Kevin Van Valkenburg · @KVanValkenburg
17th Apr 2012 from Twitlonger
@richarddeitsch @MySecondEmpire I know Chris is a little weary of this conversation, but I think it's important to point out that of course you're right. Of course it sucks that the trolls get to win. But I think it's also fair to say that, in order to write about people with brutal honesty and so much empathy, you have to leave yourself vulnerable to snark and ridicule. And that's just so much easier to feel the sting on the Internet. It's fricken hard to write about bringing a soldier's body home from Iraq or about a movie critic with half a face. I know from talking to Chris that it's emotionally exhausting to work on those kind of stories. And of course it's always going to be so much easier to mock those kind of things instead of building them yourself. Chris became a target for certain people, and they double down on their efforts when they realized they could hurt him, that throw-away articles would open a window to take a run at his family just to hurt him more for having the foolish gall to share personal things, and that's fine. That's the internet. As Michael Caine says in The Dark Knight, "some men just want to watch the world burn." But once they stark going after your family, your friends, once they fuck with you just for sport, how do continue to say "I'll keep putting myself out there for people to belittle just for fun?"
I used to think I was super goddamn clever when it came to picking apart people longform stories, singing the praises of some and mocking flaws in others, as if I had a fricken clue what went into the ones I wasn't wowed by. And then I grew up a little bit and started doing more of it myself and I realized what an empty, miserable high it gave me.
Writing about writing is always going to be fascinating to people who care about such things, but stuff that has real value -- stuff that's not draped in the desire to be cool, or couched by the author to anticipate criticism -- is always going to be easy to mock. I think what Chris did was a fascinating experiment. I think it had tremendous value. But I also get it why it's not worth it to continue.