gauds from imaginations which have no peasant traditions to give them character

Was enjoying a lovely Ta-Nehisi Coates piece in The Atlantic online, that was not much more than an homage to the first line of William Carlos Williams’ poem, “To Elsie”. Just the poem, as one of those little links on the Internet that doesn’t make you think to hard about things, or introduce something new, either revelation or meme. Just something enjoyable, that ought to be shared.

I was enjoying it, until I scrolled down the text of the poem, and was irrevocably distracted from the text–which is a bit more challenging than the typical web browsing fare–by a glaring embedded Flash ad, shouting moving text at my face, in different colors and fonts to boot.

The Ad was for The Atlantic.

At some point, if they wish to consider themselves curators and not simply link-toilet pipes lined with ads, online publications and periodicals are going to have to rethink the efficacy of the standard model of online advertising.

I know this is a bad time. Venerable publications, such as the Atlantic, who “after 150 years of publishing, know a thing or two” as their ad reminded me, are distracted by the mortal problem of how to stay in financial existence in this new literary age, and so the minor points of CSS and ad placement probably fell low on the list of immediate importance. I would also excuse them the irony of having it be a squirming piece of self-advertisement, because the circulation of ads throughout a site is often at random, and had I loaded the page at a different moment, I might have seen a less-innocuous ad for a poetry collection, or a non-profit, or something else. Although, the fact that it was an ad for their own publication displaces the first mitigating factor, in that the ad clearly wasn’t generating much needed revenue for them.

But all of these details aside, this is a problem that must be solved. And it will be, eventually. I don’t believe that the combined traditions of literature throughout the culture of the human species is going to die off because of ebooks, or web ads, or poorly designed internet magazines. If we lose our capacity for literature, it will be because we as a species will have lost it as we evolve towards being a non-literary animal–or de-evolve, depending on how you look at it. It will not be that technology made us do it; it will be that our literature allowed technology to do it. And because of this, and because I don’t think we’re going to lose our literary aspects any time soon, I can comfortably say that the format for web publishing WILL change. Because this cannot be the way that it is. People like Coates will continue to love Williams Carlos Williams, and continue to use the Internet to share this love. But the Flash ads cannot and will not stay. These ads will be shed from the margins of literature, like water off a duck. The two are simply not co-existent with each other, and between the two, literature is the one with a deeper emotional root. Flash ads will be evicted from the flanks of literature, pulled off like a lamprey and squeezed like a tick, driven back to the literary exurbs among music videos and cat pics, where they belong. And no one will be sorry.

The reason I say this, is to plead with the web editors of The Atlantic. Reject embedded Flash Ads now. Think about your curation. Because that, presenting literature as literature, is what you are supposedly doing. You are responsible for adapting the literary glands of humanity to this new technological thing we have invented. We can clearly see that Flash ads have no place as buttresses for literature, so take action now, and be the first to expel them from our poetry-loving sight. Flash ads are snap bracelets. They are tamagotchi. They are the current thing that everyone has, so grocery and dollar stores are stocking tons of cheap knock-offs to try and make a quick buck. Cheap knock-offs that cut your wrists with rusty, elastic metal bands that have ripped through their neon plastic coating and have to be recalled. The stores that stock this trash do not have a business model. Their model is they sell anything people will take off the shelves, and get throw out what they won’t. This is not curation. This isn’t even the fine art of desire-marketing, the age-old industry of pornography and prostitution. This is offering to sell someone your shoes because they said they liked them.

Remember that you have a product, and that is words. Remember you have a form, and that is literature. This will be the content and the form for as long as there are people around to read it. Define the words you publish by the way they are presented, because this is how and why people will come to consume them. If you have to advertise, then advertise. But don’t let the advertising fuck with your message. Because then advertising has become the message, and this message is shining in your face like a five year old with a flashlight.

Embedded Flash ads will go the way of the animated gif. Make no mistake. So get your literature out now, and early. Those whom you curate for will thank you.