kdiddy.org

Facebook has a handy little year in review for users. Looking through mine and one that you can generate for InstaGram, I found them a little dissatisfying. They didn’t really seem to capture all that was good and bad and huge about 2013. The big things were included, like my new job, but as I’ve pulled away from the internet more and more, I have less of a record of what has happened. I’m not particularly happy about this. It’s not necessary to document everything. There are, after all, only so many memories that you can truly cherish. But I’ve always liked being able to look back on an ultimately inconsequential moment.

There are also constant hums that I’ve become more aware of this year that are impossible to condense and articulate into a tweet or a stats update or even a blog post. My anxiety about basically everything has been pretty tough to contend with. I have really complicated feelings about key people in my life and I can’t tell if they’re valid or not. My kid is undeniably growing up now and I feel hyper-aware of the time that he still spends in childhood. Any time he cuddles with me or drops the front of tough adolescent that he tries on here and there, I breathe a sigh of relief that I haven’t missed it all yet.

Anyway, neither the Facebook or InstaGram reviews contained any moments from July, and I realized that that month contained one of my favorite nights of this year, one that I think/hope that I’ll always remember. Just in case, I don’t, though…

On July 11th, there was a brief but significant thunderstorm in the very early evening. The power went out and we went through the normal stages of reaction: sitting very still for a minute, sighing when it becomes clear that it wasn’t a momentary outage, pacing carefully.

Since it was still light out, the three of us sat on the porch and admired the pretty, midsummer sunset.

We could hear our neighbors shouting their theories about the power outage at each other. So-and-so a few blocks away still has power. Did a transformer blow? What did Duquesne Light say? Have you seen one of their trucks go by? How much stuff do you have in the freezer?

I wanted a popsicle and got some to cool us all down.

It started to get really dark and we needed some source of light. I gathered an odd assortment of scented candles and clustered them on the porch. They were mostly Christmas-related scents. It was odd to smell cedar and sugar cookies mixed with summer stickiness and rain.

After a few hours, we were getting hungry and frustrated. An alert chimed on my phone letting me know that the Pirates game had finally started after being delayed for the power outage. “We could go to the Pirate game,” I suggested half-jokingly. But the husband pointed out that at least there would be power and we could get something to eat.

“Let’s do it.”

We rushed over to the park and purchased bleacher seats. The crowd was pretty sparse since it was a weeknight and the game was just starting at 11 p.m.

I held our seats as the husband and the kid went to the bathroom. A girl coming up the aisle in a sequined skull shirt caught my eye. I quickly noticed that her date was Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.

The game turned out to be great. The Pirates added one more win to what would ultimately be their best season in 20 years. And the three of us did something spontaneous. We went on a tiny adventure and escaped life for awhile.

This is an awkward reentry into writing here, since there’s plenty of other stuff to talk about, but let’s start with this:

BuzzFeed ripped off one of my MamaPop posts.

Note: What makes this whole thing kind of directionless is that MamaPop shut down for good a few weeks ago so the original post is no longer up. But I grabbed it before Tracey and Amalah turned off the lights and am reposting it here for the purposes of this little manifesto. I’m also reposting it for posterity, because it was one of my favorite things I’ve written.

So, anyway, here’s what happened.

A year ago, I had an idea to write a post about all of the turtlenecks in Love Actually. I was excited about the idea, but knew that it was so specific that I needed to research it first. I Googled it pretty extensively, resolving that if someone else had already written about it, I would figure out how to either reference it and take a new spin, or scrap the idea entirely. Because how many posts about turtlenecks in Love Actually could there be, right? So if someone had already covered it, writing it again would seem stupid at best, and a total rip-off at worst.

I didn’t come across anything and set to work on the laborious task of watching the movie and screencapping each turtleneck. That activity plus actually writing the post took quite a bit of time. But the post turned out great and when it went live on December 20, 2012 it got a huge response. (Well, huge for me.) I watched excitedly as the Facebook shares soared past 1,000. I entertained fantasies that I had written something that people would return to every holiday season, that it would make the rounds again every year. As someone who has written on the internet for a long time, this was the idea of creating something immortal, a goofy contribution to the weird and separate culture of what we discuss in this space.

Cut to a few weeks ago. I was scrolling through BuzzFeed and came across a post called “The Definitive Ranking of All of the Turtlenecks in Love Actually” by one of their writers named Erica Futterman. Stunned, I read through the post that was alarmingly similar to mine and contained a great number of the exact same screencaps. I could only assume that I had been ripped off and all of the dark stories that I’d heard about BuzzFeed’s practices were thrust into my face.

I would never assert that no one else could ever have the same goofy idea for a post. But I imagine that what happened next is that the writer of the BuzzFeed post did one of the following things:

a) Googled the idea, came across my post, and jacked it
b) Googled the idea, made it “original” by putting it through the BuzzFeed ordered list machine or
c) Wrote it without Googling it first

The first two scenarios make the writer close to, if not very much sitting in the lap of being a plagiarizer. Though that accusation seems strong since there’s not a lot of writing in her post. The best-case scenario is c), which means she didn’t do any research, which makes her a sloppy writer.

Aside from the brain-drippings that make up a lot of BuzzFeed posts, I’d heard of a few other examples of their writers taking liberties with the content of others. While I hadn’t been too offended by all of the stupid lists, having a fairly concrete example of their blatant pilfering was really jarring.

In the days immediately after the BuzzFeed post went up, two things happened: my grandfather’s funeral and MamaPop’s demise. Both of these pushed any outrage or urge to action way back in my brain and by the time I’d started to feel capable of thinking about it again, a few weeks had passed and MamaPop was gone. So the window for doing something (though I don’t really know what) seemed to have closed.

I’ve not been able to stomach the sight of BuzzFeed since, which quickly made me realize just how much content that site spews out daily. Basically every third item that I see shared on Facebook is from BuzzFeed and it still makes me cringe. I think we’re already aware that they tend to write about the same inane things over and over (37 Things 90s Kids Love, 15.7 Problems People with Glasses Have, 6 Things 90s Kids with Glasses Regurgitate), seemingly because they just churn posts out at a crazy pace. Original content must be close to impossible to generate between the constant deadlines so I have to imagine that the swiping and repackaging of topics is at least a somewhat significant problem. It kind of seems like an unstoppable machine at this point. It seems like their services as an aggregator are becoming blurred and want to serve as some kind of Reader’s Digest for the 18-30 demographic.

But, even if it’s just screaming into the void, here’s what I have to say to that writer, to BuzzFeed, and to writers in general as we navigate this shifting terrain and the internet muddles the rules. I know you’re busy. I know writing as a job, especially on the internet, is a Herculean task these days. But I think we all need to agree that a combination of the big standard rules of writing (like NO PLAGIARISM OF ANY KIND EVER) and basic internet etiquette (“here’s this cool thing that I saw here,” just a totally minimal acknowledgment of where you found it) is reasonable even in this frenzy.

Seeing something that I worked really hard on just pared down and posted was really upsetting. And now that a behemoth like BuzzFeed took that idea and made it its own, it’s completely gone from me now. It really just…it really hurt my feelings, is what it comes down to.

This post originally appeared on MamaPop on December 20, 2012. MamaPop is no more, so I am reposting it here. I took the opportunity to fix a few typos, but the post is what I published a year ago.

I watched Love Actually last Friday night. This marked the third or fourth time since Halloween that I had watched it and my reasons for doing so were mostly therapeutic. I had been crying off and on through most of the day and I needed something that would just make me feel good. Love Actually is one of my favorite Christmas-time movies, and watching it helped. Plus, I got to do my research for this post, which I had been planning for a few weeks.

See, the last time I watched it, I suddenly noticed how many turtlenecks were worn in the movie. It was pretty remarkable. I mean, I realize that it’s set in London in December, so obviously warmer clothing is called for. And turtlenecks are not unreasonable. But when you think about the interwoven characters in this movie, and if they were your social circle, you might wonder, “Hey guys…why are we collectively so big on turtlenecks?”

Those particular shirts showed up in almost every scene. Being a sane person, I decided to take note of each one and see if I could reconstruct the story of Love Actually through its turtlenecks.

Opening Montage Turtleneck

First we have the opening montage of the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. And Hugh Grant’s monologue about messages of love coming from the phone calls during the September 11th attacks and whoa, why is my face all wet?

Cheating Wife Turtleneck

We meet Colin Firth’s character, Jamie, whose wife skips out on a wedding because she has a cold. Really, she’s just using the time alone to diddle Jamie’s brother…who apparently has a thing for babes with red noses and chest congestion who mouthe-breathe during sex. Hawt.

Funeral Turtleneck

Liam Neeson’s (Daniel) wife has died after a long illness. People mourn her with warm necks.

Funeral Montage Turtleneck

Daniel’s wife had specific wants for her funeral, including this picture of these turtlenecks.

Vaguely Creepy Boss Turtleneck

Snape plays Harry, the owner of some hip, early 2000s company that probably has something to do with graphic design judging by the looks of it. He’s weirdly invested in both Sarah’s (Laura Linney) crush on Karl and his assistant’s lady bits.

Karl Turtleneck

“I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over all of this sexual tension.”

That’s Not a Turtleneck, It’s a Red Flag

Mia is maybe 25 and shockingly hot. But she doesn’t have a boyfriend, is attracted to her old, married boss, and her eyes get really wide sometimes. Keep the pet rabbits away from her. She cray.

Concerned Stepfather Turtleneck

Daniel is worried about how his stepson, Sam, is handling his grief. He’s vaguely concerned that the 11-year-old is injecting heroin into his eyeballs. He starts crying because dead wives will make you do that and Emma Thompson helpfully responds, “Ew, stop.”

Saying Good Night to Karl Turtleneck

Sarah stays late and refreshes her makeup all for the two seconds at the end of the day where she gets to say good night to Carl. This has been going on for 2.5 years. I think maybe it’s time to step up your efforts, Sarah. Also, the word “burden” is right above the picture of Sarah’s mentally ill brother. I see what you did there, Love Actually.

Saying Good Night Does Not Lead to Sex with Karl, Boss

But thanks for sitting on my desk and grilling me about it. It’s not weird or anything.

Bello…Bella…Turtleneck

Jamie doesn’t know Portuguese, but he knows he loves the new housekeeper that’s helping him out while he recuperates from heartbreak and writes a terrible novel at his French country home.

The Most Reckless Writer Alive Turtleneck

Jamie also doesn’t know about computers or writing your novel not right next to a body of water or even just leaving the rest of the pages inside instead of precariously secured under a small rock.

If Only We Could See Our Subtitles Turtleneck

They’re saying almost the exact same things to each other! Awww! Granted, Jamie appears to have one turtleneck that is his writing-in-the-French-countryside turtleneck, but it’s pretty versatile.

The Turtleneck that I Wear When I Show My Best Friend’s Wife My Creepy Video of Her

Amazingly, Keira Knightley does not frantically try to find the nearest exit when she sees Mark’s collection of close-ups and slow motion shots of her licking icing off of her fingers. Mark takes a walk and his zip-up cardigan becomes the turtleneck of broken-hearted embarrassment.

Thank the Lord Turtleneck

Sam was not injecting heroin into his eyeballs or having a hard time dealing with his mother’s death. Rather, he’s hopelessly in love and will learn to play drums in two weeks so that he can participate in his school’s Christmas pageant and await his crush’s declaration of love. Daniel signs off on this because he knows girls love it when you aren’t just honest with them.

Buy Me Something Pretty Turtleneck

Mia gets increasingly inappropriate with Snape and demands that he buy her something pretty while he’s out Christmas shopping with his wife. Hawt. Snape gets increasingly inappropriate back.

I’m a Douche Turtleneck

“I spent 270 pounds on a necklace for my assistant but you think I bought it for you. No, you get a $15 CD. Merry Christmas.”

Language School Turtlenecks

I Just Realized My Husband Is Cheating on Me Turtleneck

I’m Just Judy and I’m Not Really Sure How Our Plot Line Fits In Turtleneck

These two are adorable, and they know a bunch of people in this movie. But Judy shows up later at the Christmas pageant wearing this same outfit and the timing gets lost on me. Is this a flashfoward? Did they go to the pageant and then kiss on Judy’s doorstep afterward? When is this? I don’t understand.

Sam’s Learning How to Play Drums Turtleneck

We’re the Cutest Turtleneck

The Prime Minister is looking for Natalie by going door to door instead of just calling, I don’t know, anyone and getting Natalie’s address. Because he doesn’t have any resources? Or wants to do this the more difficult way because it will be more rewarding? I don’t know. But he and his companion sing “Good King Wenceslas” to these three and it’s great.

I’m an Extra and I Get to Overhear this Awkward Conversation Turtleneck

Always sort out your marital issues at the kids’ Christmas pageant. What could go wrong?

I’m Claudia Schiffer Turtleneck

It’s so funny that I’m Claudia Schiffer but I’m supposed to be someone else (I think) because Claudia Schiffer was mentioned a few times as Daniel’s potential new mate earlier in the movie!

Whoa, It’s Weird that Everyone at the Arrivals Gate Knows Each Other Somehow Turtleneck

Jamie must have finished his book so he gets to wear a different shirt.

I’m Liam Neeson and I Own a Turtleneck for Every Occasion

There were other turtlenecks that I spotted in crowd shots but I didn’t want to appear too obsessive. And good luck not noticing this whenever you watch this movie from now on.