Topic: Preventing Max Gogarty version 2.0

[confettiinmyhair]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2010/sep/06/gap-year-thailand-full-moon-party

Thank God the good folks at The Guardian didn't put a comments section on the end of this article.

[Tiny Poster]

Well, it's a Guardian journo doing a feature on gap year students. Nothing like the Gogarty thing.

[confettiinmyhair]

I'm suggesting that the comments would've reached into the thousands, and that the bile would be overflowing, attacking the affluent young folk who get to see the world in their Gap Years. If anything I'm surprised they haven't allowed comments to get oodles of re-tweets and mondo hits.

[Tiny Poster]

As far as I know, they don't have Comments in the Travel Section. The Gogarty piece did because they put it both in Travel and the Blog section.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

To be fair the locals have Gap years too. From age nine, 70hrs a week, $25.

[The Boston Crab]

/\ Nice. I'll borrow that.

[shiftwork2]

In case this wasn't highlighted at the time, Max Gogarty re-appeared in The Guardian earlier this year:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/30/famous-for-15-minutes

One does have to scroll down somewhat to see the young fella-me-lad in his skinny kecks, bless.

[Space ghost]

In case this wasn't highlighted at the time, Max Gogarty re-appeared in The Guardian earlier this year:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/30/famous-for-15-minutes

One does have to scroll down somewhat to see the young fella-me-lad in his skinny kecks, bless.

I like the way he claims to have won a BAFTA for his writing on skins when in fact he actually helped to write one ten minute webisode.

[SOTS]

I did actually have a SEMI USEFUL gap year. I just worked and earned money. None of yer travel.

[thehungerartist]

Like most of my generation, I grew up with the web. For 'screenagers' it is the tool of choice for information, entertainment and communication. And perhaps that is part of the problem. It is the easiest place on earth to be listened to and therefore it is a perfect platform for those who feel cheated to have a voice.

Cheated out of what exactly?  Dude probably thinks Job Seeker's Allowance are an up-and-coming Brighton 5-piece.

To be fair the locals have Gap years too. From age nine, 70hrs a week, $25.

Take a bow puff (if it is one of yours).

[Famous Mortimer]

Take a bow puff (if it is one of yours).

Aye, credit where credit's due.

[cptwhite]

So I read the original article, and I read the one posted by Shiftwork2 and tend to side with young Max.  Yes it's self indulgent, naive and he's somewhat privileged to be able to go to India on a gap year anyway.  If what he's said about the Skins BAFTA is true he's also somewhat egotisitcal.  But still the extent of the bile/hatred he's had to face after writing a piece which is naively in-line with his age is by far more disturbing that the piece itself. Okay so life isn't fair, he gets to go to India in skinny jeans and stubble, yes it's slightly condesending to think you'd give a shit.  But the anonymous "group attack" philospohy of the internet age is infinitely more depressing and it's sad to see CAB members find it wholly acceptable and scooping to bottom of the internet barrel when (deep down) I think we like to think behind the ultra-dry and offensive/inventive humour we'd like to consider ourselves as people of high morale calibre.  Tolerance stops where someone offends your highly sensitive morals of fairness?

[Jack Shaftoe]

A lot of the bile, as i remember, was directed at the Guardian for giving the already-privileged Max (whose dad ran a travel company, I think) such an opportunity, rather than, say, someone a bit less like a character from Skins, or a minor Allen. The Guardian then went into 'OMG leave Max alones!' mode, rather than acknowledging that it was mostly them who were being shat on by the internet.

[Famous Mortimer]

All the articles written about the event afterwards, even from other papers, were journalists basically closing ranks against the hordes of people who bothered to go to their site and comment on the article. If you’d not read the initial comments (which, by and large, were quite mild, criticising the choice of journalist and fairly poor writing style) you’d think there’d been some organised campaign of unbridled hate against that man specifically. The charge was made of the commenters that they should leave poor Max alone to develop as a journalist, to which the retort was that perhaps he shouldn’t be a journalist for a national newspaper if he:
a.   couldn’t cope with criticism, and
b.   wasn’t very good yet

No comment on the things he’s done since then, as both Skins and his numerous short films have sadly passed me by.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

It's similar stuff to the articles that assert city centres have become 'warzones' and 'no-go areas' at night. I detect an almost intellectual pleasure at the writer engorging himself in his own description of the squalor and obscenity.

Predictably the article you posted managed to get my mum into a fit of outrage and disgust. She's ever so stringent and critical of anything and everything that's reported, unless it's in the paper she reads.

[Ignatius_S]

So I read the original article, and I read the one posted by Shiftwork2 and tend to side with young Max….  Tolerance stops where someone offends your highly sensitive morals of fairness?

It’s absolutely true about that he wrote one webepisode and he talks about it here. He might have done more for the webepisodes, but I doubt it

With the BAFTA, this was in the Television Craft BAFTA awards (a separate event) for ‘Interactive Creative Contribution’. Fair play to Max, but he was joint winner, so a little over-egging the pudding there.

I would strongly recommend reading Max’s article as it was a hoot.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/blog/2008/feb/14/skinsblog

A lot of the bile, as i remember, was directed at the Guardian for giving the already-privileged Max (whose dad ran a travel company, I think) such an opportunity, rather than, say, someone a bit less like a character from Skins, or a minor Allen. The Guardian then went into 'OMG leave Max alones!' mode, rather than acknowledging that it was mostly them who were being shat on by the internet.

That was certainly a main reason.

One question that asked, because people thought Max’s hackery was so poor, was ‘What does your dad do at The Guardian?’’ Other readers were only to happy to point out that his father had written a number of travel articles for the paper – in fact, Max even got a mention.

According to the website for his tourism PR company:
[quote[20 years experience as a travel consultant; travel editor; TV presenter (including three seasons with BBC 1’s Holiday programme); lecturer in travel journalism; award-winning author; prolific travel and property contributor to major magazines and national newspapers - including an eight-years as Chief Travel Writer for the Daily Telegraph.[/quote]

You’re right, The Guardian did get defensive:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/blog/2008/feb/15/editorsresponsetoyesterdays
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/17/backpackersbulliesandintern
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/17/internet

[Kapuscinski]

Yes, the Guardian don't like it when their readers "misbehave". Andy Pietrasik 's defence crowbars in that Max went to a comprehensive school, as if this makes any difference. No doubt in the middle-class guilt field that is the Guardian newsroom they do fawn over people from a state school background and despise those from an independent school background.

"I'm kinda shitting myself about travelling." And the Guardian wonder why they don't get the pensioner market when  they use foul language willy nilly.

[Ignatius_S]

... No doubt in the middle-class guilt field that is the Guardian newsroom they do fawn over people from a state school background and despise those from an independent school background....

Probably it's more of a novelty, this is a couple of years old, but this list I've pinched shows which Guardian editors went to public schoo (answer, all of them):

Editor Alan Rusbridger (Cranleigh); political editor Patrick Wintour (Westminster); leader writer Madeleine Bunting (Queen Mary’s, Yorkshire); policy editor Jonathan Freedland (University College School); columnist Polly Toynbee (Badminton); executive editor Ian Katz (University College School); security affairs editor Richard Norton Taylor (King’s School, Canterbury); arts editor-in-chief Clare Margetson (Marlborough College); literary editor Clare Armitstead (Bedales); public services editor David Brindle (Bablake); city editor Julia Finch (King’s High, Warwick).; environment editor John Vidal (St Bees); fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley (City of london School for Girls); G3 editor Janine Gibson (Walthamstow Hall); northern editor Martin Wainwright (Shreswbury); and industrial editor David Gow (St Peter’s, York); Seumas Milne, an Old Wykehamist (Winchester College) and at Balliol; the Observer’s Andrew Rawnsley (Rugby School and Cambridge U); George Monbiot (Stowe); Zoe Williams (Godolphin and Latymer)

Things might be a little different these days, but not noticeable so and this is from the time of Max's brief stint.

[George Oscar Bluth II]

Poor old Max. I think people's objections were based around both the fact that his dad was a travel writer and also that what Max was doing was astonishingly unremarkable. India and Thailand? There were two people in my flat in the first year of university who'd been to Thailand, and I know more than a few people who've been to India. If your parents are in a certain income bracket it's almost compulsory to visit those places these days.

Come back when you're trekking across the Sahara, Max you cunt.

Fake edit: Having just re-read his piece, I take back what I said about feeling sorry for him. A lot of the anger must almost certainly have been down to how much of a complete prick the guy sounded in the piece. Eurgh.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

Thanks folks. Unless it was as well known as, for example, "money can't but you love", I'd never not credit the original author thehungerartist.

I nearly didn't bother as I'm not sure of said denim and khaki specislist's current practices...hard to imagine no one's made the link before, if anyone has I'm confident the (stand-up) comedy officinardos round 'ere'll say so. But no, I'd never 'eard t'like myself.

[biggytitbo]

I just want to call Max a massive cunt again, its been ages since I last did.

[thepuffpastryhangman]

Any cred left in the smokescreen 'but he went to a comp' died decades ago.

For an exact date you'll have to check when Bobby Webb left.