MeFi in the Village Voice

November 11, 2005 4:43 PM

Whoa, a big article about MeFi in the Village Voice.
posted by mathowie (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 4:43 PM (70 comments total)

"Smart, avid, leanly written, and likably lefty..."

Up the Revolution!
posted by mischief at 4:49 PM on November 11, 2005

Smart, avid, leanly written, and likably lefty, the posts and comments that frame the links somehow cohere into a recognizable sensibility rather than just more evidence of imminent worldwide information meltdown.

"likably lefty" makes it sound so warm and fuzzy!

So is the $5 going to $10?
posted by stirfry at 4:52 PM on November 11, 2005

heh
posted by stirfry at 4:53 PM on November 11, 2005

335 words? I was hoping for more, to be honest. Still, it was fair, I guess.
posted by dash_slot- at 4:53 PM on November 11, 2005

oops, I meant "big" in the sense of "wow, the village voice!" big.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:54 PM on November 11, 2005

leanly written

I guess they didn't check the site on a day when y2karl was posting or EB was waxing on and off. Still, nice publicity!
posted by fenriq at 4:56 PM on November 11, 2005

Nice wee piece. Is Julian Dibbell is a member, I wonder? Influx of Voice readers in ten, nine, eight...
posted by jack_mo at 4:56 PM on November 11, 2005

Oh, no, anything but the Voice readers!

(the people who place the personal ads might be good for a few chuckles, though)
posted by jonmc at 5:02 PM on November 11, 2005

AskTrannieProstituteFilter
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:08 PM on November 11, 2005

congratulations, matt
posted by matteo at 5:14 PM on November 11, 2005

What a great "The internet— not just for porn anymore!" piece.
posted by klangklangston at 5:28 PM on November 11, 2005

Wow, this is heartwarming. Take that, people complaining about recent FPP quality! Yay for generalism! Yay for a near-manic variety of interests! Yay for likable leftiness! Yay for active but light-handed pruning of redundant items! Yay for bottomless, unquenchable curiosity about the world! (And yes, there are a few tagline gems in there, go nuts.)

In short: Yay for Metafilter! It won't hurt to be in self-congratulary mode for a bit. I, for one, am busting out the champagne. By which I mean beer. Nay-sayers: lighten up for a change, this is good even without the square brackets.

Now, let's see them do an article on Metatalk. :)
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 5:31 PM on November 11, 2005

We are the open source.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 5:31 PM on November 11, 2005

Looks like Rothko, 5MeoCMP, GuyZero, bitmage, goodnewsfortheinsane and merc had their posts pictured. Fame! Fortune!
posted by Wolfdog at 5:40 PM on November 11, 2005

Awesome! Way to go Matt!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 5:44 PM on November 11, 2005 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: achieving the posture of an Atlantic or Harper's.

But, really, great work, matt.
posted by Uncle Glendinning at 5:49 PM on November 11, 2005

Delightful. Let's try to keep it real, homeboys mine.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:53 PM on November 11, 2005

That's a stupid tiny article, but watch, it'll start another influx of those who want so much to be Hip, Now and Groovy. (Unlike me: I clearly had Hipness, Nowacity and Grooviousness thrust unwillingls upon me.)

Was the Village Voice ever important? Except for personal ads, I mean?
posted by davy at 5:55 PM on November 11, 2005

Cool! Major congrats to Matt. Village Voice says it's "likably lefty". Plausible deniability removed. (Although, as a middle of the roader, for the MOST part I also agree with the likable.)
posted by Carbolic at 6:05 PM on November 11, 2005

Was the Village Voice ever important? Except for personal ads, I mean?

They had Mark Jacobsen, one of my personal heroes, for a while. But they also had Christgau, that pretentious jagoff, for a music critic.
posted by jonmc at 6:06 PM on November 11, 2005

Cool. Interesting to think about decent blog writing in relation to the sort of writing you find in the New Yorker (They must mean the Talk of the Town section). Ironic as well, given the amount of New Yorker story-links we get in on MiFi sometimes.
posted by mmahaffie at 6:18 PM on November 11, 2005

Wow, thanks Wolfdog, for being so eagle-eyed. I didn't even catch that. Eternal fame is mine!

Well, soon-forgotten, barely legible fame, but still.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:26 PM on November 11, 2005

Bottomless, unquenchable curiosity about the world....yes!!
posted by fire&wings at 6:31 PM on November 11, 2005

Was this printed in the paper version, too, or just online? I don't remember seeing it when I read last week's paper, but I wasn't looking for it, either, and I tend to skip sections. Has anyone seen it? I'm gonna look tomorrow, so I'll be able to report back.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:42 PM on November 11, 2005 [1 favorite]

But, really, great work, matt.

I love the mathowie, but let's not forget it's the participants that make the site worthwhile. All hail teh Matt, of course, for giving us the playground and herding the cats and birthing the ponies, but without all of us, this is just another weblog.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:48 PM on November 11, 2005

Congrats to all.
posted by 27 at 7:02 PM on November 11, 2005

It would be kinda interesting if you added a "Where did you hear about Metafilter" box on the signup screen. Just to see how many new people articles like this bring in.
posted by cmonkey at 7:12 PM on November 11, 2005

Ok, I went and got a copy of the current Village Voice (the cover story is Michael Musto's "Death of the Dumb Blond", it's the November 9th-15th issue, Volume L No. 45). The column, Site Specific, in the paper isn't the one that mentions Metafilter- I think the Metafilter column is going to run in the print edition next week, based on that the section in the html address of this week's article that says 45 is where the html address of the Metafilter article says 46. But that's just a guess.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:49 PM on November 11, 2005 [1 favorite]

Huge influx of new political posters arriving soon! *sigh*
posted by LarryC at 7:51 PM on November 11, 2005

excellent!
any publicity is good publicity, no?
posted by brandz at 7:51 PM on November 11, 2005

It doesn't make specific mention of me. it's useless.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 8:00 PM on November 11, 2005

We're like Harper's and the New Yorker? Right... just keep giving us more reasons to be pompous assholes.
posted by geoff. at 8:47 PM on November 11, 2005

did we need reasons?
posted by konolia at 8:51 PM on November 11, 2005

hell, i suspect we don't even need assholes.
posted by andrew cooke at 8:55 PM on November 11, 2005

Waittasec. Village Voice publishes its online edition before it's print edition?

What a weird idea.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:10 PM on November 11, 2005

I don't know, five fresh fish. It is the internet column. Plus, plenty of big news sites do the same thing- NYTimes.com will post stories in the evening that are gonna be in the next day's paper.

But of course, the whole thing was just a guess and I could be totally wrong. We'll know in 4 days, when next week's print edition hits the streets.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:26 PM on November 11, 2005 [1 favorite]

Hipper than hip, likably lefty, now more than ever. *smiles*
posted by y2karl at 9:49 PM on November 11, 2005

I demand a gift basket of New York's finest hookers and blow for my irreplaceable services to this fine institution of journalism.
posted by loquacious at 9:53 PM on November 11, 2005

MetaFilter: bottomless, unquenchable curiosity about the world.

Yup.
posted by homunculus at 9:54 PM on November 11, 2005

Where is Matt's name? Is it possible to write an article about MetaFilter without acknowledging #1?
posted by Cranberry at 9:57 PM on November 11, 2005

They acknowledged the "active but light-handed pruning of redundant items", which is just about the same thing.

Congrats, Matt, and all the active members.
posted by yhbc at 10:00 PM on November 11, 2005

This calls for a congratulations all around and two new taglines:
Metafilter: smart, avid, leanly written
and
Metafilter: likably lefty
posted by Lynsey at 10:13 PM on November 11, 2005

Hey, man. I don't want your sappy, sentimental words. I want a sampler platter of Columbian marching powder fit for David Bowie His Worshipfulness Himself and enough candied yoni to drown a football league in. I can write my plenty of mushy, mewling platitiudes on my own, thank you.

Shit like "You guys are awesome." and "I like how all your brilliant minds make me think and laugh." and "Your pedantic bitch-festing and surgical hair-splitting often sincerely makes me feel quite at home and loved." and even really lame ultra-sappy words like "Sometimes I wish I could just roll all of you up in a tasty little ball of spicy meat and eat you in one bite so I could consume your intelligence and wit and become smarter and faster like those planarian worms I probably read about here once."

Where's my hookers and coke, damnit? Doesn't New York have a whole army of recumbent bicycle equipped clandestine goods delivery-persons? Thirty minutes or it's free, you shifty cocksuckers.

Aww, Christ. The ol' lady is calling me to bed already. See? A whole Friday, gone like that. Missed. Windows. Of. Opportunity. That's a hell of a way to reward customer loyalty. Fuck it, I'll just call Octavio later. He's always happy to hear from me. Ah, to hell with it. I'll just go to bed and call him tommorow.
posted by loquacious at 10:40 PM on November 11, 2005

I don't know if Julian Dibbel is a member but I do rememeber posting a link about him once which seems very metay to me in some way I can't quite figure out or maybe it's just webby incest.
posted by rdr at 12:31 AM on November 12, 2005

This is neat. But we still lack emoticons. Get to work Matt.
posted by bardic at 1:15 AM on November 12, 2005

But we still lack emoticons.

And garish avatars. Where's my damn spinning Pikachu?
posted by gramschmidt at 1:34 AM on November 12, 2005

Was the Village Voice ever important?

I've met a few folk for whom blind items by Michael Musto in the Village Voice were pretty much the most important thing in the whole wide world (which to them meant a handful of nightclubs, maybe the odd restaurant). That would've been in the 80s and early 90s.
posted by jack_mo at 2:28 AM on November 12, 2005

Cool. But that piece linked on the side about skinny jeans is troubling.
posted by PY at 3:32 AM on November 12, 2005

When are the likably lefty t-shirts coming out? I had no idea what to get dhoyt for the holidays.
posted by If I Had An Anus at 5:53 AM on November 12, 2005

Was the Village Voice ever important?

Yes, but it was before your time, you young pipsqueak.

That would've been in the 80s and early 90s.

And before then, too. In fact—and I know you're not going to believe this—once upon a time, Christgau was actually a decent rock critic.

*starts maundering about Back in The Day, is led off to glue factory*
posted by languagehat at 6:17 AM on November 12, 2005

Was the Village Voice ever important? Except for personal ads, I mean?

They have Sietsema. Probably the most notable non-haute-cuisine food reviews in publication.
posted by rxrfrx at 6:27 AM on November 12, 2005

And am I correct in understanding that no new users have signed up since this article came out? Or even in the last week?

Or is looking for the greatest user number page not a good way of figuring that out
posted by rxrfrx at 6:31 AM on November 12, 2005

Possible guess: The types of people that read the online version of the Village Voice might be the types who already know of MeFi, hence either already joined or not interested in joining. Perhaps when the print version comes out, it will reach people who didn't know of MeFi, and there may be new users.

Just a guess.
posted by Bugbread at 6:49 AM on November 12, 2005

my guess is that it's not completely automated, and that matt is sitting in a dark room, looking at screen after screen of paypal transactions that need to be approved, and giggling.

behind him, puke & cry is tied to the far wall with bungee cord. he keeps leaping forwards, but, just as he thinks he's within reach, he's jerked back against the wall.

giggle. nyaaahhhh. splat. giggle. nyaaaahhh. splat. giggle. ....
posted by andrew cooke at 7:20 AM on November 12, 2005

THE MACHINE OF INDUSTRY!
posted by cortex at 7:35 AM on November 12, 2005

If I Had: here you go.
30 seconds with Photoshop and I promise to donate the money to a fund that buys underpriveledged children sockpuppet accounts.
posted by klangklangston at 7:48 AM on November 12, 2005

rather.... Now in many kinds of things.
posted by klangklangston at 7:51 AM on November 12, 2005

Heh, thanks. And such a wonderful cause too.
posted by If I Had An Anus at 8:41 AM on November 12, 2005

Can I get a "Likably Lefty" cover for my semi-automatic rifle? Or a "Likably Lefty" tarp to cover my oil well with? Maybe I'll just spray paint it on the side of my hummer. mmmm, lefty!
posted by blue_beetle at 8:50 AM on November 12, 2005

THE FOUNDING FATHERS WERE RACIST BIGOTS!
posted by Likable Lefty at 8:53 AM on November 12, 2005

Very cool, it captures in a few paragraphs the 'essence' of this place.

My guess: the influx of new users will be nothing compared to the 8,000 or 9,000 users that have joined since doors were opened last year.
posted by Quartermass at 9:12 AM on November 12, 2005

go for 20 matt.
posted by sgt.serenity at 10:17 AM on November 12, 2005

Or is looking for the greatest user number page not a good way of figuring that out

They're not consecutive. Here's a much later one.
posted by cillit bang at 12:06 PM on November 12, 2005

Look matt , if you raise the price of admission , you'll be able to hire jeeves to run this place so i say go for it.
posted by sgt.serenity at 1:08 PM on November 12, 2005

I am speculating that there exists the possibility that articles written for the website might never see the cord of dead trees.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 1:41 PM on November 12, 2005

Looks like Rothko, 5MeoCMP, GuyZero, bitmage, goodnewsfortheinsane and merc had their posts pictured. Fame! Fortune!
posted by Wolfdog at 5:40 PM PST on November 11 [!]

Wow, so I've got that and voting in the yearly music poll into the Voice. I should move to NYC and become a fulltime journo.
posted by Rothko at 2:41 PM on November 12, 2005

I wonder if Matt could program up a Bayesian-style post-ranking system, that closely enough emulates his own behaviour that he could just set it free to weed out bad posts...
posted by five fresh fish at 4:46 PM on November 12, 2005

Excellent. I can't wait for all the new Village Voice users to sign up and immediately stumble across the mushroom thread.

Oh, and a nice treat for Matt's first week or so full-time, no?
posted by jokeefe at 8:58 PM on November 12, 2005

Good job, everyone.
posted by Jon-o at 9:17 PM on November 12, 2005

I resent this. I may be lefty but by God, I'm not likeable. I've worked hard to achieve that. Actually, that's a lie.
posted by Decani at 4:17 PM on November 15, 2005