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Feb 26, 2023Liked by Antonio Melonio

Thank you Antonio🙏

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Okay, forgive me if I make any mistakes here; I don't know what this website is, but this article has pissed me off so much I created an account to rant about it.

I don't care about the article. I mean whatever blah blah blah wealth is performative proletariat good have you seen office space etc. These critiques sound like they're from some hippy 'zine from the 1970's, and, whatever, fine, we all have our old-school opinions and beliefs we learned once in our youths and never lost. But, dude, this is terrible writing.

Like, look, I'm not unfamiliar with anarchist politics and theory, but Jesus Christ dude take a writing course or something. I didn't laugh. I didn't even snort. This is a completely uncharismatic blog post. None of these jokes are funny, or well constructed. It feels like a simulacrum of real writing, like a derivative of a bygone aesthetic sense of cynicism that was never funny to begin with, the pen of a bad writer making halfhearted winey critique on why "rich people eat stupid food," which is impressive in this age of derivative bad writing made by no writer. This is so bad it passes the Turing test.

This blog has pissed me off so much, that, in the spirit of public service, lets go through a paragraph of yours and try to improve it.

> Those people in expensive suits and fancy dresses? You begin to ask yourself: how did these people acquire their wealth? Why are they rich? Who suffered to enable their lavish lifestyles? The diamonds on their rings — don’t they know how those get mined?  And why don’t they care?

Okay, so, first glaring thing here is turns of phrase: "expensive suits and fancy dresses;" "lavish lifestyles." Other, more wrote imagery as well: "diamonds on their rings." A more minor gripe, but overcommon constructions: "acquire [...] wealth." As a reader, as I enter this paragraph, I am not reading anything new. Anyone who has spent time among the angst-ridden anti-capitalist youth of 20 years ago will have read these exact words, often in the same order, communicating the same idea. Obviously, very few ideas are rare, very few ideas are new, or novel. That's fine, what isn't fine is this paragraph. There is nothing here. It has no meat.

Word count is important here, and boy are you blowing it on useless shit. Ask yourself, what is each sentence attempting to communicate? How do these sentences build on each other to form a paragraph? Lets go sentence by sentence here.

1) Those people in expensive suits and fancy dresses?

This sentence does nothing. It's not complete. There is no subject. All it does it set up the subject for the next sentence, something which the next sentence doesn't use because of the second person reflexive and the fact that you have to redefine "those people," anyway.

2) You begin to ask yourself: how did these people acquire their wealth?

The best sentence in this paragraph, but the use of second person along with that particular question isn't going to fit neatly onto most readers. It's weak, though nice use of a colon? Still, please cut down on useless words. The question clause could be cut down by 1/3rd: "how did they acquire wealth?" Alternatively, "why are the wealthy wealthy?"

3) Why are they rich?

A near complete copy of the previous sentence idea. Nothing is added here but using more potent language you could have used in the last sentence.

4) Who suffered to enable their lavish lifestyles?

You keep switching tenses and distances here. Sentence 1 used "those," sentence 2 uses "these" and present tense, sentence 3 present, sentence 4 past. 5 and 6 present. As far as ideas go, fine, but please phrase it in a way that makes you sound older than 14.

5) The diamonds on their rings — don’t they know how those get mined? 

Back to present, but more egregiously, completely wrote. Also, somehow, you managed to take the em dash and use it poorly. Impressive.

6) And why don’t they care?

By this point I think the reader's eyes would be bleeding. Now, look, I am not an advocate of prescriptive grammar, but when you break grammar rules, it's to attract attention to a sentence or an idea. Starting sentences with a coordinating conjunction is a very potent way of doing this because you have the capital "A" in "And" to tell the reader "hey, look over here, what I'm about to say is important." It quite literally stands out next to the other letters around it, especially because you have all this additional black space from the period "[..]. And [...]." The thing is, when you snap the reader's attention like that, you need to make sure what you're about to tell them is fucking fire; I mean like, off the fucking wall good; a sentence so good they're going to laugh, chuff, or reread in astonishment. "And why don’t they care?" is not that. That especially suffers from being rote. That (and variants in the second person) is a very common construction. Further, you're burning word count for no gain, this sentence would be stronger as "Why don't they care?"

This paragraph could be one sentence and communicate one of it's ideas the same, an example

> The wealthy are performatively blind to the shape of their extraction, ignoring the ways in which the suffering of the global south subsidizes their luxury purchases.

The one good thing you have here is a strong sense of voice. Even without your use italics, these sentences have clear tones and inflection points. The problem is that voice is annoying as shit.

You are going to live rent free in my head for the rest of my life. It's going to be even funnier when I find out you're 26 and failed to launch.

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You found fun...

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