty great company to be in. I say, nicely done.
*I know I’m forgetting, like, five people.
