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"It takes a lot less time and most people won't notice the difference until it's too late"
Literary Lovers – I don’t expect you to know who Sandra Lee is because I would hope that most of you haven’t the half hour time slot to fit her into your lives. For the purposes of today’s article, however, let me take a moment to “enlighten” you. Sandra Lee is the host of The Food Network’s television show “Semi-Homemade.” She is also one of the many descending steps The Food Network took to get to the substandard hell it dwells in today. Before you call me out on my tendencies to overreact to things that don’t really affect my life and do not pertain to storytelling whatsoever, understand that my anger for her and that network is really anger at a bigger picture – she is the face of our society’s acceptance of mediocrity as the norm.
Sure, who the hell am I to say anything on the matter? I don’t even reread what I write here before I post it (please don’t fire me, Julia). I publish with the assumption that no one expects the respect of proper grammar and structure (although I confess I am so often tempted to correct grammatical and spelling errors on people’s Facebook statuses). We live in a society that doesn’t expect us to suit up for work and we buy electronics that we anticipate to break within the year. We are used to, accept, and fully expect things to be semi-acceptable and we’re totally okay with it. Things that used to require a written letter are done via Facebook comment. Announcements of important events are done via Twitter. Everything is casual. Things are good as long as they’re good for now. Formality is dead. Quality check is optional.
While I do often pine for the days of real chefs on The Food Network, I understand the move to give airtime to people who can barely boil an egg as one that is reflective of our society’s need for accessibility (after all, isn’t that how we ended up with eight years of “Semi-Competence” with a certain commander-in-chief?). Sandra Lee is probably unable to properly braise me some ossobuco or whisk up an aioli that doesn’t contain Miracle Whip – but then again, she’s probably better suited to aid me in my simple 2am cravings than Thomas Keller. At 2am, my palate won’t be discerning enough to truly appreciate foie gras pan-seared in truffle butter. At 2am, I just want crap food to complement the crap articles I’m finding on the internet. Ah, the joy of the 2am Googlefest. For some reason, all the unanswered questions in my life come at this hour and the only feasible solutions seem to lie in the anonymous experts of the internet. Though I prefer to seek the help of the everyday people at Yahoo Answers, desperately punching in my questions on Google often turns up articles from eHow. A cursory glance at the website may mislead you into thinking you’ve found a goldmine. eHow claims that they will teach you “how to do just about everything.” Articles range from “Effective Communication When You Are Mad” to “How to Make Kenyan Chapati” (Sandra Lee should check this out). It doesn’t stop there – eHow’s Top Ten Articles offers help in eliminating mold and mildew, sticking to your workout program, negotiating for a higher salary, and becoming a secret service agent – all this in an average of about six steps!
It’s actually incredible that a single website has answers to all of these questions but how in the hell did they put together such a wide range of articles? eHow is owned by Demand Studios, a company that does new media with a social media mindset. You don’t need an agent to get in on the game – you kind of just sign up and start. You’re not paid much per article (about fifteen bucks a pop) but you can bang out a bunch in a single week and hope to rack it up. Though Demand Studios provides a set of guidelines for their articles, it seems that the ultimate goal is quantity and not quality. A single topic on eHow can have dozens of articles and the quality of the answer ranges from awful to “I guess this answers my question.” You can take a look for yourself at this eHow article claiming to teach one how to freelance fulltime for the company – it leads quite a bit to be desired.
Freelance writers are probably tempted to put the quality of their writing at a compromise in order to get a decent wage out of this program, so how does this affect their careers in the long run? If writing lots of crappy things for a crappy wage ultimately adds up to something you can kind of live on, would you continue doing it? Remember: unlike blogs, these posts aren’t marketed as an individual’s opinion on a subject (as what I’m currently writing happens to be). eHow articles are half-assed pieces that temporarily answer your question in a rather informal manner (formality may mislead you to believe that they know what they’re talking about).
So Freelance Writers, I’m curious: Do you or someone you know write for Demand Studios? If you currently do, do you give it your all or are you saving your energy for someone who will pay you more for a topic you care about?
And one more for everyone: Maybe I can’t speak for you, but I know that if I didn’t “let things slide” as often as I do, I’d be doing a lot better than I am doing right now. If we didn’t settle for mediocrity on a daily basis, where do you think you personally would be today?
I know that it’s always better to speak for yourself (not “we settle for mediocrity” but “I settle for mediocrity”) and that it’s hard to read an article written this way without thinking the author is an asshole. I just wanted to say that.
It’s true. I am an asshole.
And I agree that I probably should have said, “I settle for mediocrity” but as I said in the first half of the article, I don’t reread my posts or I may have rewritten it to be as you have suggested.
However, if I stated it that way initially, I can’t help but think my first thought was that I’m not alone in “settling.” I just wanted to say that.
I disagree with the first reply.
We DO settle for mediocrity on a daily basis. People who don’t think we do are brainwashed into acceptance and don’t think out of the box. Being ticked off at the sub-par quality of many things today isn’t being an asshole in any way. The author’s sick and tired of bullshit. And I am too!
I take incredible care of my cell phones and somehow I still manage to be on my third one this year. This third one freezes up a lot. I am sick and tired of this bullshit!
<– semi-gratuitous emoticon!
I can’t speak for everyone, but I write, rewrite, and revise anything I write on the web (whether it’s a post for Lit Drift or a Tweet) approximately eight million times before I ever hit the “submit” button. Wired has a great article about how these new outlets for writing, as casual as they may seem, constitute a new sort of literacy (http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-09/st_thompson) and Jennifer tackled the issue a few weeks ago (http://litdrift.com/2009/09/09/technology-is-making-our-writing-better/). A lot of people are thinking twice about the writing they are sending out into the world, or as the case may be, into the ethernet. But then again, a lot of people aren’t.
And I imagine the case is different when money enters into the equation. ESPECIALLY when money enters into the equation. With an site like eHow, I doubt many people feel like they’re doing their life’s work as they’re composing guides to getting gum out of your hair or removing blood/coffee stains from clothes. I think you’re spot-on to say that mediocrity runs rampant there. But elsewhere? It depends where you look, I think. There are some books, TV shows, and movies I can think of that have been positively mediocre…but there have also been some books, TV shows, and movies that have floored me.
I’m not too worried about mediocrity in fiction because the cream really does rise to the top. With the exception of a few flukes like Marley and Me or The Da Vinci Code (wait? what? who said that?), most books/tv shows/films/news articles/whatever of note have been truly outstanding. Though we might have to put up with it in the short term, mediocrity ultimately falls by the wayside. Which is reassuring.
As far as mediocrity en masse goes–that is, the stuff you might find during your 2am Googlefests–yeah, it’s pretty shitty. I think it’s always going to be there. Like tabloids. Or cockroaches. I think part of the problem is that we expect real-time content, rather than new content every month, or week, or even every day for God’s sake. New content, on eHow and on 24-hour TV news channels and elsewhere, is expected every few minutes. And since there’s SO much content that needs to be generated, and there are a finite number of good ideas and an infinite number of crap ideas, we’re left with a lot of crap. But you can’t change the fact that mediocrity exists, you can only choose to divert your attention elsewhere.
PS- Speaking of Sandra Lee: http://www.avclub.com/articles/this-cake-will-make-your-eyeballs-burst-into-flame,25176/
Oh my God, how did my response get so long?
Length is fine – I almost did this to Zach’s post earlier!
I definitely wasn’t saying that this was the case for everything and that the whole world was half-assing it. I was simply saying that it’s a lot easier than it once was to get away with doing crap work and then getting airtime and recognition for it.
The world is a lot more casual in its presentation of content than it once was – which isn’t always a bad thing. What I was asking regarding settling for mediocrity was more along the lines of life outside of writing. Like… what if I wore something other than sweats and flip-flops for a change?
All that being said, there is still absolutely no excuse for Sandra Lee.
You know, I could never quite find words for why Sandra Lee bugged me so much – except of course the fact that my boyfriend has an odd obsession with her show, and he know how to cook real food – but you’ve found the words to describe it. Thanks!
Julia, I revise, rewrite and revise again before posting as well. And if I find typos/mistakes in my writing (and that’s anywhere), I’m the first to delete the original posting and go back and fix it. That being said, I hope there are no typos here…
I completely agree, I think the problem lies in the fact that people nowadays cater to the lowest common denominator, instead of raising expectations in the hopes that people will rise to meet them, people lower them to appeal to a wider range of people, sacrificing quality in the process, and this in turn just makes people lazier and less willing to put effort into achieving things. And that just means the lowest common denominator just keeps getting lower.
@ PHM : No, Alex is right on this. If Alex settled for mediocrity, then the point of this whole article would be meaningless, and only the I statement would be valid. I mean, way to shoot down your own point. I love how just because people take a definitive stance on something, people think that they’re an asshole. This is part of the problem.