Hi-Ho, The Glamorous Life: You’re Doing It Wrong, You’re Doing It Wrong

Marissa Skudlarek brings us Part II of her article about the internet and its discontents.

In my last column, I wrote about the anxiety that “the endless stream of information on Twitter, Facebook, and the Internet in general” makes me feel. In this column, I want to focus on one particularly prevalent form of Internet writing, which I have come to think of as the “You’re Doing It Wrong” essay.

According to KnowYourMeme.com, “You’re Doing It Wrong” became a catchphrase circa 2007-2008, and has remained popular ever since. It was originally just a fun, slightly snarky photo-meme (“Running: You’re Doing It Wrong” above a photo of Italian race-walkers; “Governing: You’re Doing It Wrong” above a photo of George W. Bush), but it has become the guiding principle of a slew of online writings. The Internet is crawling with self-styled experts who just love to tell you what’s the matter with the pop culture you’re consuming and the sociocultural habits you’re unconsciously falling into.

That’s right: if my previous column was a 600-word piece freaking out about the sheer amount of stuff published online each day, this column is about how writers of You’re Doing It Wrong columns are, indeed, doing it wrong. I get the irony, OK?

Because condemnation and hyperbole generate more pageviews than praise or subtlety, a You’re Doing It Wrong essay frames its thesis as contentiously as possible – and thus goes viral. More reasonable voices, which point out nuances, or observe without condemning, get drowned out by louder, shriller voices. In this overheated Internet climate, it feels refreshing to read celebrations of people who are Doing It Right, rather than criticisms of people who are Doing It Wrong. Consider this a public plea to my editor, Stuart Bousel, to publish his crowd-sourced list of male playwrights who write good roles for women.

Of course, even if you do write a paean to someone you think is Doing It Right, be prepared for the backlash: someone will come along the next day and write a piece about how that person is Doing It Wrong after all. If Stuart publishes the list of male playwrights who write good female characters, I fully expect that it will generate a lively debate in the comments section. I also expect that someone will write a response saying that we shouldn’t celebrate male playwrights who write good female roles, because that simply reinforces the patriarchal structure of society, keeps women out of the spotlight, etc. It feels like we’re getting to the point where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t; where no matter what choice you make, someone will tell you that it exemplifies everything that’s wrong with modern society.

I keep bringing up gender because it’s something I think about a lot and feel qualified to discuss. But, in addition, our culture’s overwhelming anxiety about feminism and gender roles means that many You’re Doing It Wrong pieces are targeted toward women. There was another meme going around Twitter yesterday – the #EdgyHeadlines hashtag, which generated humor and social commentary by flipping the gender of magazine-type headlines. I recall examples like “Men, Do You Dress Too Provocatively at Work?” and “Do Male CEOs Spend Too Little Time With their Babies?” Of course, the point of #EdgyHeadlines is that we never actually see headlines like these. It’s women who get told they dress wrong for the office, women who are told to fret about work-life balance. Women bear the brunt of You’re Doing It Wrong attacks, and suffer the most anxiety from them.

I’ve witnessed this happening in our own community. A couple of months ago, local theater director/producer Melissa Hillman wrote a “You’re Doing it Wrong” blog post directed at young female playwrights, whom she claims are writing too many passive protagonists and focusing too much on heterosexual romantic relationships. Her stated intent was to encourage women to “own” their own stories and thereby write better, stronger plays. But I spoke to several women who said that this essay gave them anxiety and made them want to throw in the towel, instead of making them want to write more and better.

Full disclosure: I’m pretty sure that my play Pleiades is one of the plays that prompted Hillman to write her blog post. I’d submitted Pleiades to Impact Theatre last year, and received a kind but firm rejection from Hillman only a few days before she published her piece. And I’d always thought of Pleiades as a play that might be too feminist for mainstream American theaters – it has eight roles for women, after all – yet, evidently, it wasn’t feminist enough for Hillman. This made me feel a little bit trapped and discouraged, rather than empowered. I know very well that you can’t please everybody, but read enough “You’re Doing It Wrong” essays and you’ll start to feel like you can never please anybody.

At the same time, though, I felt kind of flattered that Hillman might’ve been thinking of one of my plays as she wrote her blog post. If so, it’s the first time anyone has written about my work in a serious, critical way, and it did prompt me to think harder about what messages I’m sending in the plays that I write. These days (to paraphrase Oscar Wilde), perhaps the only thing worse than being criticized is not being criticized. The Internet is an endless cycle of creation, reaction, backlash, and outrage. It can make your head dizzy — but don’t you want to go for a spin?

Marissa Skudlarek is a San Francisco-based playwright and arts writer. So, come on, then, have at her in the comments section. She also welcomes additional criticisms on her blog at marissabidilla.blogspot.com or on Twitter @MarissaSkud.

Hi-Ho, The Glamorous Life: Sur Moi, Le Deluge

Marissa Skudlarek brings us part one of a large article, and hence we’ve decided to let her have a week out of turn. We think you’ll agree, it’s worth it.  

I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. Sure, I’ve got a busy month ahead of me: I’m directing a staged reading of my play The Rose of Youth on March 29, and my new translation of Jean Cocteau’s Orphée performs at Theater Pub on April 15. But I think what’s really pushing me over the edge of sanity is that, in addition to working on my artistic projects, I feel a compulsion to keep up with the endless stream of information that appears on Twitter, Facebook, and the internet in general.

That’s why I suspect that, even if you’re not as outwardly busy as I am, you might be feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, too. Do you, also, suffer from the Fear of Missing Out? Are you, also, caught up in the cycle of reading the essay about the topic du jour, and then reading what other people are saying in response to the essay about the topic du jour, and then feeling like you should prepare your own brilliant, incisive critique of the topic du jour? Do you feel like it’s impossible to merely enjoy things anymore – that if you enjoy something, you should broadcast your appreciation by writing an essay about why you like it so much? And, moreover, if you find something at all offensive or problematic, do you feel like you have a grave moral duty to write an impassioned-verging-on-hysterical condemnation of it?

Because I feel all of these things, and more. Briefly put, we’re living in an information deluge, and the salt water is starting to fill my lungs. Indeed, the physical sensation of feeling overwhelmed is similar to that of drowning: a shortness of breath, a clenching in the chest, a mad desire to run or escape or just flail around. (Otherwise known as “the precursors to a panic attack.”)

At other times, my reaction to the information deluge is not panic but paralysis, verging on despair. In part, my despair is that I’ll never catch up with everything, never read all I want to read, never know enough. But I also wonder if our addiction to cultural commentary and over-analysis directly leads to a sense of despair. I think about how I was a brooding, unhappy teenager; in my diary, I overanalyzed every detail of my high-school drama. Only years later did I come to understand that my brooding exacerbated my unhappiness, rather than assuaged it.

Could the same thing be happening now? Whenever something becomes successful or popular, cultural commentators tear it to shreds, analyzing its every detail and using that as the basis for sweeping judgments about The Way We Live Now. Or they’ll seek to undermine it, telling you why it isn’t very good or shouldn’t be popular in the first place. But after something’s been torn apart or undermined, what’s left of it? That’s right: messy shreds and fragments.

And then, if information overload is driving me half-mad, why the hell am I calling myself an arts writer, hoping that you will read my column, telling you to visit my personal blog and my Twitter feed? I worry that unless I have something brilliant to say, my writing will just waste your time and contribute to the cacophony of the world. This thought, in turn, only causes me to feel more desperate, more panicked, more paralyzed.

These days, there’s more information and commentary out there than ever before. Computers have made it easier for people to share their bright ideas and live the life of the mind, should they be so inclined. Still, I feel that I’m living cerebrally, which is far different from living mindfully. The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the over-examined life can make you feel like there’s nothing to live for.

Marissa Skudlarek is a San Francisco-based playwright and arts writer. If you’re handling the information deluge better than she is, you can find her at marissabidilla.blogspot.com or on Twitter @MarissaSkud.