“On Tinder, Off Sex” is a New York Times article by a graduate student in English at USC. She’s is “interested in both men and women” and consumed half a bottle of bourbon before her last sexual encounter. The author sets a pretty high bar for indecisiveness.
Some of my Facebook friends (i.e., not my friends!) are interested in this. What I find most interesting is why the New York Times would run the piece. Readers of traditional newspapers are pretty old. Is this article there to make them feel better about their own sexuality? E.g., “Well, I thought things were bad here at age 70 but at least I have figured out who I want to have sex with and sometimes we get the energy to follow through.”
Readers: Why would the Times run this? How is it newsworthy if a young person is confused about sex and unable to act?
This falls in the category, for those over 30 or so, of “too much information” or oversharing. I didn’t ask this woman when was the last time she had sex, I don’t need to know that information, I don’t want to know that information, but here she is telling us anyway, in a national newspaper. Not only that, but she is giving us a detailed description of her last sexual encounter. The kind of details that used to be reserved for the “Letters to Penthouse” column. We now live in an age where there are some people who are famous largely because they have allowed their sexual encounters to be filmed and published on the internet (and I’m not referring (just) to professional porn stars – e.g. Paris Hilton, one or more of the Kardashians, etc.) so a merely R rated description of this woman’s sex life is now suitable for family newspapers. This is probably no worse than what this woman posts on her Facebook every day.
As for how egocentric ramblings of this sort (which are available for free on Facebook) are supposed to generate enough income for her to live on without support on her parents, beats me. If she were to spice it up a little more she might have something. I recently heard an interview with a fellow who had written a book about his father. Unbeknownst to the son, during his childhood his father made his living as a prolific author of pornographic novels. He wrote hundred and hundreds of them for a few pennies per word under various pen names, but growing up his son had no clue. But I doubt this woman has enough stamina or imagination to do the same.
Even the grey lady is not immune from clickbaitery to drive traffic.
The NYT has become a pulp rag of the left. Here’s the last paragraph of a Jay Carney piece on the NYT vs Amazon story.
“The Times got attention for their story, but in the process they did a disservice to readers, who deserve better. The next time you see a sensationalistic quote in the Times like “nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk”, you might wonder whether there’s a crucial piece of context or backstory missing — like admission of fraud — and whether the Times somehow decided it just wasn’t important to check.”
More here: https://medium.com/@jaycarney/what-the-new-york-times-didn-t-tell-you-a1128aa78931
A lot of things besides tax proposals, wars and movie reviews are newsworthy and fit to print.
This story will tell the aging newspaper reader what it’s like to be younger and confused.
Another article will tell them what happens when you die alone
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/nyregion/dying-alone-in-new-york-city.html
Also sort of newsworthy.
And the “No sex, I’m comfused” article could make older people feel better about themselves. A 94 year old might read it and go “I see timid paper shufflers, aggressive divorce lawsuit plaintiffs, and a general “can’t do” attitude: By our mid-20s nearly all of us were in what would turn out to be lifelong marriages and we already had kids.”
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2015/10/19/what-does-the-greatest-generation-think-of-us/
and feel better about himself.
Never underestimate the joy older people derive from kvetching about young people.
I haven’t read the NY Times article yet but the comments here reminded me of some lyrics from the song “Feather Ben”, at least as sometimes performed by Rosalie Sorrels:
“You kids with your lovers
whose last names you don’t know-
at least I could put a name to the ass.
I’ve had my lovers and my age was golden.
You can have yours, it ain’t even good brass.”
Somehow the only sane response that comes to mind is a paraphrase of Lillian Hellman’s own when asked why she never wrote anything about gays:
“The confused ways of fucking do not require my comment.”
(quoted by Christopher Hitchens in a Vanity Fair column).