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Whomst do you serve?
Feb. 22nd, 2022 03:54 pmA couple of ACES conferences ago I picked up a copy of A World Without “Whom”: The Essential Guide to Language in the BuzzFeed Age, by Emmy J. Favilla, the copy chief at BuzzFeed. Now, the type of stuff I edit professionally these days really does not need to be BuzzFeed-y at all–and in fact really shouldn’t be–but I do spend a lot of time on the Internet and I have produced a certain amount of content for it (both professionally and otherwise), plus, given how fast things change online, I worried that if I left it a few more years the book would become too dated to be useful (although it might become funnier).
While the book is self-consciously goofy, with a lot of parentheticals and “amirite”s and action asides, it actually does a very solid job explaining why digital outlets like BuzzFeed do the things they do, and why they work (or sometimes don’t). It also contains some important considerations around writing for international audiences, writing sensitively about social issues (although some of the specific terminology is a bit dated already), and why you would even bother editing stuff that’s supposed to be super internetty (because if you do it wrong you look unhip, square, and not groovy).
I do not necessarily agree with Favilla on every claim she makes in this book–I’m like 60% certain her timeline on the various uses and abuses of woke is a bit off, also I’m an unrepentant filler lol-er–but I think her overall approach to Writing On The Internets is solid. I also enjoyed all the screenshots from BuzzFeed’s editorial Slack and other internal communications, although some screenshots certainly lose a little something being in black and white.
Also, the problem with “whom,” as Favilla points out, is not really so much that it is old and stuffy, but that people deliberately going for an old-and-stuffy vibe whomst nevertheless don’t understand grammar keep using it as a fancyism for “who,” and that is extremely cringe. Nobody is trying to take “whom” away from Saruman; he can use it correctly.
While the book is self-consciously goofy, with a lot of parentheticals and “amirite”s and action asides, it actually does a very solid job explaining why digital outlets like BuzzFeed do the things they do, and why they work (or sometimes don’t). It also contains some important considerations around writing for international audiences, writing sensitively about social issues (although some of the specific terminology is a bit dated already), and why you would even bother editing stuff that’s supposed to be super internetty (because if you do it wrong you look unhip, square, and not groovy).
I do not necessarily agree with Favilla on every claim she makes in this book–I’m like 60% certain her timeline on the various uses and abuses of woke is a bit off, also I’m an unrepentant filler lol-er–but I think her overall approach to Writing On The Internets is solid. I also enjoyed all the screenshots from BuzzFeed’s editorial Slack and other internal communications, although some screenshots certainly lose a little something being in black and white.
Also, the problem with “whom,” as Favilla points out, is not really so much that it is old and stuffy, but that people deliberately going for an old-and-stuffy vibe whomst nevertheless don’t understand grammar keep using it as a fancyism for “who,” and that is extremely cringe. Nobody is trying to take “whom” away from Saruman; he can use it correctly.
