Ever since the announcement that Marxy was starting to blog “professionally” for the ad agency where he was already employed, the shit has quite literally hit the fan. Momus’ reaction was quite expected, but I’ve also had to comment and/or defend what Marxy has done in private emails, and I think it’s gotten to a point where I’ve had it with the negative reaction.
Are there people in the ad world that are just looking to manipulate the masses? Fuck yeah! Is Marxy one of them? I know he isn’t, and I believe that regular readers of his blog would be in complete agreement. So the biggest thing that seems to offend most is that he’s going to just speak for the man from now on for the Clast blog. Huh? Here we are, writers, who love doing what we do, blogging, and then something comes along where we can be put in a position to continue doing what we’re doing, but with a revenue, and suddenly we’re making deals with the devil!
Oh, I’m (we are) so sorry for wanting to make a living. Not everyone has the pleasure of living off royalties or what not, and there comes a point where something has to give — you have the day job, and then you have every else that you try to cram in the rest of your free time. Here YOU sit, high and mighty, criticizing everyone for not following the one “true” (and noble) path, calling us sellouts and slaves to the man (and his word)? That’s just ridiculous, and it reeks of egotism and a sense of grandeur to which I’m fast developing allergies (and here I thought it was the pollen that was killing all my senses these past couple of weeks).
Does writing “professionally” or accepting ads/sponsorship on your site mean that you’re giving up on any and all editorial independence? Fuck no. And yes, I do tend to cover things that my friends are up to — I do this because I’m in a position where I can shine the light on what they’re doing, and that I feel they deserve it. In fact, I probably developed relationships with a lot of them as a result of my admiration for their work, drive and enthusiasm in what they do. Some say I never criticize on this site. Are you kidding? This site is highly edited and very critical — whatever I will cover here is because I feel that it deserves to be seen, heard, or experienced. Period.
And so back to Marxy. The fact that he’s been able to start blogging at work is a very beneficial development for him, and has the effect of letting him spend even more time to do what he’s been doing for free and on his spare time on his blog for years. Some have seen the announcement he wrote of his Neomarxisme blog seeing changes has being a result, and maybe even a casualty, of the Clast blog gig, and that’s simply not the case. I’m not in a position to say any more, but let’s just say that he’s been working on the next evolutionary step of his blog for a while now, and you’ll all see the results probably sometime this summer (and yes, I will be involved).
Update
It continues.
Rodney King’s old proverbial question comes to mind. “Can’t we all just get along?” Jean you are dead on in your criticisms of the overwhelmingly negative reaction to Marxy’s announcement. Momus blogs for money too. Only it’s for Conde Nast, and not an Ad Agency or Market Research Firm. In Momus’s mind that raises his moral and ethical captial all the more. It’s a minor difference at best. Kudos to you and Marxy for the possibility for working together. I always thought that you and Marxy and Momus had an interesting view as Gai-jin in Japan, and together could have created a tour-de-force publishing/blogging/culture outfit. Momus seems to prefer the loner route, and burns bridges before they can ever form. I think you and Marxy are taking the high road (whether for the man or not, doesn’t matter to me).
Wow, that’s an unusually forthright and angry statement for the Jean Snow blog. And my first reaction is that I’d like to stand aside and let others debate it, because it’s a very interesting and crucial debate. But since it’s obviously directed at me, let me frame it the way I see it.
Should we blog for money? And how does the status of the information on our blogs change when we do? I don’t blog for money, Eric. I write articles for money, for Conde Nast. Click Opera is something I pay to provide. If it sells Momus records — and I don’t think it does, and don’t do it for that — that’s pretty fortuitous. The point is, it’s editorially independent.
I’ve been very supportive of jeansnow.net, but I’ve raised criticisms at a few crucial points, as I think every loyal reader has a right to do. One was when Jean announced he was the creative director of a pay-to-display gallery space in Cafe Pause, and I wondered just how that worked. How do you pick and choose from people who are paying to display? At that point, what is the function of a curator?
Another was when Jean increased the quantity of ads here, and also started putting in regular editorial instructions that we click them.
The Clast critique is the same one. At what point do Marxy’s very intelligent and apposite critiques of Japanese culture — the class system, for instance — turn into market segmentation identification on behalf of his employers?
Now, you may notice that it’s long been a theme of Marxy’s that Japanese magazines lack a clear distinction between advertising and editorial — that products in editorial space have been paid for. The same question arises here that arose when I asked about Pause Gallery. What is a journalist — or a blogger, a member of the “pajamahadeen” — at that point?
In our debates at Neomarxisme I argued that people generally took marketing with a pinch of salt. Densha Otoko being based on a “true story” is not a scandal, because that claim is part of a marketing campaign and consumers are intelligent enough to filter it out and just enjoy the film. Marxy, however, argued that a truth claim was absolute, wherever it appeared. If someone says it’s a true story, it should be one, wherever that claim appears.
By the same logic, he probably thinks his blogging at Neomarxisme and Clast are exactly the same. I’m here to say they can’t be. One of them is part of market research and will be taken as such — and, alas, dismissed as such. I expect this is what your correspondents were trying to tell you, Jean.
“Momus seems to prefer the loner route, and burns bridges before they can ever form.”
I don’t prefer the loner route, I think we’re all much more useful thinkers when we’re dialectical — in other words, when we embody differing perspectives. If we were all blogging together, and all being paid to blog, those would either be, or be seen as, the perspectives of our employers. And where would that leave us? Personally richer, no doubt. But the debate would be greatly impoverished.
And, may I say, I very much welcome Jean’s entry into dialectical mode here. I think we’ll see bigger ideas and bigger traffic as a result. And even a few more people clicking those great links to great companies like Tokyo Recohan and OK Fred!
Momus, i can see your point and i am glad that you put this angle on the debate. if you didn’t, i would. I just thought i should contribute my view on this for the first time here.
Everything happens with a reason and there are secret motives for everything that goes on. In the end, it’s up to us and the filters we have come up to use to decide what is good for us and what’s not. The same way you can watch Densha Otoko without becoming an otaku, or tons of horror movies without becoming a killer, you can do all sorts of stuff. That is the bet to win. Can you avoid the traps? If Marxy, or any other blogger doesn’t change the content of his blogs, it shouldn’t matter even if his boss was devil himself. The marketing people will always use any method, they even tried subliminal messages, to sell stuff. Only the weak and unaware minds buy these. I don’t need protection from them, if i become a “zombie”, i am to blame.
o we have the right to sell or sponsor our stuff? If we don’t make what we sell more appealing just to sell it, why not? I don’t have to justify what i do. You have to decide if you trully need it or not.
cheers
Those are good points, I think. Where I differ is on this:
“If Marxy, or any other blogger doesn’t change the content of his blogs, it shouldn’t matter even if his boss was devil himself.”
I believe that the meaning of things is determined as much by the context they appear in as the content they contain. In fact, I’d say that context actually produces meaning. There is no such thing as content which can mean the same thing as a musical that it means as a book, the same thing as a blog that it means as a market research tool.
The medium, as McLuhan said, is the message. This has long been something Marxy has disagreed on in our battles. For instance, he thinks a swastika worn by a fashion victim in Harajuku means the same thing as a swastika worn by an SS man in Germany in 1944. It has a fixed meaning, an essence, a content. He doesn’t want to see how context changes meaning — including the meaning of his own research and his own theories.
“This has long been something Marxy has disagreed on in our battles. For instance, he thinks a swastika worn by a fashion victim in Harajuku means the same thing as a swastika worn by an SS man in Germany in 1944. It has a fixed meaning, an essence, a content.”
And similarly in as much as you would like to be Marxy to study under you, Marxy very much wishes to NOT study under you. That is the dialectic.
Marxy rules. Big ups to him for convincing his kaisha to let him blog, it probably took some cajones on his part.
But, alas, objectively speaking, the Marxy of clast (so far at least) is a castrated Marxy devoid of the very thing that earned him that position in the first place - his ability to provoke, infuriate, stir debate and thereby stand apart form hundreds blogs and other media.
Read what he’s done so far. Basically reiterating or translating (depending which version you read) what other media have already said.
If this is to stay I hope the guardians of the clast blog will be sensible enough to trust the fact that Marxy’s devoted readers are sensible, reasonable creatures and allow comments and discussions. Probably too late for that now but a Marxy without sarcasm (as he admits) and without comments is, well, a good employee maybe.
If people make money from their blogs, then good for them. I make bugger all from mine, which is why I write for magazines to get a bit of cash for what I like to do. I’ve pointed out ad’s a couple of times on my site (acting on the advice of a third party) but I felt cheap doing it, plus it made no bloody difference.
I have no idea if Marxy’s - or anybody else’s - employers influence what he writes. I write freelance, therefore I’m not under any pressure to plug anything or avoid offending sponsors, etc, but I know people who are and think it’s crappy. I don’t see how one can be impartial when being paid to toe a certain line.
I did - and still do - agree with Momus’s point about paying to exhibit in galleries, although this is in no way a criticism of Jean. My criticism, as I believe Momus’s to be, is aimed at the system prevalent here in Japan whereby people pay to hire space in a gallery, which I view as not much more than glorified advertising. I also question how one can pick and choose from paying customers.
Being critical about things we find disagreeable is our right when things are in the public domain and there is a facility in place which invites reader feedback, i.e. comments on a blog. I welcome them - even the one that called me a “f**king ritard [sic] sh*t-sucking c*nt” for daring to (mildly) criticise a Philippe Starck design. Everybody is entitled to their opinion.
Alin, regarding the commenting on the Clast blog, that’s because it was set up wrong, and I helped David fix it last night (meaning comments should be open to one and all now).
Regarding the gallery, I do also agree that ideally it should be run as a curated space, and that would be my dream. Unfortunately, bottom line is, it’s not my cafe, the owner is a businessman, his aim is to profit from the space. Some have suggested sharing sales profit of the works, but the reality is that they just don’t sell (and that goes as well for whatever I’ve done at the cafe that wasn’t leased out like the gallery is).
The Tokyo gallery situation needs its own Neomarxisme.
Oh, I should also have said that I don’t mean to criticise the cafe owner either. It is, first and foremost, a cafe, so I can’t blame the bloke for making the most of the space.
My gripe is more with the pay-as-you-go galleries that don’t give a crap about what they exhibit as long as people pay.
Anyway, this debate originally centred around Marxy’s new blog. I haven’t read it yet, so I’ll reserve judgement. It pays to be an advised critic. ;D
I agree with Jean’s comments on the issue of getting paid to blog. The insult “sell out” is one that is oft over used, and usually when people are chanting “sell out,” it’s at the wrong guy. The kind of person who sells out in the full sense of the insult is the kind that is transparent from the get go—he talks about how he only wants money, he uses and discards others, etc. You know the type. Although I’ve never met him, Marxy is not the type.
No, what’s more likely happening, and what some may be confusing with selling out, is that Marxy’s employer has identified Marxy’s opinions as those in line with the company’s philosophy, and they allow him to blog them freely. (Media control works this way: Tom Friedman doesn’t write pro-market opinions because his overlords at the NY Times command him to do so, rather the overlords hired him precisely because they know that he writes pro-market opinions.) In this case, no one sells out.
But on Momus’ objection(s), I have to say that I’m a bit confused, not so much on the presence of an objection but on the content of the objection. Having been breast fed on The Baffler for so many years, I’ve always read Marxy’s analysis of the various categorizations of the Japanese (and this includes the posts on Clast that I’ve seen) as satirical. I lived and toiled in Japan for five years, I played bass in an all-but-me Japanese band (As Meias), hell, I even had all four wisdom teeth pulled out at the hands of Japanese dentistry, but if there’s only one thing I learned, it’s that the longer you stay and the more invested you become in Japan, the more you realize that the categories and stereotypes will fail you every time. Marxy seems to be poking fun at this, and it tickles me to think that his employer might not realize it—kind of like how a marketing firm might hire a punk-rock kid thinking that he’ll be the key to selling their new breakfast bar to angst-ridden high school kids with circle A patches on their bags.
And yet, I can’t help but read Momus’ continual (and sometimes forceful) insertion of the Japanese into each and every blog post as masturbation to a fantasy. So how is it that all of a sudden, Marxy is the one with the stereotypes and Momus not? Have I completely misread both Marxy and Momus all these years?
a debate site ?
> Marxy seems to be poking fun at this, (the categories and stereotypes)
i’m afraid that’s often not the case. is it ever the case ? the greatness of marxy is that he writes off centre (to the right? ) and ends with … so other people are compelled to come and fill in the picture.
> continual (and sometimes forceful) insertion of the Japanese — that’s when the post is actually about the japanese, right ?
> it tickles me to think that his employer might not realize it
that fantasy of grungy punk-rock subversion is irrepressible.
—–
re. Momus’ reaction, i don’t know but I shall speak of my own. Marxy needs to define his position clearly.
‘Selling out’ doing the odd jingle is ok, getting your whole project stamped by a marketing company is NOT - not when you claim links with Marxism etc.
The dialectic here shortcuts between Marxy’s liberal creative self vs the Company. There’s more in the equation for some of us.
If it helps you can compare us with those muslims who got offended by the cartoons but there are certain lines.
Marxy’s position with the subtle contempt he shows for the ‘masses’, for the culturally diferent etc would be problematic for an academic, for a marketing guy they become near irredeemable.
Regarding the gallery issue, it’s interesting to note that at the last PauseTalk there was a Japanese artist now based in New York, and we in fact brought up the issue of how art doesn’t sell in Tokyo, but it’s a vastly different situation in New York (and I’m assuming maybe the West in general). For an independently curated gallery to work here, it seems like it would either have to get some sort of massive sponsorship, or be an annexe to another side-business (a vanity thing).
Hey, if someone wants to give me the money, I’ll gladly open my own cafe with gallery space, and promise to have the space be independently (and maybe occasionally guest) curated!
i totally support jean & marxy. i fully agree with jeans post and even more so.
this is the same bullshit that goes down in music. if you make money, your some sort of slave to the man and have no artist vision.
well wholly shit, i’m sorry that i (we) can make money doing what i (we) like (and want to do) and you can’t.
it must be my (our) fault!!
Does writing “professionally” or accepting ads/sponsorship on your site mean that you’re giving up on any and all editorial independence? Fuck no.
Well said, thank you.
I think we we see is a lot of jealousy. A lot of people out there who think they could do what Marxy does, who think, “I should get paid to blog! Why doesn’t someone pay me to blog?” but don’t get that Marxy had to blog for free for a long time to build the rep. He put in the effort and I congratulate him for any opportunity he gets to use his talents…so long as it doesn’t involve trying to sell me useless stuff…haha.
Once again, my head is spinning. Back in the 90s (I think), which was the decade of my intellectual maturity and I’m assuming the same for Marxy, the “masses are dupe-able”/”masses are intelligent” debate in the United States flipped. Now, market cheerleaders were the ones bowing their heads to the wisdom of the People as reflected on the NYSE and NASDAQ. Any criticism of the market has since been seen as fundamentally antidemocratic. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard a pundit on Fox News speak of lefty critics as elitists thumbing their noses at the People, who in their infinite wisdom and after council with their television sets determine that Pepsi is indeed the choice of their generation (TM).
I know that graphic designers who work in advertising don’t like to think of it this way, but advertising is propaganda, and propaganda is intended to manipulate or induce a certain behavior. As far as I can see, there’s not much debate there. You can debate whether or not the masses *can* be persuaded into buying a pair of Air Jordans, but advertising is founded on the belief that they can. Graphic design is part aesthetic but also part scientific: professional (not personal) graphic design that fails to express its message is considered dysfunctional, and the message in advertising is always “buy me.”
But in the comments above and elsewhere, it’s sounding like people are saying that advertising is not manipulative and to suggest otherwise makes one right wing. (I’m not offering an opinion on whether or not it’s an effective manipulator, but I’ll say that that is its raison d’etre.)
@alin:
>that’s when the post is actually about the japanese, right ?
No, it’s when the posts are not about the Japanese, but he talks about Japan anyway.
>that fantasy of grungy punk-rock subversion is irrepressible.
I don’t believe it to be subversive but more a (possibly) humorous business decision. Like when Thomas Frank writes for Fast Company.
Brian makes a very strong point there, and this is a debate that every design-related site should have. Some of the Anon commenters on Click Opera at the moment are trying to level the playing field by saying that journalism and the kind of market research Clast represents are no better or worse than each other, and have similar motives and goals. Moral equivalence.
The deep irony here is that Marxy, on Neomarxisme, has long been lamenting the lack of independent critical voices in Japan — the lack of real music reviews, the tightness of the kishi press clubs, the lack of political debate, and so on. He’s also welcomed tabloid magazines and the internet for the way they’re loosening up information flow and dislodging the old centres of power, with their top-down, authoritarian approach.
But could it be that he thinks only the yakuza, the government and the music management companies are “top down centres of power” worth attacking, whereas private capital, market research, advertising, PR and so on are not? Is he, in other words, a “selective iconoclast”? And this at a time when it is precisely the power of capital and the manipulation of consumers that needs most desperately to be interrogated.
I vote for Momus!
Continuing on from voting for Momus:
I think part of the debate is just sheer DISAPPOINTMENT.
So, in my case, I stumbled upon this set of blogs, I don’t remember how. Oh yeah, I was looking up Tokion.
I was excited to find interesting people blogging about interesting things. With nice artistic taste and nice vocabularies and social theory.
But yet, imagine my disappointment to find an yet ANOTHER interesting person co-opted into the marketing/advertising industry.
It’s like with law: the best and brightest often get sucked into high-paying corporate law jobs, precisely because they’re very smart and employers are willing to shell out $$$ in order to protect corporate interests. You can’t cut it any other way: you are either directly protecting and enhancing corporate interests, or you are indirectly benefitting, which to me is more of the nature of sponsorship. Writing social sketches and cultural analysis for marketing is, like, directly selling out people’s traits, personal cultural lifework, friend networks, and dreams, to the man. “Oh, I’ve spotted the elusive leopard/unicorn for you oh master hunter, I’ve tracked it down and identified it for you, so now all you have to do is easily shoot your prey! If shown you how they live, love, the places they frequent, what they like and what they’re bound to do next.”
My disappointment is, wow, I found a neat blog, then discover, *groan* the author is now writing “marketing sketches” profiling how youth can be “brought back to the table” to buy more alcohol, after they’ve been thinking alcohol isn’t refreshing!!! WTF!!! Thanks buddy! Well, let’s get around to reforming Americans’ newfound thoughts that cigarettes are not “refreshing.” Let’s clean up that cigarette image thing, now, shall we?
“The challenge now is to create new cleaner and fresher contexts for the products which generational and environmental associations have ruined. Alcohol may only be “unrefreshing” because of the traditional locations in which it is served”
Anyway, just think about it. The beauty and hope I find in intelligent and insightful writing is that it is animated by a helpful spirit and not working directly to identify and profile the life habits of prey for advertisers
;0 :) ;) I can only think of slaves being employed by their masters, trudging through the swamps, leading their master who is on horseback, to help track down other slaves…
I think ultimately, if you wrote those profiles for your employer and didn’t put them up on a blog, people would care much less. But in the context of a blog linked from neomarxisme the contextual shift is so jarring as to invoke the kind of debate that has been invoked.
Like Momus said, the context counts for everything. I just realized how right on he was.
If you kept that clast blog internally at your company, no one would know or care.
But in the context of being linked to neomarxisme the jarring disrupture in contexts is kind of overwhelming probably to those more sensitive to context, which, according to what Momus is arguing, Marxy is not and in fact argues that context doesn’t really matter.
I miss the good ole days when this blog reminded us when the latest Brutus was available at the newsstand (just recently i realised that they come one per month! now it all makes sense…), what cool new post is over at pingmag (in case your rss no longer reads their feed but is ok on this one), or how much the author is sooooo gonna get a new limited-edition plastic shitlet from medicom..
You know, stuff that MATTERS!
Meh, back to Smap Bistro.
BRUTUS actually comes out twice-monthly!
Or so it would seem.
When Momus (aka “the guy who trolls neomarxisme posts”) actually writes a blog that doesn’t put readers to sleep with its boring intellectual arrogance, I’ll vote for him. Until then, I’m with marxy.
Or here! One thing you can count on — no big college-boy words or high fallutin’ conceptery. Jus’ gimme the link and step aside.
Keep it real, Snow!
I was a little annoyed and put off the first time I saw the little ads on Snow’s website… but then I remembered how I shut down my own blog cause I couldn’t pay the friggin bill.
So, an artist can trudge along, being pure and untainted by the man and his corporate hand, hoping one day to be truely appreciated for one’s art and be allowed, some how, to make a living at it without having to fold, to compromise, to give in to the demands of the “market” or whatever. An artist can do this and waste their whole life waitng for that chance.
Question for everyone… wouldn’t old Marxy giving in to all the whining and complaining from his readers about his “pyro-clastic” move be in itself a huge sellout/compromise?
Thanks, Mike, I’m collecting examples of “contradictory recursiveness” at the moment and that’s a lovely one. I’ll keep it with the one that goes:
1. Wealth is bad.
2. Wealth is so bad it’s a kind of poverty.
3. Poverty is good.
4. Therefore - WHOOPS! - wealth is good.
Yours goes:
1. Selling out is bad.
2. But listening to people who tell you that selling out is bad… is selling out. And that’s bad!
3. So don’t listen to people who tell you selling out is bad — that would be selling out — just go ahead and sell out!
4. Selling out is good! (Except when it involves selling out the selling out.)
Being able to support yourself by work that you enjoy (and here I would say writing about topics that you enjoy covering) is good.
Hallelujah to that!
Jean, that statement actually, automatically links straight to the core of Ethics (capital E).
the most obvious thing that comes to mind is nazis - not because i like hitler melodrama but it’s a sort of recurring and tabu subplot at neomarxisme - and i don’t only mean whether Leni Riefenstahl was working for the man or being creative, doing what she enjoyed doing.
i actually quite dislike debating and being antagonistic but this one in the original post stuck to my mind and it keeps comming back though i tried to ignore it.
“Are there people in the ad world that are just looking to manipulate the masses? Fuck yeah! Is Marxy one of them? I know he isn’t, ”
what conclusion should we draw from this apparent contradiction. Is Marxy some sort of trojan horse ? Is Diamond Agency radically, in a pretty much unheard of kind of way from its competitors ? …
i mean radically different. (reccuring note to self: read before posting)
The point I was trying to make with that line was that whether you dislike people working in the ad industry or not, people who have followed his personal blog should have an idea of the kind of person he is, and should therefore have trust in his judgement.
yes, but it’s exactly people who have been following his blog who have raised various (primarily ethical) objections. they should be trusted or at least positively acknowledged.
one thing i personally lament in all this - and this relates directly to what you were saying about galleries or to such admirable efforts as Pause Talk - is that this yielding to and identification with totalities , like ‘the Market’ in Marxy’s case, like ‘the Japanese’ in Momus’ case etc ultimately stiffles the possibility to do something interesting in the cracks between which is really the only place where interesting things can happen.
Good point, Alin. Long live the cracks, and let’s hope we all manage to find creative (and personal) satisfaction and development somewhere (and somehow).
So wait a minute, Marxy is the Editor of Tokion, works for an ad agency, ‘and’ writes their blog? If this is not true, please correct me. If it ‘is’ true, then, uh, yeah, he is the definition of sell out and there’s no way you can trust what you see in the pages of Tokion (or the Clast blog, for that matter). Just because this guy is your friend shouldn’t automatically make turn a blind eye to the obvious.
Marxy hasn’t worked for TOKION for quite a few years now (except for some freelance articles).
I just realized why I’ve never taken part in a covnersation where Momus is involved… I knew he’d make me cry and then I’d have to throw away all his records. Damn him.
Back to the arguement. You are assuming in my “contradictory recursiveness” that I have aggreed that Marxy is selling out, which I have not. Marxy is just paying the bills. The same one might do by selling one’s music or producing for people who sell their music to the man. A tool of the man, no matter how far removed, I still a tool.
“Marxy is the Editor of Tokion, works for an ad agency, ‘and’ writes their blog?”
I haven’t worked at Tokion since early 2003, and if it makes you feel any better, I have not even written a freelance article for them since I joined the workforce.
Cool page., brother