Comment by andrepd
1 month ago
Hard disagree. How many paragraphs of fawning over the unique culture of the Bay Area must I endure before he arrives at the point?
Such gems as
> I like SF house parties, where people take off their shoes at the entrance and enter a space in which speech can be heard over music, which feels so much more civilized than descending into a loud bar in New York. It’s easy to fall into a nerdy conversation almost immediately with someone young and earnest.
The next sentence is “The Bay Area has converged on Asian-American modes of socializing”
As if there is a single Asian-American culture and no Asian-Americans like going out to bars…
The whole piece is littered with weird over generalizations over huge and diverse groups of people.
It happens with more authors. Blogging and self-promotion on social media easily leads to fast and sensational "insights". It is fast food: feels good, easily digestible, way better than a thorough study involving the required ifs-and-buts and the hard work of trying to find blind spots in one's own perspective.
The latter profile isn't suitable for short content bites and doesn't sell to a large audience. The former does, but comes with a cost only the uninformed aren't aware of.
I can sympathize with that though. Non-fiction in general is a hard sell.
Yep. This is Jeff Foxxworthy level social analysis.
Just quoting a paragraph means nothing, what’s the actual problem you have here?
I’ve lived in both SF and now NYC, and that characterization is painting with a broad brush, but isn’t ridiculous.