I Am Not an Internet Cultural Critic

Reconciling the Desire to Appeal to an Audience with Authenticity in Expression, OR: Why I Quit Tacking "-ification" Onto Every Noun

Well, here’s the essay, folks!

¹Tell me if you’ve read this before: The critique article or essay is written in first-person. It opens with the author’s recounting of an intimate moment that might also serve as a languid, world-weary metaphor that asserts itself in cleverness but not concentration with an overly familiar tone jarring enough to pass for voice. (I liken it to the first page of a novel that is excessively profane, vulgar, or gory in attempt to shock the reader into intrigue—traits of which will not be revisited with such intensity at any other point in the book.) This intimacy brings on the same discomfort a person who sits too close to you on a bus might, but gradually peters out by the end of the first third when the subject of critique is introduced.

If the interest in the subject in part stems from discourse being had on the internet, inciting Tik Toks, Tweets, and the likes are referenced, the subject being defined within the context of the discussion they’ve instigated. Reportage, basically. This part, you skim if you’re already familiar with the subject and the arguments that are made about it at the surface level.

Then might come another sudden shift when the actual critique is introduced. It’s delivered in a robotic, preachy tone with a detachment in great contrast to how the work had opened. The former is the cause of the latter; the air of superiority manifests in the author’s sudden removal of themselves from the matter—as if they too aren’t impacted by what’s being critiqued—and in the affected, contradictory modesty that comes in them then assuring the reader that they are.² To some extent, this is unavoidable, as the very nature of critique in part suggests some healthy sense of ego in being convinced of one’s own ability to persuade another that their own meticulous and educated filtering of bias is not only an accurate assessment but should be considered the reigning stance. However, the obtrusiveness of it comes in it feeling unearned, given that what’s presented is still effectively the same baseline reportage that had already been covered but a few paragraphs earlier, and is overreliant on the authority the tone produces to mask this.

All there is to what’s ultimately offered is a more eloquent summary of what had already been said by the initiators of the conversation with no new insight and no distinct perspective or comparable evidence of the author having taken the time to form their own opinion. The resolution or call-to-action decided upon in the end is almost always akin to “let’s all think about it a bit more”, which is an important thing to do, but given the lack within the preceding content, feels like an acknowledgement made mainly because it suggests a convenient placeholder for better consensus the reader will naturally draw inferences as to what might be, but is ultimately not supported by the text. One is left with the feeling that the subject had been covered only so the author could amass the clout that comes with participating in discussion about a “hot topic”.

Not every internet cultural critic follows this rather shallow pattern, of course. But as many brilliant ones as there are—Princess Babygirl and twenty-first century demoniac being amongst my personal favorites—plenty of others prove flimsy in this regard, I myself once included amongst that crowd.

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I apparently have four incomplete essays on online expressions of girlhood in relation to my own saved to my Notes app. I don’t at all remember writing them and am glad to not have shared them anywhere. They had been written between early 2022 and late 2023 and—though I don’t regret writing them, as they’d been conducive to my development—they demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of how exactly I was meant to assert myself as a writer to the audience I was (am) cultivating.

I fell into what I’ve come to think of as a common pitfall amongst aspiring internet cultural critics. I wasn’t directly concerned with aesthetics in the material sense, as is the most common accusation to level towards young writers in this day and age who make a point of participating in internet culture—sometimes rightfully so. Rather, I was concerned with the aesthetics of keeping up with those who concerned themselves with the materialism of aesthetics. Keeping up with the people who kept up with the Joneses so that I may have something to eagerly whisper back to the rest of the block about the nature of their attempts. Ironically, in my efforts to ensure I always had something to say regardless of how substantive, I fell victim to the same egotistical desperation born from the consumerism I observed and condemned within them. As can be common, what came as a result of this was critique that acted as dispassionate copy. Regurgitations of imitations that came heartbreakingly close to pulling the productive thought that lingered in the thematic background out of the haze it was enveloped in, only to then reject it in submerging itself in the predictability of an anodyne, algorithm-friendly voice meant to attract nothing more than social capital, leading to all the sincerity in intent when initially entertaining it having been lost.

In those essays, I’d meditated on bouts of what I falsely thought to have been depression (of which I proceeded to romanticize); brief teenage kleptomaniacal indulgences I pretended spoke to something beyond the banal deviance expected of a teenager; and tragedies I had not been devastated by but would like to have been. As was the trend—as is what I think tends to annoy some people about the influx of “girlhood essays” at the conceptual level—my recollections all related back to an oversimplified universality of the female experience that was born moreso from a desire to boast relatability while still maintaining a sense of separateness than to comment earnestly on all I had not even thoroughly enough explored to have more than a paragraph’s length of worthy opinion on. I had also presented the subjectivities of my own experience as objective truth without support enough to justify such an ambitious conclusion. My writing subsisted on borrowed experiences, borrowed emotions, and partial understandings of borrowed philosophies I had not studied enough to even declare alignment with or rejection of. (Guess I hadn’t gotten over my kleptomania as quickly as I’d thought.) Whatever perspective I might’ve had was sacrificed in its totality to this attempt at qualifying myself.

Such was also the case for succeeding essays I had written about Tumblr, wellness culture, and Puritanism—three other things I also knew nothing about. My greatest offense has to have been the five near-identical, equally bland and astigmatic essays I had written about overconsumption. After writing them, I then proceeded to—without the slightest hint of irony—create a Pinterest board titled “carolyn bessette kennedy corporate sleazebagette vibes” and pin various images of clothing from Khaite, Prada, and The Row I am still in love with but cannot afford. I’m currently resisting the urge to make a flippant remark about this, so—for me, so that I can rest easy tonight—I kindly urge you to insert your own.

These numerous essays were all a symptom of a much larger insecurity I had yet to realize. My brief, unremarkable stint as an internet cultural critic was an egregious manifestation of a struggle to express my perception of the world in a way that fulfilled the promise every writer makes to their prospective readers when they produce a work for an audience: to have left them in the end with a new essential something in exchange for their time—knowledge, wisdom, pleasure. Critique is the most accessible and direct demonstration of a capability to impart all three. This is why—though it might not always be the medium best suited to a person’s expression of perception—it tends to be the one most gravitated towards by writers who are extremely online with the intent of carving out a space for themselves within a market that views, falsely or otherwise, having an internet presence as a requirement for success.

It would be unfair to say that I amongst the others didn’t offer any of the three in delivering what we had—or at least try to—only that it had not come for a place of utmost sincerity, which is completely antithetical to the nature of what critique demands. The insincerity was and is often born from a prevalent fear amongst such writers: a fear of not appearing interesting enough. Rather, the right kind of interesting—the kind that would be picked up by an algorithm and circulated to others who also fancied themselves the “right kind of interesting”, therefore giving truth to one’s possession of it. Because that was all that’s really needed to amass an audience in the end. It wasn’t so much about skill or talent as much as it was being the right voice at the right time and having altered the pitch of that voice so that it fell in harmony with the rest of the choir. Regardless of the idealistic advice often shared that proclaimed otherwise, one must sing the choir’s song and a cover of it is usually the only acceptable deviance from it.

It is a rarity that one finds mass success in singing an entirely different song, one with lyrics in great contrast to the prevailing attitude of the zeitgeist. But what exactly the song of the zeitgeist will be at any given moment is so unpredictable that attempting to sing along when one isn’t inclined to is a futile effort. There is ultimately no guarantee that bowing to the algorithm or whatever other perceived deliverer of mass attention in such a way will even be worth it. So why bow at all?

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When it comes to making a conscious effort to learn of and express the most authentic version of one’s interior, emphasis is too often placed on the external act of the search, as if looking for a missing dog. A wise person once told me this interior doesn’t need to be sought after in such a way or even spoken towards, but simply listened for with a clean and willing ear. I once again listen to the content of my old efforts, my old works—the attempts at gaining clarity, the complexity addiction, the obsession with finding the idyllic in apparent subversions of what’s normally considered so—and realize I have spent my entire writing career trying to find poetry. And I have spent my entire life trying to be literate enough to confess my essence to myself with it. That is who I am.

In an age where deafening material is plentiful and omnipotent, it’s almost inevitable that one’s ears will be clogged for a while, and that one spends that time desperately urging a variety of things to scream in hopes that something manages to pierce through the silence. And something always does. I liken the attitude I’ve taken to learning to listen more intently for myself to the one with which you might regard your future when in your teens or (I would imagine) twenties: you’re never convinced it’ll get better until it eventually does. You’re never convinced of your own resilience until you look back one day and realize just how much effort you’ve put into surviving.

I am not an internet cultural critic. I admire those who have come to the conclusion that critique is their most ideal medium for interpreting their surroundings, but that has never been me. As soon as I came to accept that—as soon as I started to listen for myself—I began to learn more about the world beyond that self than I ever had in assuming I could thoughtlessly borrow others’ understandings of it for the sake of a performance no one gained any satisfaction from.

1. I know this technically—ironically—counts as internet cultural critique, but hear me out, would you? I swear I’m retired!

2. I will be doing this in reverse here.