@publiczacha

This is the paradox of the new media age: some of the most wild, crazy-looking sites are being run like traditional businesses. Reddit, home of violently misogynistic forums called things such as Beating Women, is owned by Advanced Publications, the same parent company as Condé Nast, publisher of GQ and Vogue. It’s just that neither side likes to talk about it.

So what is a slick corporation to do when it wants to appeal to young people? Why, outrage public decency, of course. And that is hard on the internet, where people swear like they breathe and you can’t move for erect nipples. So companies like Vice have to poke at other taboos, like sexual violence, drug use and suicide.

The worst thing is, it works. Creating a Twitter storm every so often is exactly what Vice wants. It doesn’t have aspirations to be taken seriously, so it doesn’t need to apologise if anyone is offended. It doesn’t have the kind of editors who are likely to be hauled in front of a select committee to explain themselves. And although it publishes a British edition, it doesn’t feel like part of the fabric of the British media. There will be no Leveson-style inquiry into its actions; it can easily tell the PCC to bugger off.

and for a second, a split second, i was a neil gaiman fan. and i was a fan because he’d tricked me, and he’d tricked me without me knowing, and i’d heard rumors that he does that, but i thought i was immune. and for a second i felt like what it must feel like when i’m on stage playing “the bed song” and someone snaps a picture of neil a few feet away, looking at me. and for a second i felt what it must feel like to wait in a line for five hours and have him sign a book that changed your life. to stand not in admiration of the husband writer, the writer who wants his tea but not with the milk hot because then it’s just wrong, the writer who won’t remember what time he said he’d meet you, the writer who has to sign 12,000 copies of his new book that’s a bestseller before it hits the shelves and actually that’s really annoying because i’m slightly jealous of his instant success no matter what he does, the writer who gets irritated when i leave too many clothes on the floor and he can’t get to the bathroom, the writer who is awkward and has a hard time in party situations when he feels he doesn’t understand the social hierarchy, the writer who is not really a writer are you kidding me he’s just some snoring heap of flesh beside me, sweating and breathing and grinding his teeth and probably dreaming the kinds of dreams that neil gaimans dream, full of dreams and wishes and magic and wonder and all the shit that can drive me crazy if i’m not in the right mood for it….no…the WRITER. the man who actually takes a pen to a paper and writes things and creates a believable world that sucks you in and spits you out, its logic embedded in your mind forevermore. that. i saw THAT. and i love THAT so much, the fact that he can DO that…and i don’t get to see that most of the time. i’m too busy looking at the man. as it should be, i think.

… whatever it is, we’ve infected each other, and the only cure is more cowbell.

that’s the end of my book and marriage review.