around the web

Ranting head "Maddox" explains with great clarity and particularity why he hates BuzzFeed. [YouTube] (hat tip reneabythe)

If you watch to the end, there is a post-credits blast re: GIF mispronunciation: "I'm not gonna call it JIF. You invented the Graphics Interchange Format, you didn't invent the way letters are pronounced."

Paddy Johnson weighs in on New York magazine's adoration of Buzzfeed (thanks for the link). She spots a moment of wavering commitment where New York questions whether BuzzFeed's advertising model is "really selling anything."

My own contribution to human understanding of BuzzFeed was tweeting that it's "like a slightly zanier version of the comcast xfinity homepage." In a reply to Johnson's post, I questioned whether Jonah Peretti had any art world bona fides: "Blackpeopleloveus.com was obnoxious and not all that funny, and that New Museum installation was dreadful, 'wall installation 101.' This was a man destined to be an Ad Man, not an artist. (In fairness, the "dirt style" HTML design page he did with Cory Arcangel was amusing.)"

In another post (thanks for the other link) Johnson writes that new media gallery Bitforms seems to have cancelled "Postfeminism Postbinary Feminism, a show that was slated to open three weeks from now and was curated [by] artist and curator Marisa Olson. Irate about the cancellation, Olson took her complaints to Facebook." The Facebook post seems to have disappeared, or perhaps it's blocked to us non-Zucks. I asked Paddy in a comment to tell us what she knows about this cancellation. Update: Johnson rescued Olson's text from the Zuckerbowels; I'll probably repost to the "public internet" after I've digested it some more. One statement leaps out, that Olson considers Bitforms to be "one of the most important new media galleries in the world." It's certainly one of the most long-lived (14 years, I think) and in the infinitesimal field of new media galleries, that's something, but am not sure "important" is the right word.