"If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger" and the Death of Pop Culture Blogs

I'm very sad to discover that Tom Sutpen's essential pop culture photo blog "If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger..." has closed down. I don't know exactly when this occurred, but the author's Twitter page was last updated on March 29.

Every week, I am reminded that the golden age of movie and pop culture weblogs has now passed, as people have devolved from engaging with culture to merely consuming it. People once shared their love of movies and music and the arts, often sharing a spotlight to more obscure, left-of-the-dial subjects. It was always such a joy to discover these cultured, educated fans as they blossomed on the new online frontier of the 21st Century. Now it's nearly all gone extinct, and the few remaining holdouts are fighting over table scraps.

It appears that most people today are perfectly fine with just clicking on images on social media sites. They're not really engaging or bonding or coming together in any meaningful way. They're just sitting like a lump on a log, clicking buttons in a techo-digital drugged-out haze, like animals in a cage who press a button to receive their sugar pellet. Here's another pellet. Here's another.

This isn't interesting or even remotely fun, either as the rat in the cage or the one dispensing the sugar pellets. I tried keeping up with that on Ghibli Blog Twitter, and was modestly successful for a while, but it became so much work for so little payoff. One never makes friends or builds careers. Nothing grows or builds. You're either the sucker stuck inside the cage or the sucker stuck outside the cage.

I remind myself that nothing lasts forever, and it can become fairly difficult to endlessly curate and manage a website when there's virtually no money involved. That's often the reason why many of us quit in the end. We love doing this, but we also love to eat and have clothes on our backs. The internet age has been a great opportunity for writers, but it has also created a race to the bottom that results in stupid, useless clickbait that makes you want to hit someone over the head with a Whiffle Bat. It also results in websites that pay next to nothing for freelance writers, including many who pay nothing for "internships" that will lead absolutely nowhere. I recently replied to an ad for writers, and the company offered $100 for 4,000-word essays. There are beggars on the streets of Chicago who earn more money than that.

So, once again, I find myself saying So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright, and goodbye to another beloved pop website that made me feel more connected to the world and its boundless possibilities.

Also, I would like to politely point out that I need writing jobs that actually pay the rent! The work has to be out there. You can't all still be living with your parents.

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