culture essay
Content Submitted to LibraryThing
The Meaning of Book Reviews for LibraryThing
I have just finished my seventh book review for LibraryThing. Most of my review content uploaded to the site has been possible by books given away at LibraryThing by either publishers or promotional groups. The aim of this tiny essay is to inquire about the meaning of writing for a website such as Librarything given what is happening to publication in general across the internet.
When one enters text or other content into fields in LibraryThing, there is no editor standing over one’s back checking form, grammar, whether anything inappropriate has been included or even whether your content has “stayed on message.” None of these factors are taken into consideration when text is added after the user has logged into the site under his or her account. Reviews, upon submission, can be voted positively following current crowd-sourced, social trends. Reviews can even be flagged for content reasons. But there is no committee, fact-checker or grammar check required to submit.
There are myriad points one could make about writer-controlled content added to a popular and publicly used site such as LibraryThing. Many of the same points can be made about author controlled web-sites of any kind. Writers, like all “public” figures, want to appear to put their best looking foot forward. In our contemporary era, web personas and content added to pages attached to these personas, are submitted to websites. Some of these websites are built upon freely available web authoring software such as WordPress.com. Others may have started out as Blogger sites but have transitioned into full-blown branded sites. And I do mean branding. This means that even if the free code has been downloaded from WordPress.org, it has been manipulated and customized according to specific and unique interests and then hosted at one of the many places to host code seen through browsers as a URL.
Whatever code and style limitations that may have been imposed by free blogs hosted at WordPress.com (which always include .wordpress.com in the URL) have been evaded by adding more distinguishing features, but not limited to, branding through naming. Some famous authors with fully branded websites (which do not necessarily have to be based on WordPress.org code) are William Gibson, Thomas Pynchon and Jeanette Winterson. I mention these three as examples of different styles that are designed with the intent to brand each author for marketing (which is not a bad thing). Each site is different. In truth, each of these sites may have people who run them who are not the authors themselves. But that doesn’t matter because the authors themselves are in control of what happens on them and how content is uploaded for live viewing.# So even though each author’s controlled and branded site looks nothing like LibraryThing nor a “standard” blog that could be run by anyone with an internet connection, the overall demand from controlled web publishing technologies are the same – content added for all the world to see is uploaded/added by select administrative personnel who determine what content is loaded and may or may not have any fact-checkers, editors or “appropriate” content managers standing over their shoulders deciding whether said content has “stayed on message.”
Now, it probably works to the benefit of every author who has a branded website to “stay on message” and use all necessary fact-checking and editing skills at hand because, well, they’re authors who author (write) and who are interested in developing an educated and positive fan base. These aspects of web publishing, however, are used by every author. It doesn’t matter if an author runs a small blog hosted on freely available software (where the software is openly branded) or a site built on fully developed and manipulated code. Each author wants to put his or her best looking foot forward. One could argue the best looking feet on the internet are branded and controlled websites. But it is not the case that every author prioritizes his or her writing the same way as another more famous one. Plus, there are lots of important and famous institutions (some universities and publishers) who use freely available web publishing software (where the software is openly branded) to promote their goods and services. Why can’t a “normal” person do the same thing? Time and space change all the time.
It seems to me many authors who care about their content added to the internet will already do their best to upload and submit the highest quality content they can manage. No, not every submission or act of uploaded content counts as authorship or toward activities built to promote a “writer.” But these days with technologies such as websites, blogs, Twitter, google+, about.me, LibraryThing and other social media applications that can be linked to each other, why would an author not make the most of every act of content upload? The linking of technologies to each other, a form of interoperability, can be used extremely effectively to promote and cross-promote writing of all sorts all across the internet. In some cases, a single post in social media will automatically cross-post to other applications. Professional writers use these technologies intelligently all the time. An amateur or non-professional writer can as well.
In many cases, posting in social media dovetails into the history of a writer’s writing. Writing a “proper” essay somewhere for web or print publication in which content is theoretically edited by a “real” editor is then promoted via blogs, websites with branded URLs and social media technologies. And now with publishers of books and e-books lining up to get some of those same publications promoted on LibraryThing, literary minded writers and creators of creative critical essays can submit high quality reviews for others to read while “real” writers can submit reviews to “real” publications on the internet. I understand the conundrum of peer-review when it comes to what makes a “real” publication. In no way are those justifications negative. They make sense to me too. In tandem with this point is the statement from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers that users who write reviews are more likely to receive more books to review than those who fail to submit reviews for books received has the caveat: the actual content of reviews does not matter. In this, a submission to LibraryThing may not count the same as publication proper, but publishers are still riding a circle by using it so heavily to promote (alongside “real” sites of publication) their wares. One just hopes, at least I do, that all reviews submitted to LibraryThing exhibit the best looking foot forward by writers submitting content for this particular social web portal. There is obviously some value and some cultural cache attached to these reviews.
Thank you for reading.
As always, I am open to comments here or @ Twitter.
#If this is not true, please communicate with me in a polite and educational manner. Thank you.
Take the Lane – a Cyclist’s Declaration
I have moved this post to my bicycle centric blog here.
Thank you.
Kitschy Halloween
Every year, the population of America (maybe other parts of the world), takes on the responsibility of decorating stores, houses and their bodies with all kinds of color schemes indicative of cultural and religious celebrations of “holiday” and Holy Days. I can’t run down the whole list of colours of course, but some of these are blue, white, gold, green, and red – a spectrum which takes into account something found in Christianity, Judaism and Kwanzaa. Festivus does not have a strict colour scheme. Or rather if it does, it fails to follow the rules of kitsch unless it makes fun of that kitsch (a form of cultural commentary perhaps?). But here we have only looked at colour schemes.
Other forms of kitsch are of course the burning of candles, trees, red fragile ornaments hanging on those trees and statues of all kinds. I can’t say the degree to which each person or family who uses these items in their respective celebrations does so for reasons of faith, religion (as faith and religion may not be the same thing) or other conforming societal forces. It matters not of course, but most of these celebrations have at least on their surface a veneer of joy, togetherness, family and love. I can’t think of any late-year winter celebration that does not fall into one of the categories (if not all). And there in lies the rub.
For when we look at these “holidays” (as opposed to “Holy Days,” which is really quite different methinks), we find default images on repeat yearly from the largest of retailers to the smallest of apartments. And when marketing schemes get involved, well, kitschy-ness just goes through the roof). There is a deep emotionalization attached to most of these repeated images and objects. And we have not even talked about the radio playing on repeat (almost literally) the same songs for countless hours every year. One person hugs and cries in happiness and another person feels warm & fuzzy inside for at least a few days every year. And a good thing too because this is such a hard world every other day.
But let’s not think life gets better really because not only do we have to BUY most of these objects/images yearly, but the increase of gifts and cash transactions also increases the types of crime that occurs during this most wonderful kitschy time of the year. But the point is that these images, objects and popular songs repeated yearly are safe. We like this type of sameness and I am labeling it “kitsch.”
If we step back two months in time before this approaching time of the year, we might ask ourselves if Halloween is also a time of kitsch. I mean, we hear some of the same songs in October, we search after the same kinds of movies at the same time each year and we decorate stores and apartments in the same colours (black, orange, white, and maybe red for blood) each year. Does this not encourage us to think of Halloween as a form of kitsch? Well…no! The reason is because burning candles do not suddenly jump up and scream in their user’s face while burning pumpkins chase lone travelers through covered bridges onward toward oblivion, elves do not crawl out of coffins and steal your life’s source while vampires do rip through your esophagus and drink your blood and men in red suits do not eat your flesh while zombies do look for humans to consume.
No images from this approaching “most wonderful kitschy time of the year” will cause you harm, but Halloween has lots of spirits and shadowy creatures that will, despite being repeated each year in cards and movies, shake the ground right from under your feet. There’s no way that experience is kitsch.
