{"id":15832,"date":"2015-04-16T11:42:40","date_gmt":"2015-04-16T19:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/?p=15832"},"modified":"2015-04-16T11:46:38","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T19:46:38","slug":"my-haters-myself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/?p=15832","title":{"rendered":"My Haters, Myself"},"content":{"rendered":"

via Amanda Hess at Slate\u00a0My Haters, Myself<\/a> – Mastering the art of the haterbrag.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Jennifer Weiner at a PEN America event on April 6, 2015. A slideshow projected on a screen behind her was loaded with pics of Jonathan Franzen striking stuffy promotional poses.<\/p><\/div>\n

(Photo by\u00a0Corrie Hulse)<\/p>\n

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Jennifer Weiner has sold millions of books, spent a\u00a0combined five years<\/a> on the\u00a0New York Times<\/em> best-seller list, and amassed 109,000 followers on Twitter. Last week, she descended into the basement of New York City\u2019s Ace Hotel to share a handful of her self-promotional secrets. The talk, sponsored by the PEN American Center, was titled \u201cHow to Be Authentic on Social Media<\/a>,\u201d but its true subject was how to promote your book on the Internet without making everyone hate you. Weiner advised authors to tweet about the things they love (for Weiner, it\u2019s the reality TV romance competition\u00a0The Bachelor<\/em>); to tweet about the authors they love (Roxane Gay<\/a> and\u00a0Gary Shteyngart<\/a> are two of her favorites); and to tweet about their own projects \u201csparingly, carefully, modestly, thoughtfully, and absolutely as little as possible\u201d\u2014and let their now-loyal crew of social media followers spread the word. The talk was a handy primer, charmingly delivered. But it referred only obliquely to Weiner\u2019s true social-media innovation: Co-opting her haters into her personal brand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In 2010, Weiner\u00a0coined<\/a> the term \u201cFranzenfreude\u201d to mock the extensive and fawning media coverage that met Jonathan Franzen\u2019s latest novel,\u00a0Freedom<\/em><\/a>. When Franzen unexpectedly returned the slight, frowning upon \u201cJennifer Weiner-ish self-promotion\u201d in an essay published in the\u00a0Guardian <\/em>in 2013<\/a>, Weiner cannily recast Franzen\u2019s dig as a badge of honor, changing her Twitter bio, for a time, to \u201cEngaging in Jennifer Weiner-ish self-promotion.\u201d Years of sustained, adversarial brand building followed. On Twitter, she\u2019s\u00a0dubbed Franzen<\/a> \u201cthe worst Internet boyfriend ever,\u201d branded his literary allies \u201cFranzenfriends,\u201d and gleefully organized an \u201cunFranzen<\/a>\u201d party to coincide with Franzen\u2019s keynote address at next month\u2019s BookExpo America. In\u00a0advance of last week\u2019s talk<\/a>, she promised to finally \u201cexplain how \u2018Jennifer Weiner-ish self-promotion\u2019 works\u201d and joked that she was prepping for the event by spending all day Googling photos of Franzen. Um, it wasn\u2019t a joke: A slideshow projected on a screen behind Weiner was loaded with pics of Franzen striking stuffy promotional poses. Throughout the evening, Weiner hammily referred to him as, alternately, Jonathan Franzen, Lonathan Janzen, and Shmonathan Shmanzen. \u201cDude, you know a lot about Jonathan Franzen,\u201d the event\u2019s host, Emily Gould, noted when it was all over. Replied Weiner: \u201cI like to be prepared.\u201d<\/div>\n
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Weiner is a master of what I\u2019ve taken to calling the haterbrag. Think of it as the\u00a0humblebrag<\/a>\u2019s evil (but funner) stepsister, a bit of social media sleight-of-hand that turns an insult into an asset. When Weiner cast the \u201cWeiner-ish\u201d line out to her followers, she jiu-jitsued his scorn, presenting herself not as the victim of a withering putdown by the great American novelist of our era, but as the accessible everywoman who stands in opposition to a stuffy highbrow jerk. She\u2019s not the only one who\u2019s learned to manipulate a foil for fun and profit. Heather Armstrong, who writes funny, no-holds-barred dispatches about her family life on her blog\u00a0Dooce<\/a>, has distilled a decade of rude comments into her\u00a0short, sweet Twitter bio<\/a>: \u201cI exploit my children for millions and millions and dollars on my mommyblog.\u201d\u00a0Bloomberg Politics<\/em> reporter\u00a0Dave Weigel<\/a>takes the most foolish comments aired about him on Twitter andretweets them<\/a> to\u00a0his own audience<\/a> of 150,000. A popular\u00a0Jimmy Kimmel Live <\/em>segment invites celebrities to\u00a0read mean tweets about themselves<\/a> on the air; somehow, the exercise always manages to confirm the hater\u2019s insignificance and accentuate the celebrity\u2019s easygoing cool.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The haterbrag embodies a couple of typical complaints that people like Franzen lodge against social media culture: It\u2019s a narcissistic overshare. But it also functions as a bit of a backlash to the relentless and unnatural positivity promoted by social media companies, which have organized the Internet into a series of blandly congenial exchanges. \u201cSocial networks privilege certain behaviors in sometimes subtle ways,\u201d says Jacob Silverman, author of\u00a0Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0BuzzFeed<\/em><\/a> <\/em>has elevated this social media sunniness into an editorial mission, conditioning readers to react to its content by choosing from a range of pre-set emotions, including \u201cOMG,\u201d \u201ccute,\u201d \u201cLOL,\u201d and \u201cWTF.\u201d As Rob Horning put it in a 2012\u00a0essay in the New Inquiry<\/em><\/a>, the \u201cuniversal love and harmony you can see flowing down your Facebook newsfeed\u201d belies the darker implications of social media surveillance\u2014like, how its openness allows random strangers to drop in and tell us to die in a fire. In a\u00a02010 dispatch on the phenomenon of the hate retweet<\/a>, Choire Sicha noted that it constitutes \u201can interesting undermining of a system that\u2019s designed to be about validation and friendliness.\u201d Says Silverman, \u201cWhen we\u2019re encouraged to be positive and not feed the trolls, there\u2019s something vaguely rebellious about embracing negativity or others\u2019 provocations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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According to social media, Franzen\u2019s an out-of-touch, bird-watching white dude\u2014the perfect foil for Weiner\u2019s power-tweeting feminist brand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sarcastically nodding to one\u2019s haters is \u201crarely about winning that particular conversation,\u201d Silverman says. \u201cIt\u2019s about looking witty or snide in a conflict that\u2019s performed for a public audience.\u201d When you retweet an insult from a hater, you shift the balance of the audience from the hater\u2019s fans to your own; the person with the most followers ultimately decides the context in which the comment will lay to rest. Weiner has rejected characterizations of her interactions with Franzen as \u201cfeuding,\u201d\u00a0arguing<\/a> that the term recasts a woman with a dissenting opinion as bitter and petty.\u00a0 But the term is incorrect in another way, because the antagonistic \u201crelationship\u201d between the two authors has been defined largely through Twitter, a universe in which Franzen has no agency. Though he has inspired\u00a0several parody accounts<\/a>, Franzen is not on Twitter, and I can\u2019t exactly blame him. In his absence, Weiner and others have molded his persona into a buffoonish caricature. According to the view from the\u00a0social media cheap seats<\/a>, he\u2019s just an out-of-touch, bird-watching white dude who thinks he\u2019s\u00a0better than Oprah<\/a>\u2014the perfect foil for Weiner\u2019s power-tweeting,\u00a0Bachelor<\/em>-watching feminist brand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In some ways, the haterbrag phenomenon recalls the dynamics of the modern rap battle, which itself has begun to spill over from the studio and the stage\u00a0onto Twitter<\/a>. One of Kanye West\u2019s lasting contributions to hip-hop is his recasting of the \u201chater\u201d from an antagonist to an asset, Ben Gabriel argued in\u00a0an essay in the New Inquiry<\/em><\/a> in 2011. Instead of expending his energy fending off lesser rivals, Kanye recognizes that the \u201cvocal ignorance\u201d of his haters is a \u201cnatural resource\u201d that can be converted into a conduit for spreading his own message. After Kanye\u00a0sat for a searching conversation with BBC Radio<\/a> in 2013, in which he discussed his difficulties breaking into the fashion world, Kimmel mocked him\u00a0by hiring a small child<\/a> to sip a milkshake and scream out choice Kanye quotes. The Kimmel sketch was ignorant, lazy, and not widely viewed until Kanye attacked it on Twitter; the rapper quickly leveraged the controversy into an extended sit-down on Kimmel\u2019s show, which he used to\u00a0promote his vision <\/a>for apparel. Kimmel, the ostensible host of the show, could barely get a word in. Gabriel points out that Nicki Minaj\u2019s 2009 track \u201cStill I Rise,\u201d which is written in\u00a0the collective voice of her haters<\/a>, chooses its haterbrags wisely in order to underscore \u201cthe important themes that underlie an emcee, but only negatively.\u201d By giving voice to the haters who call her a lesbian Chinese Lil\u2019 Kim impersonator, Minaj reinforces her image as a \u201cpost-geographical,\u201d \u201cpost-heterosexual\u201d rapper, one deserving a prominent placement in a particular \u201cfemale pantheon,\u201d Gabriel says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Not every mean comment is worth bragging about.\u00a0Guardian<\/em> columnist Jeb Lund uses Twitter as a comedy forum where he trades in \u201cmutual derisory comments and self-effacing performative humiliation tweets with friends in on the gag.\u201d Though he sometimes\u00a0retweets his haters<\/a>as a part of the performance, his saddest detractors are spared. \u201cIf they have 10 followers, and their tweet is shitty and forgettable, you\u2019re giving them more credit than they deserve by punching down,\u201d Lund says. At the opposite end of the spectrum lies Donald Trump,\u00a0a billionaire<\/a> with2.84 million Twitter followers<\/a> who acts like such an impossibly mean idiot on Twitter that getting \u201cburned\u201d by him feels like receiving a thoughtful, personalized gift. When Trump called\u00a0New York Magazine<\/em>columnist Jonathan Chait \u201ca no-talent illiterate hack,\u201d Chait liked it so much that he incorporated it into his\u00a0Twitter bio<\/a>. Trump\u2019s insult \u201cinterested me because it was redundant in a comic way,\u201d Chait says. \u201cHe took care to specify that I am a\u00a0no<\/em>-talent illiterate hack, as opposed to a talented illiterate hack.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The art of the haterbrag lies in the curation: Dozens of pedestrian insults can pass through a person\u2019s feed before a truly bizarre or ironic comment appears. When Butler University literary journal\u00a0Booth<\/em>prodded Franzen to elaborate<\/a> on his feelings about Weiner in a February interview, he produced several perfectly mean quotes about her; she selected the most peevish of all of them\u2014\u201cShe has no case. So she tweets\u201d\u2014and elevated it to her Twitter bio. Some haterbrags work because the comments are so negative that they end up circling all away around to complimentary, or even unexpectedly profound. In 2012, some guy read\u00a0a personal essay I wrote<\/a> and wrote in the comments, \u201cYou make even a potentially funny story make me want to shoot myself\u201d; I know he was trying to be mean, but I can\u2019t help but read it as a testament to my emotional range. Other haterbrags earn points for superior riffability. I once\u00a0referred to Weiner<\/a> as \u201can imperfect vessel for confronting sexism in the publishing industry\u201d; she smartly capitalized on my icky word choice and added the phrase to her haterbrag repertoire. Recently, when a follower suggested that Weiner concoct a signature cocktail for her \u201cunFranzen fest,\u201d Weiner quipped that it ought to be served in an \u201cimperfect vessel.\u201d And the\u00a0Twitter bio<\/a> of\u00a0National Journal<\/em> reporter Emma Roller suggests an innovative twist on the form: \u201cSomeone called me pithy once, but maybe they just had a lisp.\u201d The line positions Roller\u2019s persona between a straightforward compliment and a sexist dig; it is at once self-promotional, self-deprecatory, and subtly haterbraggy\u2014basically perfect.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The hatebrag is a social media machination, but on some level, it\u2019s also a totally authentic response to getting insulted in public. We want to discredit whoever did us wrong, and have our assessment confirmed by all of our friends. After Weiner\u2019s talk, one woman asked how she knows when it\u2019s time to end a Twitter war. Weiner replied: \u201cWhen you\u2019re with your children, but you\u2019re not with your children, because you\u2019re composing tweets to Jonathan Franzen in your head.\u201d A few days after the event, she\u00a0took her Twitter bio off the defensive<\/a>. Now, she defines herself in her own terms: \u201cNovelist, feminist, New York Times Opinion contributor, mother of two, Bachelor superfan.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

via Amanda Hess at Slate\u00a0My Haters, Myself – Mastering the art of the haterbrag. (Photo by\u00a0Corrie Hulse) Jennifer Weiner has sold millions of books, spent a\u00a0combined five years on the\u00a0New York Times best-seller list, and amassed 109,000 followers on Twitter. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15832"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15845,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15832\/revisions\/15845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teensleuth.com\/hauntedlibrary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}