On perspective

caro:

As someone actually employed as a writer, albeit not the sort of cranky navel-gazing social looker-on that Miss Bangs-and-Eyeliner seems to have once dreamed of being, I can tell you that the same thing applies to the media industry that applies to all niches of New York life. This city is what you make of it, and I can’t stress that enough. If you find their writing mean, don’t read it. If you find them intolerable, don’t go to their parties. If you’re convinced that you’ll never ever ever ever be famous unless you manage to strike up a conversation with K*i*h G*s*en at a loft party and dazzle him with your repartée, put things into perspective and keep in mind that nobody who doesn’t read Gawker religiously has any clue who he is anyway. There are plenty of interesting and successful (well, relatively speaking) writers in New York who aren’t among the irritating ranks detailed in this heavily-quoted-and-reblogged post.

I’m sure that the semester abroad in Paris was on the books long before this girl declared her public disillusionment with “The Scene,” but really, it’s not going to do her any good to frame it like a response. Talk about melodrama.

I agree w/everything Caroline said here, but I’d like to add a couple things I’ve been mulling over in the 9 and a half hours since this all went down. (How long ago it all seems. Heh.) The thing is, there’ll always be people in New York who are or seem smarter/richer/more attractive/have a cheaper or bigger apartment/have a better job/know more people in “the scene”/get invited to more parties, AND SO ON AND SO FORTH. Constantly comparing yourself to everyone else is nothing but a recipe for misery and feeling bad about yourself. Also, it’s unbecoming to always have a chip on your shoulder. So what if “Sebastian” lives in a huge Brooklyn brownstone with his parents? It happens. There are plenty of other kids just like him, and it’s pointless to get all huffy about it. Get over it, and just try to do what it is that you do as well as you can. The other thing that people who constantly bemoan the advantages that everyone else has is that they conveniently forget the advantages that THEY have. Many of us can empathize, to some extent, with Jessica Roy, because it’s hard not to feel like an outsider sometimes in this town! By the same token, however, I can’t help but feel that some kid in North Dakota who has to go to community college and work at Wal-Mart to pay his tuition while writing his blog or novel or whatever at 2 in the morning isn’t a little envious of this girl who goes to NYU and can go off to Paris for six months. (Whether or not she’s on financial aid is irrelevant—it’s the privilege, and the opportunities, that are.) It’s super easy to lose perspective in New York, but you have to try not to.