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Post by liebkartoffel on Jul 2, 2023 12:26:20 GMT -5
I don't know why I still go back to the J/O media sites -- habit, I guess, and The Onion is OK -- but over at TOC, I read two articles, and they were both terrible in the same "the author thinks they're way cooler than you but they're really not" fashion, and they were both by the same dude, so I guess Matt Schimkowitz is TOC's newest* shitty author, though I haven't seen him go into the comments to defend his terrible takes like Jesse Hassenger yet.
Yet.
* Maybe he's been there a while, I neither know nor care
Schimkowitz can at least put a sentence or two together, even if his takes suck and his meandering snark never lands. There are a couple of newer writers--Hattie Lindert and Mary Kate Carr--who are just straight up bad at writing. Like, precocious-high-schooler-who-wasn't-told-"no"-enough-level writing. It doesn't help that their primary task seems to be clumsily paraphrasing Variety and Hollywood Reporter articles in a manner that approaches but isn't quite outright plagiarism.
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Post by King Charles’s Butterfly on Jul 2, 2023 13:58:28 GMT -5
I looked through a couple of Shinkowitz articles out of curiosity but I’d dispute his abilities as a wordsmith—he mixed up bearish and bullish!
I think it shows how narrow a line O’Neal managed to walk (and even then not everyone liked his contributions to the site).
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Post by Ron Howard Voice on Jul 5, 2023 16:45:50 GMT -5
O'Neal is relatively calm and de-snarked in his new stuff for Texas Monthly.
I just saw that the AVC and all its sibling sites are starting to post AI-generated articles at the behest of management. The writers are using Twitter to urge readers not to click them.
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Post by King Charles’s Butterfly on Jul 5, 2023 18:01:07 GMT -5
O’Neal’s also been in GQ in more serious/thoughtful mode, too (he was usually pretty great when he entered that late in his time in the AVC, when he’d write music articles particularly.)
I am not surprised by the move as AVC content is already mostly indistinguishable from stuff in the tabboola links (remember those?) that used to be at the bottom of articles. I have trouble believing that content farming is going to be profitable, particularly for a business that theoretically relies on eyeballs, but is there good way of knowing which eyes are real? AI content with/cheap ads read en masse by other bots seems like thin gruel but still gruel.
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monodrone
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Post by monodrone on Jul 6, 2023 5:59:23 GMT -5
O'Neal is relatively calm and de-snarked in his new stuff for Texas Monthly. I just saw that the AVC and all its sibling sites are starting to post AI-generated articles at the behest of management. The writers are using Twitter to urge readers not to click them. yep, saw some sections from an error-strewn Deadspin predictive-text generated listicle yesterday so not surprised to see that it's spreading across the portfolio.
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Post by liebkartoffel on Jul 6, 2023 7:21:40 GMT -5
Sam Barsanti: Yes, sir. I'll happily train my BarsantiBot replacement, sir. Whatever I can do to pitch in, sir.
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Hippo
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Post by Hippo on Jul 13, 2023 2:46:21 GMT -5
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Post by MrsLangdonAlger on Aug 11, 2023 17:41:17 GMT -5
What were the details of the Reagan/Jellybean mistake the AV Club writer made? I only remember it was a 30 Rock review.
I do remember the dude thinking the Bushs were really on The Simpsons.
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Post by Jimmy James on Aug 11, 2023 18:30:13 GMT -5
What were the details of the Reagan/Jellybean mistake the AV Club writer made? I only remember it was a 30 Rock review. I do remember the dude thinking the Bushs were really on The Simpsons. It was for the episode "Reaganing". Jack was trying to have an error-free day, which he claimed Reagan had pulled off, and he was carrying around a jar of jellybeans in imitation of Reagan. One of his crises was Tracy being unable to deliver his lines on a shoot for a commercial- Jack solved the problem by giving Tracy a handful of jellybeans and recording Tracy's dialogue while Tracy was chewing, making it look like Tracy was speaking, but Nathan Rabin claimed Jack put Adderal in the jellybeans and that was how he got Tracy to focus and get a usable take. www.avclub.com/30-rock-reaganing-1798166295Edit: Going back and looking at it now, he also escaped censure for referring to regional ice cream chain Carvel as a "local bakery"?
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Post by liebkartoffel on Aug 11, 2023 19:25:38 GMT -5
What were the details of the Reagan/Jellybean mistake the AV Club writer made? I only remember it was a 30 Rock review. I do remember the dude thinking the Bushs were really on The Simpsons. It was for the episode "Reaganing". Jack was trying to have an error-free day, which he claimed Reagan had pulled off, and he was carrying around a jar of jellybeans in imitation of Reagan. One of his crises was Tracy being unable to deliver his lines on a shoot for a commercial- Jack solved the problem by giving Tracy a handful of jellybeans and recording Tracy's dialogue while Tracy was chewing, making it look like Tracy was speaking, but Nathan Rabin claimed Jack put Adderal in the jellybeans and that was how he got Tracy to focus and get a usable take. www.avclub.com/30-rock-reaganing-1798166295Edit: Going back and looking at it now, he also escaped censure for referring to regional ice cream chain Carvel as a "local bakery"? And he was still salty about it nine years later. I'm overall sympathetic--sounds like the dude was/is going through some things--but in this case "got a detail involving jellybeans wrong" is a bit of an understatement. His...interpretation of that scene was truly bugnuts.
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Post by Celebith on Aug 12, 2023 11:36:44 GMT -5
O'Neal is relatively calm and de-snarked in his new stuff for Texas Monthly. I just saw that the AVC and all its sibling sites are starting to post AI-generated articles at the behest of management. The writers are using Twitter to urge readers not to click them. I don't miss Texas (other than the restaurant critics, of course) but I do miss sitting in the library reading Texas Monthly. Almost enough that I'd subscribe. It might be worth it to subscribe to the online editions of a couple of magazines to have something other than the scroll of doom to read.
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Hippo
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Post by Hippo on Aug 12, 2023 16:14:56 GMT -5
I'm overall sympathetic--sounds like the dude was/is going through some things--but in this case "got a detail involving jellybeans wrong" is a bit of an understatement. His...interpretation of that scene was truly bugnuts. With Rabin, I’m always under the assumption that he’s going through something. I dislike his writing but that’s more to do with feeling like he’s a bad writer than anything about him as a person.
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Aug 12, 2023 16:30:25 GMT -5
In unrelated problems, half the time when I tap on a link on any AVC article, it opens four new tabs from some unseen Verizon ad that’s fucking everything up
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Post by Angry Raisins on Aug 13, 2023 7:45:43 GMT -5
It was for the episode "Reaganing". Jack was trying to have an error-free day, which he claimed Reagan had pulled off, and he was carrying around a jar of jellybeans in imitation of Reagan. One of his crises was Tracy being unable to deliver his lines on a shoot for a commercial- Jack solved the problem by giving Tracy a handful of jellybeans and recording Tracy's dialogue while Tracy was chewing, making it look like Tracy was speaking, but Nathan Rabin claimed Jack put Adderal in the jellybeans and that was how he got Tracy to focus and get a usable take. www.avclub.com/30-rock-reaganing-1798166295Edit: Going back and looking at it now, he also escaped censure for referring to regional ice cream chain Carvel as a "local bakery"? And he was still salty about it nine years later. I'm overall sympathetic--sounds like the dude was/is going through some things--but in this case "got a detail involving jellybeans wrong" is a bit of an understatement. His...interpretation of that scene was truly bugnuts. Pretty big difference between "running joke" and "vitriolic rage". I don't recall much of the latter.
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Post by King Charles’s Butterfly on Aug 13, 2023 11:51:35 GMT -5
Hippo ’s “always under the assumption he’s going through something” is right, he’s written some great stuff over the years but to some degree it’s always about himself. Writing about TV is not the dream job people probably assume it is (even back when “tv reviewer” was a legitimate paid staff position) and it’s good to be sympathetic with others’ struggles but…idk, I’ve seen things, I’ve been through things, my friends have been through things, and “severe anxiety over people not liking my 30 Rock reviews” is very hard to take seriously. I don’t think this was intentional on Rabin’s part, but adding to the sense that there’s something blinkered about his perspective is the fact that an AVC writer did get legit rage for years on end: Koski over Ghostbusters. I assume it was much less funny than the recurring jellybean jokes, especially since there was no mistake on her part.
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Hippo
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Post by Hippo on Sept 4, 2023 4:49:48 GMT -5
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Post by songstarliner on Sept 15, 2023 22:32:30 GMT -5
Anything left off of their list of best music videos ever? Here's a few of my favs that didn't make the cut.
And of course:
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Post by liebkartoffel on Sept 15, 2023 23:03:09 GMT -5
Was reading about the Frasier revival on TOC and their "similar articles" algorithm randomly (and hilariously) spat out this 2010 post apologizing for Leonard Pierce's ethical whoopsie. Reading old comments/commenters are always a trip, but some of these are frankly adorable: Remember when the AV Club and its readers thought they were doing, like, for-real journalism for grownups?
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Hippo
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Post by Hippo on Sept 16, 2023 6:37:59 GMT -5
It was a simpler time! We believed in journalism then for some reason, we didn't know better!
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Post by King Charles’s Butterfly on Oct 16, 2023 17:59:00 GMT -5
I don’t know if this is ragebait or pure editorial stupidity (Internet archive link so you can read without giving them pageviews), but it really doesn’t matter. The stupidest takes on how Marvel is better than Scorcese from three or four years ago—right as Marvel’s juggernaut is sinking and Flowers of the Killer Moon is debuting—written by the founder of boxoffice.com, of all people.
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Post by Dripping Yellow Madness on Oct 16, 2023 20:43:06 GMT -5
I don’t know if this is ragebait or pure editorial stupidity (Internet archive link so you can read without giving them pageviews), but it really doesn’t matter. The stupidest takes on how Marvel is better than Scorcese from three or four years ago—right as Marvel’s juggernaut is sinking and Flowers of the Killer Moon is debuting—written by the founder of boxoffice.com, of all people. Although it's worth going to the original article to track the hornet's nest of comments it's stirred up...
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Post by Prole Hole on Oct 24, 2023 6:47:25 GMT -5
I don’t know if this is ragebait or pure editorial stupidity (Internet archive link so you can read without giving them pageviews), but it really doesn’t matter. The stupidest takes on how Marvel is better than Scorcese from three or four years ago—right as Marvel’s juggernaut is sinking and Flowers of the Killer Moon is debuting—written by the founder of boxoffice.com, of all people. Although it's worth going to the original article to track the hornet's nest of comments it's stirred up... "Worth it" seems like a big statement...
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Post by Floyd D Barber on Oct 26, 2023 23:39:49 GMT -5
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Nov 3, 2023 8:47:30 GMT -5
My Kinja account is tied to my Twitter account, using it as a sign in. So I'm pretty sure this is a Twitter issue, not TOC. But. My sign-in is quasi-broken now. My icon still appears, I can comment, I even had some notifications of replies yesterday. But when I click on the menu to go to notifications, I get a 404 Kinja User Not Found error.
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Nov 7, 2023 10:33:22 GMT -5
Of course they do include many of the bangers, but I'm particularly salty that they chose one segment to honor the first ever Treehouse of Horror, and they picked "Bad Dream House." Not a bad segment, but compared to "Hungry Are the Damned" and "The Raven?" Come on, now.
With James Earl Jones on the mic, "The Raven" is unironically one of the best performances of this poem ever put to audio, and "Hungry Are the Damned" has some of funniest Smipsons lines of all time. There's the gag about the ever-lengthening cook book title, and then there's this, my favorite Smipsons joke ever:
"You speak English."
"I am actually speaking Rigelian. By an astonishing coincidence, both of our languages are exactly the same."
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Post by songstarliner on Nov 8, 2023 20:32:17 GMT -5
Of course they do include many of the bangers, but I'm particularly salty that they chose one segment to honor the first ever Treehouse of Horror, and they picked "Bad Dream House." Not a bad segment, but compared to "Hungry Are the Damned" and "The Raven?" Come on, now.
With James Earl Jones on the mic, "The Raven" is unironically one of the best performances of this poem ever put to audio, and "Hungry Are the Damned" has some of funniest Smipsons lines of all time. There's the gag about the ever-lengthening cook book title, and then there's this, my favorite Smipsons joke ever:
"You speak English."
"I am actually speaking Rigelian. By an astonishing coincidence, both of our languages are exactly the same."
The children that "write" these slideshows wouldn't know a good Smipsons episode if it kicked them in their sweet, sweet, s-s-sweet can.
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Post by Nudeviking on Nov 9, 2023 3:12:10 GMT -5
These fucking things suck so much. They keep popping up in the AVC's twitter feed. "Actor XY or Z's top rated movies and tv shows on IMDB!" and it's like, "What is the fucking point even?" I can't imagine these things even working as clickbait.
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Post by Roy Batty's Pet Dove on Nov 9, 2023 10:22:32 GMT -5
Hippo ’s “always under the assumption he’s going through something” is right, he’s written some great stuff over the years but to some degree it’s always about himself. Writing about TV is not the dream job people probably assume it is (even back when “tv reviewer” was a legitimate paid staff position) and it’s good to be sympathetic with others’ struggles but…idk, I’ve seen things, I’ve been through things, my friends have been through things, and “severe anxiety over people not liking my 30 Rock reviews” is very hard to take seriously. I don’t think this was intentional on Rabin’s part, but adding to the sense that there’s something blinkered about his perspective is the fact that an AVC writer did get legit rage for years on end: Koski over Ghostbusters. I assume it was much less funny than the recurring jellybean jokes, especially since there was no mistake on her part. The Koski/Ghostbusters thing was that she didn't like The Ghostbusters, right? And people were mad that a pop culture writer didn't like this overrated movie, and were generally especially angry because Koski is a woman?
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Post by Pedantic Editor Type on Nov 9, 2023 11:11:10 GMT -5
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Dec 11, 2023 8:41:25 GMT -5
Jesus H. Fuck this review is garbage:
- A paragraph about Miyazaki coming out of retirement. Okay, sure, gotta have that. - A paragraph about the English dub, which the reviewer has not seen and is not reviewing, with a throwaway line about the US distributor (?) - A brief intro to the plot, with still another reference to the English dub cast - An okay paragraph about the film - Another paragraph about the English dub cast and second name drop for the distributor - A meta-conclusion about Miyazaki's intended meaning for the film, which ... I dunno
There's so little drawn from the actual movie here. I absolutely believe this could have been written without seeing either version. This could be cobbled from trailers, a press release about the English dub, and spot-checking a couple other reviews.
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