I think there is good discussion to be had here, but holy shit, I have never been able to get over how utterly pretentious Jerry's writing is. The comics are usually fantastic and at strange odds with the accompanying news.
It has never occurred to me to call the way Jerry writes "pretentious." Most of the time I would call it "comedic" (specifically, containing great amounts of bathos)--he makes very creative, unexpected, and over-the-top use of the English language to convey relatively normal opinions on relatively boring subjects, in a way that makes me want to read his thoughts on things I couldn't otherwise care less about.
It never occurred to me to call the person writing Jerry. I have always thought of the writing as Tycho's. I mean that in the same way I would say Hamlet said "To be or not to be..." rather than Shakespeare said.
seriously. the guy just enjoys literature and words. anyone who writes a sentence with a structure like "this was always work that needed doing, and has value thereby" is not automatically pretentious...they are just probably a writer.
It's always been my understanding that he writes that way simply because he enjoys it, and he's perpetually incredulous that he can make a living doing so.
I certainly enjoy reading it. I've always found his articles insightful and well-reasoned, and if I happen to learn a new word or two in the process then all the better.
Generally when I read something and judge it to be pretentious, it's because the author is using words that are out of his/her depth, in an attempt to impress the reader. When Jerry writes I get the impression he's choosing his words carefully and with equal intent to entertain and to inform.
I've noticed many criticisms here on hackernews of using artistic license in writing as coming off as pretentious or egotistical; it almost seems to be a bout of anti-intellectualism. I would personally love to be able to write at Jerry's level, he definitely has talent.
Exactly. My high school rhetoric teacher would do similar things, writing (or lecturing) in a way that is clearly impractical but for the live of the language. I can't see it as anything other than thrilling with the language. He's paid to write, dammit, so he'll darn well write!
I've always found the comic pretentious and unfunny. Probably because a character almost always is given a mouth-breathing look of stupidity in at least one panel. The joke of the comic has always seemed to be, "look at this thing I've seen people doing, wow that's idiotic, here's the flawed thinking that led to that."
This is only based on the Penny Arcade comics I've seen that have gone viral, so perhaps it is not representative.
In this case, Mike (Gabe) has been using Glass for a couple of days (week?). He actually posted his thoughts on it and one of the issues was the rudeness in pointing a camera an mike at everyone.
I dunno. His writing has always seemed extremely persona-driven: that is, he's still Tycho when he writes the news items. It's deliberately inflated with self-importance, to give the sense of a snobbish art critic in an area where that kind of persona is rare and a little absurd. I find it amusing.
Weirdly, I had no idea what he was talking about in the final paragraph, because I lack enough background information. But somehow I enjoyed reading it anyway, because of the last sentence. That was brilliant.
I don't think the writing is pretentious, it's simply bad and awkward. People are commenting he just likes to use words, but there are ways of doing that, while at the same time crafting something that flows well.
He probably writes the way he speaks. Bad idea. People are generally fantastic at parsing speech, and terrible at parsing writing.
Or, as I'd say it:
Well, if I had to guess, I'd say he probably writes in a similar way to the way he speaks; or at least; the way he would like to speak if he had three minutes to think up every sentence he had to utter. This may not be such a good idea as it sounds, unless you have a term paper due, of course. Because human beings have been speaking for roughly the same time that we've been making jokes about funny shaped fruit, we have fantastic wiring in our noggins for translating the sounds we utter into thoughts, but simply don't have the same capacity to decode the same kind of syntax if it has been scratched on cave walls, or written on parchment, of displayed in glyphs on some kind of screen or whatever your medium of choice is for writing.
He doesn't speak like that at all; you can find a ton of "behind the scenes" videos on PATV, and you'll see that these people are (portrayed to be) genuinely appreciative of their fans and where their comics have taken them and their associates. The way he writes does irk me though. As far as I'm concerned it definitely detracts from the message he's trying to convey.
