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    Annoying New York Times articles

    The NY Times has a knack of publishing lifestyle or trend articles that make me want to pull my teeth out with a pair of pliers. And yet I can't turn away and I have to read all of them.

    Today's article, in which a bunch of people famous on Twitter and with vague-sounding actual jobs are shown to be MORE COOL THAN YOU:

    ON a rainy Tuesday last month, in an all-white office space in Brooklyn, a blogger known as swissmiss traded productivity tips with some visiting creative strategists. “Our own mini-TED,” she said, half-joking, referring to the high-profile tech conference.

    Across the room, a prodigious young culture curator, whose Brain Pickings blog has managed to attract fans as disparate as Pee-wee Herman and professors from M.I.T., was posting about “must-read books on the art and science of happiness.” Two Web developers from a company called Fictive Kin joked about Russian spammers. A ZZ Top song was playing. The office puppy was napping. A clipboard was going around for lunch orders.

    As a group, the writers, Web designers, illustrators and social media figures who share the Studiomates collective in Dumbo have around a half-million followers on Twitter and many more on their blogs, Foursquare accounts and Facebook pages.

    Yet it’s the offline interaction — the group lunches, the whiteboard brainstorming sessions, the Friday beer parties — that puts Studiomates at the forefront of an innovative new model for doing business.

    It turns out that 140 characters in a Twitter post cannot compete with 26 characters in a Brooklyn loft.

    Five years ago, a group like Studiomates probably wouldn’t have been a group at all but rather two dozen strangers in search of a Wi-Fi signal at Starbucks.

    The 26 members, who each pay $500 a month for a desk, are mostly engaged in independent projects in unrelated fields, and have no practical reason to work together. But as the new media pundit Clay Shirky said at the South by Southwest conference in March, “we systematically overestimate the value of access to information and underestimate the value of access to each other.”

    “Sure, we could all be home doing what we do, but why would we?” Tina Roth Eisenberg (a k a swissmiss) said as her studio mates clacked away at their MacBooks. “I just like being around nerdy creative people all day long. It helps make sense of all the information coming at us.”
    It gets worse.

    #2
    Annoying New York Times articles

    Incandenza wrote:
    It turns out that 140 characters in a Twitter post cannot compete with 26 characters in a Brooklyn loft.
    Worse than this? Thanks for the heads-up.

    Comment


      #3
      Annoying New York Times articles

      I don't know, I found that article very cheering. I may be a piss-poor borderline alkie sat in a dead end job in a library, but at least I don't have to pay $500 a month to have pretend friends.

      I bet they all like fancy dress, and every single desk has a "You don't have to be mad to work here..." sticker on.

      Comment


        #4
        Annoying New York Times articles

        This is a big part of the reason why we haven't resubscribed since we came back.

        Americans don't really "do" fancy dress, unless you're talking about whatever passes for hipster chic or "what "creatives" are wearing today".

        Comment


          #5
          Annoying New York Times articles

          This is the UK equivalent of these people, surely.

          Comment


            #6
            Annoying New York Times articles

            I'll bet they work hard and play hard.

            Comment


              #7
              Annoying New York Times articles

              Kickball, mostly.

              Comment


                #8
                Annoying New York Times articles

                ursus arctos wrote:
                Americans don't really "do" fancy dress, unless you're talking about whatever passes for hipster chic or "what "creatives" are wearing today".
                Dressing up? Yuck.

                Cosplay or Edwardian Balls? YES!

                Comment


                  #9
                  Annoying New York Times articles

                  Fancy dress across the pond

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Annoying New York Times articles

                    ursus arctos wrote:
                    Kickball, mostly.
                    Dodgeball I would have thought.

                    I love these articles, and the front page garbage piece on the WSJ. They are fantastically shit. If you want the real pain piece, you need to read "the hunt" in real estate. They have started getting way more normal lately (sub-$3000 rentals, sub $500k apartments) but they used to be the most detestable folk.

                    There was also that idiot couple who got an article written on their marriage, extolling how they met when they were both married but realized they found true happiness in each other.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Annoying New York Times articles

                      A Hungarian wedding band began to play, and the procession of 50 or so made its way down six flights to the streets of Brooklyn. With an accordion and brass horns wailing, the rainbow parade headed straight for the archway under the Manhattan Bridge. Ms. Arrington later posted photos to her Flickr and Twitter accounts and to her various blogs, but to fully appreciate the wonder of the moment, she said, “you had to be there.”
                      Edited from the story: "Everyone was staring at us...taking pictures, thinking.. like.. 'those people are nuts' ".

                      Why did I read it? I mean...I was warned.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Annoying New York Times articles

                        Ginger Yellow wrote:
                        Hmm, I had no idea.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Annoying New York Times articles

                          OMG, "The Hunt"!

                          My fervent hope is that all of these pieces will prove to be enormously efficacious in determining just who to line up against the wall come the revolution.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Annoying New York Times articles

                            Worn Old Carabela wrote:
                            A Hungarian wedding band began to play, and the procession of 50 or so made its way down six flights to the streets of Brooklyn. With an accordion and brass horns wailing, the rainbow parade headed straight for the archway under the Manhattan Bridge. Ms. Arrington later posted photos to her Flickr and Twitter accounts and to her various blogs, but to fully appreciate the wonder of the moment, she said, “you had to be there.”
                            Edited from the story: "Everyone was staring at us...taking pictures, thinking.. like.. 'those people are nuts' ".

                            Why did I read it? I mean...I was warned.
                            I loved how the one person talking about the woman who retweeted the request for marching bands and talking about her other friend's birthday was worried that thousands of people would show up because she mentioned it, and how she can link to something and have the site crash because of her tens of thousands of Twitter followers...and then 50 people showed up.

                            It's like the writer of that article was desperate to prove to all of us, "these people are cooler than us, really!" and the subjects were more than happy to go along.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Annoying New York Times articles

                              Meanwhile, over on cnn.com:

                              CNN.com's search engine optimization expert Topher Kohan owns 12 different versions of "Star Wars" and has watched "Star Wars" and "The Empire Strikes Back" more than 500 times.
                              Topher, you'll never get those hours back. Ever.

                              He has an opinion on this, as you can imagine.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                Annoying New York Times articles

                                What I want to know is how many times he's watched The Phantom Menace.

                                Comment


                                  #17
                                  Annoying New York Times articles

                                  As many times as Godfather fans have watched III.

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Annoying New York Times articles

                                    Worn Old Motorbike wrote:
                                    Incandenza wrote:
                                    It turns out that 140 characters in a Twitter post cannot compete with 26 characters in a Brooklyn loft.
                                    Worse than this? Thanks for the heads-up.
                                    God, that line is like fingernails on a chalkboard.

                                    The NYT used to (maybe still do?) label some of these lifestyle stories "The Way We Live Now."

                                    What you mean "we," kemosabe?

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      Annoying New York Times articles

                                      'We' is the laziest crutch in journalism: 'remember the '80s when we all had the big hair and the shoulder pads; we watched Dynasty and drove little BMWs to the tennis club", etc. Gets everyone on the same page before making some inconsequential point.

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        Annoying New York Times articles

                                        “I just like being around nerdy creative people all day long. It helps make sense of all the information coming at us.”
                                        This probably isn't intended to be taken seriously, but people who meet people unlike themselves might gain a few insights.

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          Annoying New York Times articles

                                          "The Way the Target Market for our Advertisers Lives Now" doesn't fit in the "Berliner" format.

                                          It used to be a good paper, really.

                                          Now it makes Tina Brown's New Yorker look like Harold Ross' version.

                                          Comment


                                            #22
                                            Annoying New York Times articles

                                            Tubby Isaacs wrote:
                                            “I just like being around nerdy creative people all day long. It helps make sense of all the information coming at us.”
                                            This probably isn't intended to be taken seriously, but people who meet people unlike themselves might gain a few insights.
                                            Well yes, but they way that's phrased..."It helps make sense of all the information coming at us." What the fuck does that mean? What information is coming at them? From the article, it seems that these people are on Twitter and reading blogs more than doing any actual work.

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              Annoying New York Times articles

                                              You'd make a crap curator, Inca.

                                              Comment


                                                #24
                                                Annoying New York Times articles

                                                And am I the only one thinking that this creative working arrangement than they've hit upon sounds a whole lot like an office? God forbid they actually call it that, because an office is boring and soul-crushing, but this is an exciting new venture that allows creativity to blossom and ideas to be exchanged in a new framework for networking and interaction.

                                                Comment


                                                  #25
                                                  Annoying New York Times articles

                                                  Worn Old Carabela wrote:
                                                  You'd make a crap curator, Inca.
                                                  That could be interpreted two different ways...

                                                  Comment

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