So You Want to Be a #Longreads Superstar

When I read “My Gucci Addiction,” Buzz Bissinger’s unexpected shopaholic leather-daddy confession in GQ, the first thing I thought of was a smiling, spritely man on a computer screen, masturbating with a pair of spotless white tennis shoes. I was at a college party, huddled drinks in hand with a bunch of friends around a laptop open to the Chat Roulette. We talked to an on-duty German military officer about the Red Army Faction and watched an insistent 14-year-old prove his joint-rolling skills before we hit upon the shoe masturbator. His mic was off, but he communicated nonverbally that he wanted us to watch him jerk off using a pair of sneakers on his hands. Requests like these were blamed for the swift death of Chat Roulette, but in the obituaries we rarely heard about the exhibitionists who were successful, who found curious and willing audiences. We told him to go for it, and boy did he.

Those of us who read Bissinger’s GQ piece were giving the same go-ahead. It’s as if Bissinger invited readers to watch him try on his 41 pairs of leather pants one by one and tell him what a bad, bad boy he was for buying them. Many on the Internet who read popular long essays (often hashtagged #longform) were happy enough to join in. “My Gucci Addiction” spawned a whole ecosystem of response pieces that variously suggest he is mentally ill, trolling all of America, or a role model and spokesman for male shopaholics everywhere. He may be one or all three, but his essay is better explained as a large-scale work of exhibitionism. Instead of sneakers, he’s using expensive apparel, but it’s the same principle. (...)

Some people want celebrity for the money, some want it for the affirmation, but some just want to be watched. It’s clear from this essay that he — already part of a very small tier of commercially successful non-fiction writers who aren’t obvious frauds — doesn’t just want to be critically acclaimed or best-selling. He wants to be Us Weekly famous. You know, real famous. “My Gucci Addiction” obviously draws inspiration from the MTV show Cribs, which always includes a tour of the closet and the bedroom. Like a rock star or Hollywood leading man, Bissinger inventories his wardrobe: “I own eighty-one leather jackets, seventy-five pairs of boots, forty-one pairs of leather pants, thirty-two pairs of haute couture jeans, ten evening jackets, and 115 pairs of leather gloves.” (...)

Exhibitionists have found ways to use and even structure the development of online platforms like Tumblr, Vine, and Snapchat, but the assumption has been that their domain would stay limited to visual media. But when you hook anything up the Internet — including non-fiction — you change its nature in a way that makes it particularly attractive to show-offs of all kinds. The #longreads hashtag was supposed to be about the viability of the proud and enduring essay on the web, not the name for a new form of writing, yet “My Gucci Addiction” is a #longread through and through: The piece contains a call for its audience, a call for the reaction pieces and the controversy and the gossip. Bissinger isn’t navel-gazing; he’s talking about himself, but looking right at us.

Even though we mostly discuss online virality of pictures of cats and funny Youtube videos, the huge potential audience for long-form writing has profoundly altered the essayist’s incentive structure. For the first time, a single piece of writing can find an audience far larger than the readership of the publication in which it appears. As longform nonfiction has found a home on the Internet, an echo-chamber effect has developed by which a piece that breaks through is guaranteed a few signal boosts from aggregators like Longreads and Byliner, both of which picked up “My Gucci Addiction” within the day. If nothing else, Bissinger’s performance marks the maturity of the #longreads form. Since no one has yet taken a hard look at Mike Daisey’s sex life, Buzz heads into rehab as the first #longreads rockstar. Just the way he wanted it.

by Malcolm Harris, TNI |  Read more:

Image: Hongkou Flashers Liu Dao, 2010