[Letters]

Letters

The full compilation!

By dig readers

ROFLcon and ponchos spark controversy

 

Dear Dig,

Your use of cutesy typographic misuse made reading your 4.23.08 issue a chore - especially since you stuck with this self-serving conceit from cover to cover. You guys sure know how to beat a dead horse. I suppose I should shell out the dough for the New York Times if I really demand good writing, but this crap suggests that you're not even trying anymore. Focus on your content, not how you style your content—otherwise you'll end up with something like Stuff @ Night.ERIC

VIA EMAIL

 

 

What's up with the misogynist poncho "ad" on page 49? "Bitches will be all up on your dick when you walk in a room sporting this ass raping poncho!" Wow. The potential hilarity was ruined by bad taste and poor judgment.

WENDY

VIA EMAIL

 

 

DO NOT WANT

kthxbai

-anon

PS Loving the cover work, the last five weeks have been out of the park.

 

 

Holy fuck, I wants me a poncho! I injured myself laughing. I'll never read the Dig again when I'm high. Also, it's hard to read when you're stoned. You motherfuckers! Awesome. Who's responsible?

SETH

VIA EMAIL

 

 

Dear Dig,Once a fine, fun paper, you've been dying over the past few months. Maybe you've been terminally ill all along and only recently showed symptoms. I mean, seriously: a lolcat-themed issue? Truncating Savage Love? De-illustrating Oh Cruel World and moving it to the back page? Interviewing a little kid at the aquarium for Exit Polls? I'm giving up. The one bright point in today's issue was an ad on page 49 for a fucking sweet poncho. There wasn't an email or phone number on the ad, just the pure majesty of the poncho. Can you tell me how to contact the guy who sent in that ad? I'd like to talk to him about starting our own damn newspaper.TILI

VIA EMAIL

 

 

In case you didn't notice last week a local freebie newspaper with a huge readership and good advertisement revenue folded.

So where is the eulogy or at least a snide ironic commentary or two? Also what's up with the Dig this week? Between that slip up and the barrage of stale internet memes I feel like I picked up a particularly shitty months old issue. I understand the cheeseburgers + roflcon = lolcats cover but to allow such a bad premise to bleed into most other sections is just sloppy.

JAVIER

VIA EMAIL

P.S. The Chezbrg3r gu1d3 d1d r0k.

P.S.S. OH SWEET LORD SPELLCHECK IS NOT PICKING UP THE LEETSPEAK AS AN ERROR...

 

 

Dear Dig,

God love ya. I love you. I look forward to reading you each week and have completely abandoned those other Boston free weeklies. But I was seriously annoyed with your choice to write several of your articles in misspelled internet speak last week (ROFLCon issue, 4.23.08). I'm finishing up a graduate degree, and I also ingest an obscene amount of pop culture, so I can appreciate your need to lambaste the ridiculousness of pop culture overlapping with academic analysis. But seriously, enough is enough. One or two articles is mildly amusing, twenty is mildly annoying. Don't get me wrong, I use "like" and "btw" on a fairly regular basis and would probably use "lol" in actual conversations if I wasn't concerned with seeming like a total ditz. But I was forced to start skipping some of your articles in frustration. And you don't want me doing that, do you? So just remember, a little bit goes a long way. That's what she said.

 

Sincerely,

GEOFFREY

BRIGHTON

 

 

Wow. Last week's issue was spectacular—spectacularly abhorrent and an utter chore to read. Forget griping about glossy covers and an increased ad over edit ratio.

It started with the cover. I noticed something amiss. The 3's, the 1 and the "nom nom nom" made me think, "Ok, fess up Weekly Dig staffers...who's a farker/farkette and who's into lolcats?" But then I noticed this was a theme for the issue and god was I mad. It wasn't just the roflcon-pertinent articles but almost every headline and sometimes whole unrelated articles. Don't ever, ever do that again or you will lose a reader not based on something petty like a glossy cover, but on integrity of print media.

Then again, it doesn't help this publication's cause when Isabelle Davis writes a review like she did for Blind Melon's new album. The one fact in her short spiel of opinion is in fact false. Hoon did lots of heroin, yes, but it was cocaine that did him in. As for the band keeping its name, I believe Glen Graham, Blind Melon drummer, put it best: "If you lost your arm," which is quite an important limb to musicians, mind you, "would you change your name?" That's some fine reviewing and fact-checking there, Izzy. It's all about integrity at this point in print media; it's quite obvious the Weekly Dig has a certain level of "snark" in its prose, but, for example, to criticize the Herald using this "internet speak" is below even the Herald's standards, which are not by any means noteworthy. Weekly Dig: get your shit together. Don't try to be "the internets." Just be the (legible) Weekly Dig.

 

BORIS

BACK BAY

 

 

Dig,

 

I look forward to reading your paper every week but what the hell was that crap you published in your last issue? I'm looking to your paper for something intellectual, cynical, funny, and for insight on where to get food or see a show this weekend. Writing standards have fallen so dramatically in the last few years with the onslaught on IM and texting, the last thing you should do is endorse this travesty.

Our society communicates through writing and there is no greater sign of intelligence than being able to effectively communicate. I have read enough 10th grade history papers and emails with ridiculous syntax that's a pain in the ass to translate, I don't need to do that when I pick up the paper.

In the first page of the issue it might have been cute, a little shout out to all the kiddies who text and IM all day long. After that it was just annoying and bothersome. If I want to read prose like that, I'll ask to see my 11-year-old cousin's AIM log. I felt I missed the Weekly Dig this week after trashing it when I realized that crap permeated the entire issue.

 

CHAD

CAMBRIDGE

 

 

Dear Dig,

At first I thought I was going to have a seizure trying to read through all the text messaging verbiage crap that you thought was clever to use. But then I came across one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my 31 years ... the ad for the Fucking Poncho! Sweet Baby Jesus is right! Seriously, who ever came up with this should be inducted into some hall of fame. For those people who missed this, I am so sorry because your life will never be complete. I have showed it to countless people, and watching their reaction as they read through it is fucking priceless. I am thinking about framing it and hanging it on the wall, but for now it is on my fridge for all to see, except that I live alone and nobody comes over, but I fucking crack up every time I see it. And in honor of your retarded text messaging issue, this ad has been chatted about via text many times so far. Happy?

And I started reading your magazine after you changed to glossy covers so I don't have an issue with it and am glad to see people are done bitching about it!

Keep it real!

 

ELIZABETH

BOSTON