The Value of Cat Photos: A Discussion (that we did this AM precoffee)
Choire: Emily Gould! I am online for 15 minutes, here in the middle of my Official Week Off Work. Thank you very much for pinch-hitting on The Awl this week. How is it… going?
Emily: I didn't really factor in that your being on vacation would mean... that you are on vacation. So that's one thing. I was somehow like "Oh it will be so much fun filling in for Choire, I'll get to IM with Choire all day just like old tymes."
Choire: Oh right. Surprise! Have you actually been to our office??
Choire: How do you like our office?
Emily: So, your office is located in sort of a large windowed closet, in the back room of a production company of some nature, in sort of a best-case-scenario smack dab in the middle of Manhattan location.
Choire: I call it "Penn Station adjacent."
Emily: And the other businesses on your floor could not be more comical if they tried?
Emily: Can we say this, that there's a Private Investigator? Edith was marveling that the door of his office just comes right out and says "Private Investigator." She thinks it should be like... "Carrot Salesman" or something.
Choire: It does seem like a missed opportunity. There's a very handsome tattooed boy who works there who is very shady.
Emily: So no fedora or anything. Ok, that's disappointing. Also a few oddball fake-seeming publications. Like Irish Times Magazine. Home and Away Newspaper. Basically your office is on a soundstage in a made-up world? I dunno, I liked it.
Choire: The Irish Times is, in my mind, a bustling global enterprise. Not just a door to a small room that Irish people sometimes come out of.
Emily: It was reassuring to hear Alex's noises again. Like being in a barn with a familiar horse (not a metaphor).
Choire: He's like one of those pretty horses in a beer commercial. How does actual "blogging" feel?
Emily: It kind of sucks and is kind of fun. I am filled with horrible remorse about everything I've posted, basically?
Choire: EVEN THE CAT SIGN LANGUAGE VIDEO?
Emily: When I write a long thing quickly, especially if it's about A Stance That Will Endear Me To Absolutely No One (aka, "my beat"), I am so afraid I've gotten something crucially wrong. You know, you see that one comment that's like "You're just a terrible writer, these are all garbage sentences." And I'm kind of a perfection ..ist ... ish. Or just, like, a Libra. Sorry, I haven't been to therapy in a while!
Choire: Maybe you're like one of those horses too, like the ones that love to jump but sometimes they look down at the thing they're jumping over and they're like "nnaaaaaay." (OMG SORRY, THIS IS WHAT FREE THERAPY IS LIKE.) Also I spotted in the comments on your first day that someone was like "Are there going to be commenter executions now that you're here?" and you were like "let's hope!" I was LOLing and LOLing.
Choire: My general practice here is that if I think someone is being a jerk or whatever, I just like, email them.
Emily: In my experience of, er, teaching teenagers yoga... there is always a class clown/bad kid who disrupts the class and almost makes it impossible for the thing to continue. And if he's not there someone else (the mild-mannered girl who you would never have suspected!) steps up to take his place.
Choire:I cannot imagine teaching teenagers ANYTHING, much less yoga. But actually, I think that the kind of regret that you experience on publication, everyone sort of does as well? So when people get called out nicely, the sort of shame or whatever comes out, and they're like "Oh I hate this feeling, I won't put myself in this position again." (Except the real trolls, who are just trolls, nbd.)
Emily: Well, grand scheme of things, it's interesting to think of all the people we've known who've sort of graduated from being trolls to being productive members of blog society.
Choire: The thing I like about blogs is that they're not over-worked. I say dumb stuff, I get stuff wrong, I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, I highlight things that aren't actually interesting… I dunno, I guess I'm extremely self-forgiving or maybe perhaps not very conscientious. So I'm glad you have a high bar!
Emily: It's crippling and I think I censor myself too much. For a while I was so paranoid about offending anyone ever that I couldn't write anything.
Choire: That sounds terrible!
Emily: And then I guess kind of recently I started to loosen up. That book The Buddhist had a lot to do with it anyway. And then, you know, I swing to the other end of the spectrum and check myself. Well, the thing about Working Out Your Stuff in Public is that you have to be careful not to Work Out Anyone Else's stuff.
Choire: But like… isn't it good when viewpoints inspire a reaction? Or was it like, too distracting. (What do you think Katie Roiphe thinks!)
Emily: In the larger world, yes, sure -- I want to provoke people to reexamine their prejudices and reject received ideas. Even if they disagree with me, if they do that I'm happy. With people I know and love, though, if I write something that hurts them, it's impossible to feel happy about that. Or like it was "worth it." Even people I just kind of like, or admire, that thing of walking into a party and worrying half the people there are mad at you... and, like, they are!
Choire: Oh, that's too much burden to take on though!
Emily: Probably the Roiphes of the world love that feeling. It's never been my drug.
Choire: This is why I rarely write anything actually personal! Okay, so, what have we learned in all these years and days of blogging? Oh that's right: NOTHING.
Emily: It's incredibly hard to take away a lesson besides "it's complicated." Um but luckily I am just here to post cat photos, mostly, this week.
Choire: "It's not right but it's okay," as the poet said.
Emily: Which, I guess I should ... get back to that?
Choire: Honestly the website could use way more cat photos. Too many bear videos, not enough Cats Doing Improbable Things.
