awww, poor widdle auteurs

[schmerica]

I have never seen "Rescue Me" and thus have no opinions or comments on any of its plot points, but the tone of this article bugs me somewhat.

2. Trying to explain yourself on an Internet message board can be like attempting to lecture on Shakespeare in the middle of a rugby scrum.

...

Enter Tolan, a veteran screenwriter ("Analyze This") who says he innocently believed he could expand the discussion by posting his thoughts on a popular website, Television Without Pity.

Perhaps it was the site's name that gave him pause. Before posting his first comment, "I sat there and thought, 'Should I do this? My gut is saying no,' " he said in a phone interview Friday. "I thought maybe I could explain some things.

"But all you do," he has since concluded, "is paint a target on your back."

...

In the forums at Television Without Pity — TWOP, to initiates — users analyze plot points and story arcs with a zealotry that would not be out of place in a debate over Mideast politics or abortion law.

Comments

[j-bluestocking.livejournal.com]

It's like that wank law in that people who bring up Hitler aren't always calling the other side Nazis -- sometimes they're trying to make a bigger historical point, but they're not "allowed" to because of The Law of the Internet. This guy wasn't comparing himself to Shakespeare, he was talking about the difficulty of complex discussion in certain online venues. But the fact that he used a word as fraught with danger as "Shakespeare" tells me he was ill-prepared for online life at all. Sending a baby onto Omaha Beach. Tsk. And then he reels back, stunned... and no doubt, like Mr. Sorkin, he'll draw the wrong lesson from this.