The kids are alright
You might well have heard of Max Gogarty. A 19-year-old gap year student who writes for Skins and “spends his money on skinny jeans”, he yesterday began what was to be a series of blogs detailing his travels to India. But he had reckoned without the ire of Guardian Unlimited readers, who lampooned him in a series of nasty, personal and quite frankly hilarious comments.
If you haven’t seen the thing yet, take a look at it here.
Now, clearly the poor lad has been ripped apart by much funnier people than me, so I’m largely going to lay off him. But it is an infuriating blog. I read it as smug, self-satisfied and privileged. The kind of thing work-experience students write all the time. People have told them they’re good writers because they can string a sentence together, and they take this to mean that they have authority to talk about life.
This is the problem of the youth of today. Ideas which to older audiences seem lame or hackneyed are to them fresh and new; thus they trot out horrific clichés with the air of being extremely pleased at their own cleverness. For example: “I’m pretty sure [India] will be a world away from cowering under an umbrella at the number 134 bus stop,” Max hypothesises.
Travel has a peculiar currency with this generation. Even though it’s now been taken up by such professional chumps as Princes William and Harry, it still marks you out as someone who is interesting, someone with life experience, someone who knows things. The fact that every middle-class British twat worth his aviator sunglasses spends his gap year in either Thailand or Australia, and Sydney on a Saturday night might as well be Bromley, is lost on them.
At a New Year party I went to, several recent graduates were sitting about lamenting globalisation. “When I go to China, I don’t want to see Starbucks,” said one hardy young traveller, to the general awe and wonderment of her contemporaries. The suggestion that the Chinese might like a Double Mocha Frappuccino with cream as much as the next man was met with appalled stares.
The same innocence struck me when I met a friend’s new 18-year-old girlfriend in a pub last week. “What is it that you do?” she enquired, in what I took to be a passable impression of her mother, and was told. “Oh, I used to want to be a journalist, I’d like to write for The Guardian or The Independent, they’re the only ones that don’t have any editorial agenda.”
Well, yesterday, The Guardian’s rampantly right-on, liberal, republican, meritocratic agenda was called into question at length on its own messageboards as it was revealed that Max Gogarty’s father is a contributor to their travel pages.
I did feel a certain amount of sympathy for The Guardian’s web moderator as I watched him edit and delete swathes of unsuitable comments. I was tempted to delete some of the comments on Hollie Moat’s blog about the fiery end of the Hawley Arms in Soho this week. But we tend not to censor comments at Arena; I’m far less worried when people threaten to stop buying the magazine than I am when they say nothing at all, implying they have. Any post which attracts a healthy debate is clearly doing something.
So what do Hollie and Max have in common? Well, they’re both young. They both have pretty sweet jobs for their ages. They both think they’re a bit cool (hell, maybe they even are, I’m already too old to judge). Why does that drive everyone nuts? It might be that they’re annoying, or it might just be that they’re young and have been given a platform to air their opinions.
For my own part, I’m jealous. I was just as much of an idiot as that when I was 19 and my distinctly average journalism was only seen in my student paper. Why should such whippersnappers get to make their mistakes in front of a national audience?
As it goes, either Max or The Guardian have apparently decided he shouldn’t. Check today’s rebuttal by the travel editor, which sports a reproving comment by ‘Maxdad’. But with this experience and the snakes behind him, I don’t imagine it will be long before young Max is back home and writing again. And actually, he’ll probably turn out no worse than the rest of us.
We are listening to Elbow
Good article. I think a lot of people would share your point of view (I do) if they didn’t feel hopelessly patronised by Max Gogarty, who inadvertantly reminded everyone how hard they have to work to get anywhere near the privellige that he enjoys so freely.
As for Hollie Moat’s article (I read it after yours, which helped keep it in context) it was a bit indulgent, not all Arena readers live anywhere near or care about Camden, it’s pubs or those who frequent them. But I doubt it’ll happen again as she’ll be chalking it down to experience eh…?
Comment by Garrence — 16/02/08
In defence of nepotism… if my parents were in a position to facilitate a career that I’d like then I’d hope they would do it, as it happens they’re not and I’ll be carving one out for myself… and then handing it to my future kids if they’re interested; it’s just the evolutionary - do right by your genes - urge taken to its modern human conclusion. Society will always put a cap on their progress if it’s a public role and they’re not any cop. Case in point. This is natural selection; you can’t cheat it.
Comment by Benjamin Knight — 17/02/08
The Hawley Arms isn’t in Soho it’s in Camden.
I thought about saying something abusive but I’ll let you off.
Comment by ds — 18/02/08
Oh no! The shame! I do know that, sorry DS and sorry sorry sorry Hollie. I think I had my mind on my next Soho pint…. Emma
Comment by Arena — 18/02/08
I’d like to point out that I didn’t really want to write a blog about the Hawley, I prefer writing obscure indie band reviews or fashion write-ups, but I suppose Emma got a bit bored of no one reading them and insisted I do one about the Camden fire. Perhaps she thought you might like it in the same way people like Nathan Barley. I appreciate Emma accrediting the irritatingness of my writing to my youth, but I think it’s probably more down to my general demeanour. I can’t imagine any of you would be thrilled if you went to your local four nights a week and it burned down, but that fact is that my local happens to be the most over-exposed, pretentious place in town. I’d guess that’s more the issue with regards to my blog..
Comment by Hollie — 18/02/08
surely Max’s crime was a crushing lack of self-awareness - nothing more. The site editors were the ones who should have known better. I guess on those same principles Emma should have just not published it. But…Hollie’s post is topical and reasonably relevant. Max’s post could have come from any time in the last 15 years. There’s nothing you haven’t heard before.
Comment by benc — 18/02/08
What irritated me (but in a funny way, honest) was the ‘Londoncentric’ angle on Hollies piece, anyone outside of London hates to here ‘Camden this’ and ‘Soho that’. Oh and the name droppy tone, maybe I was just tired when I read it…
I like the mixture of writing styles in the mag and on this site, the mixture keeps people coming back. But I’m guessing that I am probably one of the older crowd that visit this place - I have been buying Arena since the late 80’s and im going through a transition right now and finding it difficult to adjust to the new school coming through with their skinny jeans and cutting edge synth lines - to quote Mark Kermode ‘All of these garage/guitar bands just sound like Gang of Four to me’. I stick with things loyally through good and bad, I have signed up for another years subscription for the mag so its too fucking late now anyway.
Comment by Jody T — 19/02/08
I felt a bit sorry for that Max fella. When I was 19, I was writing for my local paper and would have been delighted to have the opportunity to write for The Guardian - even if it took a word in the right ear from my dad. And what dad wouldn’t want to help out their son?
I’d then be gutted to see such a negative response and lose the job, based not on my writing, but seemingly on how I got the gig.
I’m 33 now and still a journalist. There’s nepotism in every industry, especially the media, and I’ve both missed out on jobs and landed them because of it.
And having just read Hollie’s post above, for God’s sake let her write about indie bands. It’s a blog, it’s not like you’re going to run out of room on the page is it?
Comment by FLETCH — 19/02/08
Hollie is allowed to write about indie bands! Here’s the last thing she wrote if you would like to see why, despite a controversial taste in pubs, she is our music editor: http://www.arenamagazine.co.uk/?p=1033
Comment by Arena — 20/02/08
Wow, since the late 80s; is it even the same magazine? That’s like an Elizabethan axe that’s had two new heads and three new handles.
I started reading during Anthony Noguera’s editorship, and maybe it’s like Bond where the actor who’s playing him when you start becomes your favourite.
As recently as the last few issues the quality of the content seems to be rising again after a bit of a protracted dip in my opinion – where I just wouldn’t read it all, only parts of it – but the design of the magazine at the moment… you know I don’t like it; I’m on the letters page of the most recent issue, which, with its dark, busy, matte-finish cover, looks like an issue of Hotdog magazine. Not threatening to stop buying like the blog says though.
Comment by Benjamin Knight — 20/02/08
Yep the late 80’s - very late of course… I remember the Kathryn Flett days of ‘92 onwards were always good. The magazine has changed with the times obviously but the quality and tone havent in my opinion thats why I have always been so loyal. Yes there are dips, I miss the Grub Smith articles and Steve Beales content always hit the mark - not being a writer myself it has always appeared to me that certain writers ‘just know’.
I did flatley refuse to buy an issue once which led to a 3 or 4 month enforced hiatus on principle for me as Chris Evans was on the front cover…now they were dark days.
Comment by Jody T — 20/02/08
Well, the original idea behind the mag (I think) was for people who’d outgrown The Face, but we’re too young/underpaid for the likes of GQ.
I’m still in the target late-20s to early-30s range and I thought it was bang on the money in the days of Quirk, Bell, Beale, Wilson etc.
It seems to be far more fashion and grooming oriented now, and from a commercial point of view that makes sense. A lot of mags are going that way – I even saw grooming stuff in Loaded a while back. When I was there on work experience in the 90s we used to laugh at people when they phoned up asking for the person who dealt with grooming - clearly they’d never read the mag. But one sales war with FHM later…
If Arena needs to do that to get sales up then fine. The online section can do the things that are tough to sell around and don’t please advertisers – often the things I’m more interested in. Things like Hollie’s pop-culture commentary for a start.
Comment by FLETCH — 26/02/08