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.I get the impression that video game critics took my statements rather personally, arguing that there are lots of good gaming writers and I simply don’t know them.But this was actually the very point of the column: my argument is that no gaming critic has emerged as the idiom’s definitive voice for the mainstream world (and that such a defining person would be valuable to the art form).The overwhelming response from gamers was that they didn’t need (or want) such a critic because they want the insular world of video games to remain insular.What was most interesting (at least to me) was the number of bloggers who responded to my ideas without reading the column itself, openly admitting that they had only perused what other people had already written about it.It was certainly the most vociferous response I’ve ever received from an article virtually no one read.2.I wish I wouldn’t have referenced Lester Bangs in this instance; Esquire ended up headlining this column “The Lester Bangs of Video Games,” which is the kind of implication that inevitably drives hipster historians into fits of paroxysm.Whenever someone wants to bemoan the state of pop criticism they immediately try to exhume Bangs’s mildly over-rated corpse, and I dislike that tendency as much as everybody else.Unfortunately, Lester Bangs is just about the only rock critic many people have heard of.Something Instead of Nothing1 For the first twelve years of my adult life, I sustained a professional existence by asking questions to strangers and writing about what they said.“Why did you do it?” I would ask these strangers.It did not matter what it was.“What were you thinking while you did that? Did it satisfy you? What does it mean to be satisfied? Do you consider yourself to be famous? How does it feel to be famous? How did this experience change you? What elements didn’t change? What will never change? What drives you? Are you lying to me right now? Why should I care about what you are saying? Is this all a construction? Are you constructed? Who constructed you? What was their purpose? Does God exist? Why or why not? Thank you very much.It was great meeting you in the lobby of this unnecessarily expensive hotel.”This has been a tremendous way to earn a living.Who wouldn’t enjoy getting paid for being curious? Journalism allows almost anyone to direct questions they would never ask of their own friends at random people; since the ensuing dialogue exists for commercial purposes, both parties accept an acceleration of intimacy.People give emotional responses, but those emotions are projections.The result (when things go well) is a dynamic, adversarial, semi-real conversation.I am at ease with this.If given a choice between interviewing someone or talking to them “for real,” I prefer the former; I don’t like having the social limitations of tact imposed upon my day-to-day interactions and I don’t enjoy talking to most people more than once or twice in my lifetime.2 For the past five years, I’ve spent more time being interviewed than conducting interviews with other people.I am not complaining about this, nor am I proud of it—it’s just the way things worked out, mostly by chance.But the experience has been confusing.Though I always understand why people ask me the same collection of questions, I never know why I answer them.Frankly, I don’t know why anyone answers anything.The obvious explanation is that the interviewee is hoping to promote a product or a concept (or the “concept of themselves,” which is its own kind of product), but that’s reductive and often untrue; once a media entity makes the decision to conduct and produce an interview with a particular somebody, the piece is going to exist regardless of how the subject responds to the queries.The interviewee can say anything, even if those sentiments contradict reality.They can deliver nothing but clichés, but the story will still run.On three occasions I’ve consciously (and blatantly) attempted to say boring things during an interview in the hope of killing the eventual article.It only worked once.But this type of behavior is rare.Most of the time, I pretend to be interesting.I try to frame my response in the context in which the question was asked, and I try to say things I haven’t said before.But I have no clue as to why I do this (or why anyone else does, either).During the summer of 2008, I was interviewed by a Norwegian magazine writer named Erik Moller Solheim.He was good at his job.He knew a lot of trivia about Finland’s military history.We ate fried pork knees and drank Ur-Krostitzer beer.But in the middle of our playful conversation, I was suddenly paralyzed by an unspoken riddle I could not answer: Why was I responding to this man’s questions? My books are not translated into Norwegian.If the journalist sent me a copy of his finished article, I could not read a word of it.I don’t even know what the publication’s name (Dagens Naeringsliv) is supposed to mean.I will likely never go to Norway, and even if I did, the fact that I was interviewed for this publication would have no impact on my time there.No one would care.The fjords would be underwhelmed.As such, I considered the possible motives for my actions:1.I felt I had something important to say.Except I did not.No element of our interaction felt important to me.If anything, I felt unqualified to talk about the things the reporter was asking me.I don’t have that much of an opinion about why certain Black Metal bands burn down churches.2.It’s my job.Except that it wasn’t.I wasn’t promoting anything.In fact, the interaction could have been detrimental to my career, were I to have inadvertently said something insulting about the king of Norway.Technically, there was more downside than upside.3.I have an unconscious, unresolved craving for attention.Except that this feels inaccurate.It was probably true twenty years ago, but those desires have waned.Besides, who gives a fuck about being famous in a country I’ll never visit? Why would that feel good to anyone? How would I even know it was happening?4.I had nothing better to do.This is accurate, but not satisfactory.5.I’m a nice person.Unlikely.6.When asked a direct question, it’s human nature to respond.This, I suppose, is the most likely explanation.It’s the crux of Frost/Nixon [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]