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It probably will. I feel crude pointing this out, but it has become an annoyance to me in the past year. I consume a lot of technology and videogame journalism,
by pstack 15y ago
It probably will. I feel crude pointing this out, but it has become an annoyance to me in the past year. I consume a lot of technology and videogame journalism, so my comment is mostly derived from experiences there. (The person posting this blog/request is more related to what I'm about to say in spirit than in actual example).
In particular, I've come to enjoy playing a sad little game called "content creator or attention whore" where I predict what a journalist's website will be like before I actually visit it.
I am very good at this game. It helps to illustrate the difference between people who care about and are knowledgeable in videogames or technology versus those who just want to get their name and voice and face out there and are just using whatever they can get to springboard into having a sit-com on NBC or hosting Entertainment Tonight or something. These are the people who make me feel icky, because either they are misleading the audience and the reader by pretending to give a damn about something that is just part of their path to fame or they have so little faith in the reader that they can't win them over with words.
So, you have your Jeff Gerstmans, Veronica Belmonts, Scobles, Pogues, Sarah Lanes, Ngai Croals, Justin Mcelroys, Ryan Davis. These are people who clearly care about the things they cover and the focus of their sites are their content. Yeah, you might catch a series of goofy candid photos from Scoble now and then, but when you visit their sites, the primary focus is content.
Then you visit the site of some other people who supposedly do the same thing and their sites are just massive walls of devotion to themselves. They're filled not so much with -- you know, content -- as they are with headshots and glamor shots.
The most recent example of this game being played was when I listened to a gaming podcast where someone was a guest that mentioned they have about four shows that they do. Video podcasts, audio podcasts, producing content and so on. I just knew what I was going to find when I went to the website they mentioned. Sure enough, the site had a list of all the shows they do that was dwarfed by the 70% of every page that was consumed by multiple enormous headshots of themselves.
- maren 15y agoI'm assuming I won attention whore from the tone of your comment? I'll take it, though the whore part is a bit offensive - but I usually don't bitch about things that offend me. I'm not knowledgeable enough w/ technology - hence why I'm looking to fill that void in my new company. Glamor shots? Any pictures you see on my site are taken via phone using Instagram - hardly glamorous. I added a picture of myself because that's who the person who fills my position will be working with - ME - not because I'm self-involved. I've been blogging for over 2 years & have put almost 250 posts out there - whether they are quality or not is for the reader to decide but I'm definitely done my best to put good content out into the world, for no other reason than because I love what I do & I love writing. Sorry to offend but I guess attention whore is a step up from just plain "whore" so I'll take it :)
- ziffusion 15y ago> I added a picture of myself because that's who the person who fills my position will be working with - ME - not because I'm self-involved. But I'm still not getting the need for cleavage.
- theblueadept111 15y agoSpeak for yourself. Will work for cleavage.
- maren 15y agoLike I said, wasn't meant to be a cleavage shot - just a picture - I didn't dissect it and think "hmm... how many people will be offended by this" maybe i am just jaded from growing up in Vegas but in my world that is so not a big deal.
- ziffusion 15y agoNot offended at all. It's a very nice, good cleavage.
- pstack 15y agoAs I said, it's not exactly the same thing, but I was responding more to the notion of the too-common extreme the poster above me seemed to elude to; not necessarily directly in response to your content. Other than perhaps this individual posting of yours, I don't think you're in the same ballpark as the more common and extreme examples I discussed. (I was going to post the URL of the most recent example of this game that we played, but it strikes me as bordering on mean-spirited.) Also, I'm not sure why you would take particular note of the "whore" part of the phrase "attention whore". One who seeks attention through deliberately meaningless or provocative tactics. Meaningless seems inaccurate, but provocative is appropriate and clearly intentional. And, again, I'm talking more about the pattern in the industry of attention-whoring rather than your specific instance. You know, like someone who has a hundred thousand twitter followers and the first thing you find on google when searching on the name of these "journalists" are bikini photoshoots for men's magazines.