"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?
