Another corner of the internet is boiling over. Linking to it serves no purpose. I already wasted too much time trying to figure out what everyone is so upset about—because the guess I made when I read the first outraged post seems to be the only one that makes sense.
Resentment is an ugly thing. As the oft-quoted proverb says, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then waiting for the other person to die.” It’s toxic and self-destruction and does no good to anyone.
This goes doubly true when one is an artist of any type who spends any time at all ranting and raging about how shallow, fake, and undeserving another (more well-known) artist is. The only people who don’t see right through your jealousy are other resentful people.
Every minute you spend seething is a minute you aren’t spending on your own art. You’re never going to get any of those minutes back. So stop trying to explain how untalented that person is. Stop pointing to examples of how bad their work is. Stop thinking up clever ways to insult the people who like the other person’s work.
None of that does anyone any good, least of all you.
If you don’t like someone’s work, don’t look at/read/listen to/share it. If you think there’s too much crap in the world, stop griping and make something that isn’t crap.
There are things worth getting outraged over. I do it all the time. It’s okay to be angry about discrimination, or greed, or oppression. Those things cause actual harm to other people. Pointing out the problem may get some help to those who have been hurt. Pointing out the problem may persuade some people to change their minds and reduce the amount of bigotry and hatred and suffering in the world.
No one is harmed by a bad poem. To what little extent bad art can diminish joy or entice people to do bad things (often a very dubious claim), ranting about it just spreads the bad stuff to more people. The exact opposite of making the world a better place.
Let it go.
Go make something better. Go live something better. Go be something better.
Font Folly 
I have to admit that you pushed a button with this post. Not theme or the content of the post, but by citing a drama/feud/meltdown but refusing to name names (or details) to be on some higher moral ground. Rather than appearing calm and above it all, the writer comes off as coy or teasing (though I know this is not your intent). It’s human nature to be curious. Talking about a drama but not adding any details is frustrating. The writer can forewarn that the incident is not worth study, but give your readers the benefit of choosing for themselves whether to look into this or not.
For instance: if Frida Kahlo accused Norman Rockwell of “selling out” and a huge controversy erupted over this: just simply stating this informs me, the reader, what this is all about– and my curiosity will most likely be satisfied. If not, I can then (by my own choice) google this and get the details. Again, curiosity satisfied. Saying something to the effect of, “Something is happening here, but I’m not going to give you details for your own good,” also smacks of patronizing.
Like I said– it’s a button.
I understand.
Except, this post isn’t about the controversy. This post applies to about half the controversies that have ever erupted on the internet, ever.
It doesn’t matter who the principals are. It doesn’t matter that what started me on this one was when a local artist (whose day job is at the local alternate weekly) posted a rant about something related to a recent tragedy posted on the blog of a world-famous quirky musician, and how that local rant was flooded with hundreds of comments from locals, including some musicians and other artists. It isn’t a feud and my comments aren’t about the feud.. It’s not Kahlo versus Rockwell. It’s the community theatre of Poughkeepsie spending a night when they ought to be rehearsing for their coming production but instead are having a bitching circle about what a horrible person Oscar Hammerstein, Jr is, and “isn’t it wonderful that he’s being savaged in the New York papers for that thing he said about Sen McCarthy?”
My comments are about every time someone who thinks of themselves as an artist starts ranting about what they call bad art created about a specific other artist. It doesn’t matter whether the art really is that bad or not. It doesn’t matter whether the subject matter of the art may be pushing some people’s buttons because it’s related to a recent tragedy that temporarily monopolized the attention of the country, causing them to project their own feelings about the events on the artist, perhaps.
It’s about ranting about someone else’s art when you claim to be an artist. And it is just as true when it’s a feud between two fan artists in some obscure corner of the obscurest fandom that ever existed, or if it’s two world-famous artists, or if (as in this case) it’s some local aspiring artist ranting about a feud playing out elsewhere.
I didn’t mention what it was not to appear calm and above it all. I’m not calm. But the part I’m not calm about is the ranting about something someone is doing that doesn’t actually harm anyone.
As always, I enjoy our discussions: someday I’ll get back to the NW and we’ll have a long dinner and facetime-chat.
I know the post wasn’t about the controversy– I (guiltily) hijacked your post to vent about teasers and one of my buttons. If your original post did not include the first paragraph, the button would never have been pushed and I would not have reacted. In fact, if that opening paragraph hadn’t been there, the post would not have suffered in the least because you have a long history of wide-ranging topics and interests.
Your tone was, as always, calm and intelligent. My snarky reference was to the teaser alone (and not naming names or going into any detail). Again– that is just the impression it made on my curious brain.
Your reply handled it in a way that completely satisfied my curiosity: you described the situation in enough detail that I could say, “Oh…local art drama…lynch mobs and paladins…got it. Nothing to see here!” The original comment, “Another corner of the internet is boiling over,” just raised a bunch of possibilities in my head that I– as the reader– had no clue as to what it might be. Fannish controversy? People I know? Media controversy? Politics? (The explanation of the situation could have been handled in one of your famous footnotes, so as not to distract from the meat of your post.)
Sometimes I fall into a media-free hole: I don’t watch the boards, I skip the news, etc. I’m not a regular on any of the art sites or communities, so things can happen that I’m not aware of. So a lot of fannish eruptions are missed. I like to make myself aware of them not so much for the gawker-aspect as to see how people paint themselves. Sometimes you can learn a lot about someone by their comments (and I like to know people at a level that is beyond what they like to project to the world). In the heat of battle people often show their real mettle.
And I’m sorry your buttons were pushed. I meant to say that in the other comment.
This particular one is extra messy because several of the internet’s equivalents of the old New York tabloids (*cough* Gawker *cough*) has boiling over for days on the “Oscar Hammerstein” analog I mentioned. I’m not sure it’s possible for some people to separate their feelings about “Hamerstein’s” poem in defense of “someone target by the House Unamerican Activities Subcommittee” (or more accurately, feelings about the suspect and the crime) to even realise that a lot of people are just bitching about how “Hammerstein” doesn’t deserve to be famous.