Overheard about ... Suck

Excuse my self-referentiality, but Jon Katz has done it again. This time, he's slammed Slate and Suck in the same breath, accusing both of snobbery and self-aggrandizement. Hey Jon -- it takes one to know one. It is a little difficult to defend Suck. Their perpetual eagerness to brag of their God-given knack for selling out is more than just crass, it's wearisome. Okay, so you wanna make a buck on the Web -- we've all kinda figgered that's what it's all about, okay? Wax poetic about the virtues of selling your soul once, shame on you. Blather about it twice, shame on me -- for still reading. Suck tends to use lengthy zeitgeist-laden sentences, picking a font normally reserved for pinochle playing cards and double-spacing the text with a grandeur reminiscent of the Star Wars opening summary. They've resurrected in hypertext glory the same strategies we all used in high school to make a five-page essay out of two hundred words of vacuous material and hollow opinion. They've also made some mistakes. To take their newfound sprouts of wisdom as serious criticism for society to pause and carefully reflect upon is laughable. C'mon, so some guys from SGI are reading about Netscape vs. Microsoft -- big deal. Satire is not the stuff that changes the industry nor the world. It does change the satirist ... Lenny Bruce didn't single-handedly tear down censorship laws, but he broke down into a pool of quivering jelly in the process. There's still enough humor between the cracks to make occasional reading rewarding. The best running gag has to be Suck's on-and-off snickering about HotWired and crew. The gag, of course, is that Wired Ventures Inc. snarfed up Suck a while back like a plump little appetizer. Well, an appetizer that doesn't seem to digest well. And, of course, Suck bragged about the deal. One of my personal worries is that Ad Nauseam will be branded a Suck poseur. No, I'm not trying to walk with the giants, but the similarities exist. Both sites have embraced the Web as a target of easy satire. The relative ease of self-publishing to an audience of n millions brings the weirdos, maniacs, and corporate marketing types out from hiding. (Where Suck and Ad Nauseam fit into these three categories is left as an exercise to the reader.) Sometimes the big targets wind up being common fodder for both, to the point that each use suspiciously similar titles. No matter. Suck will continue to do to do what it does best, which is to take cheap shots at everything out there: the Web, media stars, television, politics, whatever tickles their fancy. Fine with me. But please, Suck, the next time you get an urge to produce an article with gratuitous self-referentiality or more preening over your well-honed ability to sell-out, could you think twice? Or, at the very least, embed a link to this page? I could use the hits. Thanks.