Thoughts clouded by copious amounts of NyQuil

Every day, my mom gets on AOL and looks through the trending articles. She then proceeds to update me on the celebrities with botched face-lifts, the children that have died in tragic house fires, and the foods that may prevent hypertension. After reading Heffernan's article I realized that for the past nineteen years I have been listening to content farm article headlines. 


Content farm pieces add an interesting variable to the debate: "what is writing?" These articles are written by robotic, "unpaid freelancers" with limited knowledge of their subject matter and "deadlines are frequently as every 25 minutes." The question is: does writing have to be good? Or do any words strung together constitute writing? And who decided how or why writing is good?


In addition to this point, are content farms a new movement in the writing world? We are all aware of how writing is shifting because of online formats (heck! We have this class now which is specifically focused on writing for digital formats). Fast-paced, multitasking, and utilitarian writing is not uncommon online. These content farm articles seem to fit perfectly into the 140 character world that we have begun to create. Is this something that should bother us, or should we merely prepare ourselves for the future of online writing? 


Google is very interested in making sure that it is involved in your life and that you listen to what it wants you to hear. It's rather terrifying really. That being said, why were they so concerned with making sure that advertisement infested articles were filtered out while in the meantime Google was actively infiltrating every single aspect of the internet. Hypocrisy at its finest. 


I will write another post tomorrow about the other articles 

Ceci n'est pas une blog post

While reading McCloud, I thought to myself, "Man! I wish all of our readings were comics. This is so much easier to get through!" 

It is quite true that graphic elements and textual elements are not often found in such close quarters. In my own personal writing, I spend so much time trying to perfectly describe settings, people, and actions. Why is it so wrong to show instead of tell? When did we decide that multi-dimensional writing was to be the exception and not the rule? I would be interested in experimenting with this concept. It seems that this visual presentation could work on a lot of levels. If I figure something cool out I will definitely be posting my efforts. 

Also, I freakin' love Magritte! He did so many pieces commenting on this theme. His ideas concerning perception and reality are fascinating, and if you have a chance all of you should look into his other major pieces. 

In regards to Sosnoski, I think that hyper-reading can be looked at as a negative reader quality. But I prefer to look at it as an element that writers could use to their advantage. Rhetoric involves writing for your audience. If you know that your audience is full of hyper-readers how do you write for them? I imagine it has a lot to do with highlighting the critical points that you need to get a across so that skimmers can easily grab important information. Also, if you can grab a reader with a few points you could potentially turn a hyper-reader into a focused-reader. 

I enjoyed everyone's A/V projects! All of you are so talented and creative. I was amazed by the different topics that everyone chose. My only complaint is that we don't get a chance to do another assignment just like it!

Video Project