salon.com: does anyone else hate it as much as i do?

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god, where to begin? there's the whole "salon premium" thing, where if you don't feel like paying money to read a fucking website (i can see maybe doing it for the new york times, but fucking SALON? who the hell does that?) that frankly comes off these days as less interesting and informative than entertainment weekly, you have to sit through an ad for absolut vodka or some critically-acclaimed HBO drama or (most annoying of all, somehow) an ad for salon premium.

yes yes, they have good articles from time to time (most of them long in the past, by writers who've moved on), so i'm sort of glad it exists. but every time i go back to it (not very often anymore), i always get put off by that TONE. you know what i mean. the salon tone. it's mildly tart, a tad solicitous, a bit flaky (in a meant-to-be-endearing way) and oh so very pleased with itself. someone once compared woody allen's lesser movies to being trapped in an elevator for two hours and forced to listen to people talking nonstop; if i were trapped with a couple of salon writers, i'd pray for a quick asphixiation.

people pick on poor old sarah vowell, but she's practically dorothy parker next to some of the shit this site runs. there's the "personal stories," which all go something like "my wife and i didn't know how good we had it till our 5-year-old was kicked out of his nursery school for biting, now we don't have any time for ourselves..." or "it took me 40 years to forgive my father for abandoning me, but one night i heard an old beatles song on the radio and i had an epiphany..."

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 3 July 2005 09:18 (nineteen years ago)

it still exists?!?!!!!?

― hstencil (hstencil), Sunday, 3 July 2005 09:19 (nineteen years ago)

then there's the movie critics, zacharek and taylor, who manage to inherit and magnify all of pauline kael's worst aspects (mostly by regurgitating EVERY FUCKING OPINION SHE EVER HAD) while managing to out-smug nearly anyone else on the site (not an easy task) with their distinctly icky brand of TMI sexual libertarianism. their most damning epithet (most recently hurled at "howl's moving castle") is "sexless," and if a movie isn't swimming in the old in-out, you can forget about it. you know that joke about how books about lincoln and dogs sell better than anything, so the biggest-selling book would be about lincoln's dog? well, if brian depalma ever made a comedy about lesbian polyamory starring angelina jolie and nicole kidman, CT and SZ would declare it the greatest american movie since..."last tango in paris."

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 3 July 2005 09:19 (nineteen years ago)

They're doing the best they can. In other words, death is very near. Because they suck. Have for at least two years.

it still exists?!?!!!!?

hahahaha OTM

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Sunday, 3 July 2005 09:21 (nineteen years ago)

haha yes stencil it does, and the reason i'm especially pissed is that i just watched the same absolut vodka ad three times and it still won't let me read the one fucking article i'm trying to get to!

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 3 July 2005 09:23 (nineteen years ago)

does bugmenot have a login for salon premium?

― the underground homme (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 3 July 2005 09:27 (nineteen years ago)

apparently not. blast.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 3 July 2005 09:37 (nineteen years ago)

drat.

― the underground homme (Jody Beth Rosen), Sunday, 3 July 2005 09:39 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, I've tried several things to get around that, but none of them work. You cannot get around The Flash Ad.

― Paunchy Stratego (kenan), Sunday, 3 July 2005 09:40 (nineteen years ago)

oh hey jody we ought to hang out soon! you've been here like a month now, no?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, 3 July 2005 09:41 (nineteen years ago)

I can't stand Anne Lamott.

― shookout (shookout), Sunday, 3 July 2005 10:17 (nineteen years ago)

I never liked Salon. I never liked its "we're so intellectual" tone, its cliquey nature. It's well named. I always felt that the writers would be the kind of people who gave you red wine in enormous balloon glasses and asked you to take your shoes off when you came into their houes and then brought you to their immaculately clean, bookshelf-lined bedroom to show you their Japanese erotic art.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Sunday, 3 July 2005 11:31 (nineteen years ago)

So how was the evening over at Momus's place, then?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Sunday, 3 July 2005 12:36 (nineteen years ago)

haha well I love Zacharek's reviews, but hey I'm PK Fan #1. I usually agree with Zacharek except she gets boners for a whole lot more actors & actresses than I do. She's the best Paulette ever - she's not just swiping stances but descriptive skills as well. Taylor's not nearly as good.

― miccio (miccio), Sunday, 3 July 2005 13:00 (nineteen years ago)

My only real problem with Zacharek (since I'm not really angry that somebody is enthusiastic about acknowledging eroticism in pop culture, I just know not to trust a rave if the crux is that Halle Berry has boobies) is her weak capper quips.

― miccio (miccio), Sunday, 3 July 2005 13:03 (nineteen years ago)

their interviews tend to be really horrible, though the Frank Black one was terrific BECAUSE the writer just let Black kick the shit out of his corny indie ass. I've read some decent stuff there but I ignore most of the content. There definitely is a weak tone to most of it but Zacharek's simply the only reviewer I know of who shares the same taste as me, and will describe movies in a way that actually entices me to see them.

― miccio (miccio), Sunday, 3 July 2005 13:08 (nineteen years ago)

worst part of salon: the articles that say "i wondered and wondered about whether i was a bad parent for reasons x, y, and z and then realized how wrong conventional wisdom is because i am really a great parent, though i am not perfect because part of good writing is laying out your imperfections." aaaaaarrrgh.

― Maria (Maria), Sunday, 3 July 2005 14:16 (nineteen years ago)

Salon was too smug for Garrison Keillor!!

― Aaron A., Sunday, 3 July 2005 14:37 (nineteen years ago)

Ha ha I once said on ILx that "Ragging on terrible salon.com articles at this late stage of its living death is sorta like kicking puppies" AND THAT WAS TWO AND A HALF YEARS AGO GAH.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Sunday, 3 July 2005 14:39 (nineteen years ago)

i have a bookmarklet that gets around this but it's on my work computer. I'll find it. salon was great three years ago but I rarely bother now.

― kyle (akmonday), Sunday, 3 July 2005 16:05 (nineteen years ago)

I subscribe and it doesn't bother me, mostly because I read the political articles and take the arts reviews for what they are. In re: the payment issue: so don't pay and don't get upset if your hacks don't work to get into it, because apparently it's not worth reading anyway. In re: its long-predicted death: I guess some of us dummies aren't as discerning as most of you guys.

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Sunday, 3 July 2005 16:29 (nineteen years ago)

I like their sports guy's articles

― peter in montreal (spaces are allowed), Sunday, 3 July 2005 19:48 (nineteen years ago)

i like zacharek too. i don't agree with her very often but i think she's much smarter than her detractors give her credit for. jd is correct to say that her personal taste and politics are well-delineated at this point, but he doesn't really say why that makes her a bad critic. or is she just a bad critic because he doesn't share her ideologies?

kenan's criticism makes even less sense to me.

― mark p (Mark P), Sunday, 3 July 2005 20:11 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.salon.com/news/cookie.html bypasses all the day pass nonsense. It seems a bit too simple but I've been using it for the past nine months and it's always worked.

― backdoorsman, Sunday, 3 July 2005 20:23 (nineteen years ago)

for some reason i keep putting up with the ads just because i like to read as many reviews as possible after i see a new movie, and i can always count on salon's review being revealingly fucked up somehow. most often it's zacharek's; she just seems to get the movies -wrong- no matter what her judgments about them (good or bad). she'll overlook what seemed to me to be significant aspects that ought to change her take on the movie, she'll misread parts in what seems like obvious laziness (i.e. i think this is a message picture and i'm writing about it as a message picture so it's gonna end up being a message picture), and every once in a while just get factual details wrong. these flaws only seem to make salon's forced contentiousness even more artificial.

― Josh (Josh), Sunday, 3 July 2005 20:25 (nineteen years ago)

Well that's New York for you.

― Jim Morrison, Sunday, 3 July 2005 21:01 (nineteen years ago)

Gasp...and the music critic hasn't even been mentioned yet...

― mikef (mfleming), Monday, 4 July 2005 01:28 (nineteen years ago)

But where else can you get Tom the Dancing Bug?
Just open a new window and surf something else while the flash ad plays.
I acknowledge the feeling of smugness and avoid the articles, but every once in a while there's something ok.

― Bnad, Monday, 4 July 2005 01:43 (nineteen years ago)

oh hey jody we ought to hang out soon! you've been here like a month now, no?

more than that. i know, i suck. i was hoping i might see you at the mountain goats show last week! did you go?

― the underground homme (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 4 July 2005 01:51 (nineteen years ago)

But where else can you get Tom the Dancing Bug?

http://www.ucomics.com/tomthedancingbug/

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Monday, 4 July 2005 02:09 (nineteen years ago)

god i'm so glad i'm not the only one who hates those fucking movie critics

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 4 July 2005 02:15 (nineteen years ago)

(josh so otm)

who remembers that section they had called "mothers who THINK"?!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 4 July 2005 02:16 (nineteen years ago)

hahahaha and then they changed the name of that section to "LIFE"!!!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 4 July 2005 02:16 (nineteen years ago)

And deleted the dedicated "Sex" tab — booooo!

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Monday, 4 July 2005 02:18 (nineteen years ago)

"mothers who THINK"?!

hoo boy. (judging from what i've seen OUT THERE IN THE REAL WORLD though, most of 'em don't! i was at the supermarket yesterday and this mother was at the atm with her back completely turned to her very young son, who was standing in the shopping cart, bouncing up and down at the edge, about to tip the thing over. the mother was oblivious.)

― the underground homme (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 4 July 2005 02:25 (nineteen years ago)

I've only been reading Salon.com for a week or two but there's a GreaseMonkey script at http://dunck.us/collab/GreaseMonkeyUserScripts#head-24215794fce73deef7e37d371cddfaf80a088131 which seems to work as a premium pass.

Can anyone suggest any sites similar to Salon?

― Stan Fields (Stan Fields), Monday, 4 July 2005 02:27 (nineteen years ago)

i think i tried that script a while back and it didn't work.

― the underground homme (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 4 July 2005 02:28 (nineteen years ago)

it never dawned on me until just now how terrible a title that was.

― kyle (akmonday), Monday, 4 July 2005 02:30 (nineteen years ago)

King Kaufman's not bad at all, I think he definitely has a unique style compared to most sportswriters, very bemused and sardonic while everyone else just can't wait to work themselves into a lather every time a white guy gets voted NBA MVP or Gary Sheffield acts like a jackass.

Probably my second favorite regular sports columnist, a distant second to Bill Simmons.

― Josh Love (screamapillar), Monday, 4 July 2005 03:15 (nineteen years ago)

So, you hate salon because you have to watch the insufferable ads to get to unbearable content?

Clearly, there's no easy solution to this horrible problem.

― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Monday, 4 July 2005 04:14 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, King Kaufman's a very good sportswriter. He's pretty much the only thing I ever read on Salon.

I enjoyed Douglas Wolk's current thing about Promethea, though.

― The Yellow Kid, Monday, 4 July 2005 04:26 (nineteen years ago)

I don't care for Kaufman at all, but at least he's not Skip Bayless (how does Skip Bayless keep his job? He can't write, he knows nothing about sports, his personality is worse than Jim Rome - why god why?). He kind of reads like he's writing sports for non-sports fans.

Zacharek and Taylor don't bother me much (though I rarely read them, maybe I've just missed out on the crap).

Salon, in general, is just too mediocre to hate. It'd be like getting upset at the existence of world music comps and NPR.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Monday, 4 July 2005 04:47 (nineteen years ago)

i was hoping i might see you at the mountain goats show last week! did you go?

i didn't find out about it till the day after! maybe we could catch a movie or something soon?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 4 July 2005 05:27 (nineteen years ago)

check your e-mail.

― the underground homme (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 4 July 2005 06:30 (nineteen years ago)

one month passes...

We did it! Now it's your turn Salon's staff wrote poems celebrating our bodies and their flaws. We challenge you to do the same

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 18 August 2005 21:20 (nineteen years ago)

"my mind"

― s/c (Jody Beth Rosen), Thursday, 18 August 2005 21:22 (nineteen years ago)

one month passes...

Any thoughts on the Salon.com redesign?

― Stan Fields (Stan Fields), Friday, 7 October 2005 01:15 (nineteen years ago)

i hate it. i only go to salon occasionally because i hate it, but now i hate it even more because of this redesign.

― carly (carly), Friday, 7 October 2005 01:33 (nineteen years ago)

Look, all I'm gonna say is that my favorite article about smoking EVAH is from there and, like, four years later I'm still quoting it. This might say more about ME than Salon.com.

― Laurel, Friday, 7 October 2005 01:36 (nineteen years ago)

Laurel, could you point me to that smoking article, I could really use a good article about smoking in public places.

― Jena (JenaP), Friday, 7 October 2005 01:58 (nineteen years ago)

in salon's defence their series of essays on the first season of us big brother were just great, as i remember them, some of the best tv writing i've ever read

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 7 October 2005 02:00 (nineteen years ago)

Jena:
http://www.salon.com/health/feature/2000/02/08/i_smoke/index.html

― Laurel, Friday, 7 October 2005 02:08 (nineteen years ago)

the new design is REALLY poor...

― Jimmy Mod wants you to tighten the strings on your corset (The Famous Jimmy Mod), Friday, 7 October 2005 02:11 (nineteen years ago)

I agree, that's a highly quotable piece. Thanks Laurel.

― Jena (JenaP), Friday, 7 October 2005 02:15 (nineteen years ago)

Another deserved takedown of Thomas Bartlett.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 7 October 2005 04:12 (nineteen years ago)

While many claim to support this development, it has only resulted in ridding bars of decent conversationalists and filling them instead with people who fondly abbreviate muscle groups.

i bet those people go to starbucks and listen to coldplay!! < /ethan>

i dunno, i smoke sometimes too, but i thought the article was a bit annoyingly cute. it was like a commercial for some new product geared towards women who watch desperate housewives.

― 100% WJE (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 7 October 2005 04:25 (nineteen years ago)

as a rule, i don't like that "mantra" style of brainstorm-writing. it's okay as a private exercise, but not the kind of thing writers should be getting paid to do.

― 100% WJE (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 7 October 2005 04:31 (nineteen years ago)

the salon cookie linked above doesn't work anymore.

― maura (maura), Thursday, 13 October 2005 21:06 (nineteen years ago)

one year passes...

it's amazing this thing still exists. it was a must-read for me from about 1999-2001 then over the next couple years the bad things about it/the ratio of truly annoying writers/the whole pay deal killed my interest. i still have it bookmarked but i'm never tempted to click. and the movie reviewers, ESPECIALLY Charles Taylor, were horrible.

― gershy, Thursday, 15 March 2007 05:29 (eighteen years ago)

The subscriptions (for subscribors) have really gone down hill. The NYROB and Wired and....the Nation? I think. I can't remember all of the glossies that touched my mailbox. These days it's weird magazines like "The Week".

However, let's not dismiss Salon completely.
"Ask The Pilot" is great.
I actually like Cary Tennis, even though I tried to hate him. (But shouldn't he switch jobs with King Kaufmann, just so we know what advice/commentary we're receiving? )
I'm a fan of Heather Havrilesky.

The Ayelet Waldman fiasco almost ruined everything "Salon.com" for me.
Now I'm feeling angry thinking about Ayelet Waldman.
Perhaps I should have some gin!
Sleep might be an option as well.
I have a very strong dislike for Ms. Lamott also
. But nothing compares to my loathing of Ayelet Waldman.

OOOOHHH I hate her. I hate hate hate her.

― aimurchie, Thursday, 15 March 2007 07:37 (eighteen years ago)

God, I loved Charles Taylor. OTM though about the magazine's peak being b/w 1999-2001. Then the editors started giving hacks like Joe Conason more and more space.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Thursday, 15 March 2007 14:07 (eighteen years ago)

I hate Ayelet Waldman, too, but now I hate Neal Pollack as well. Thanks, Salon.com! I needed more people to hate!

― Beth Parker, Thursday, 15 March 2007 16:42 (eighteen years ago)

woah salon.

that takes me back.

― That one guy that quit, Thursday, 15 March 2007 16:43 (eighteen years ago)

Once in a while they have a great in-depth piece, but it was never something i checked on a daily basis, due to the paywall thing. Joe Conason I like.

― kingfish, Thursday, 15 March 2007 16:45 (eighteen years ago)

salon.com is good for at least one reason: Glenn Greenwald. bravo!

― modestmickey, Thursday, 15 March 2007 16:57 (eighteen years ago)

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