They had a poll on Daily Kos in the community diaries asking about the site readers' level of education. I found the results a bit appalling and annoying.
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2024/09/29/2273637/-Whats-(Y)Our-Level-of-Formal-Education-With-Poll,-NaturallyAccording to the poll of Kos readers, 85% of that blog's readership has a bachelor's, graduate, or professional degree from college.
It explained a LOT to me, and sort of pissed me off at the same time. It explained why so many people on that site are such fucking snobs when it comes to popular culture. That bit always drove me nuts because there are many issues like rights for writers and actors, liberals could wind up on the popular right side of (most people actually LIKE TV and movies) but every time I wrote a diary about the subject at least a dozen people told me they don't watch TV and indulge in that sort of mindless dreck. And those self-same liberals will be heard in other threads shaming the rest of us for not relating to actual issues the middle-class actually care about. Because actual real-world people don't actually care about movies and TV shows. Obviously. Whoever heard of such a thing?
85%. Shit. Don't ever believe Daily Kos is NOT an outlier in its beliefs. And I agree with most of them! But that blog's readership is NOT the fucking 99%, and after seeing that poll, I will never treat them like that again.
Here is some information about Matt Zimmer you probably do not know. I never went to college. I barely graduated high school and earned my degree with some after-the-fact tutoring because I did so poorly in school (mostly due to behavioral and mental health issues). When I was in school, although I was intelligent I always barely passed my classes. Why? Because I literally NEVER did homework. I take solace in the fact that I got solid C-'s all the time despite doing the ONE thing everybody else HAD to do to make pass grades at all. School was never my thing.
Is it weird for a writer to admit this? Considering how much shit I talk about professional writers who have clearly gone to workshops and studied the craft in the way I never did, maybe the proper response is "How dare you, Matt?"
I'm not going to bullshit anybody and say that I'm a self-taught writer. But maybe it's the fact that I never had teachers who insisted to me the right and proper way to tell a story, might be the actual reason I came to a different conclusion about that than the rest of the writers of popular culture did. And it might be the single reason Gilda And Meek And The Un-Iverse is as messy, genre-busting, meta, earnest, and singularly unique as it is.
Nana has said Gilda And Meek And The Un-Iverse is unlike any comic he's ever read. I think it's very sweet he thinks that, and it's amazing, but honestly, my perspective is, if it WERE like every other piece of fiction, I wouldn't bother telling it. I wouldn't need to. I'd feel satisfied with what Hollywood is churning out, and it would never occur to me to do my own take on something everybody else is already doing. I love movies and TV already. I wouldn't bother.
I won't lie to you and say writing isn't fun, or that I find writing hard. But it IS time-consuming and a bit of a pain in the ass at times. And the only reason I really do it is because I DO believe I am filling a hole in fiction that nobody else is. For every other writer who does NOT feel the same way about their own work, more power to you, but I only do what I do because I hate TV and comics so much. If I loved them there would be no need for Gilda And Meek to still exist.
But I am untrained. I am uneducated. I am unlearned. I am professionally inexperienced. And yet I'll put my work, spelling mistakes and all (remember, in The Un-Iverse, the typos are actually canon) against every single season of cliched predictable Arrowverse claptrap all done by writers with formal training, education, and who clearly paid their industry dues.
And that's not even a question.
So, no, I am not an intellectual writer. As flowery and wonderful as my prose often is, it's not due to either training or education. It's that loudmouth fucking muse again. I just channel the story. At this point I don't write it anymore and I probably haven't for years.
One last thing about me being an uneducated, while male with strong opinions. The fact that I am SUCH a staunch Democrat, and reject the toxicity of the Republican Party, DESPITE me having a not-so-refined background, upbringing, and education is why I refuse to forgive Trump voters. This shit is not as hard as Democratic voter outreach would have you believe. Economic Anxiety My Ass. The truth is it doesn't take a formal education to see through the repulsiveness that is Donald Trump. It takes a speck of human decency. I don't need a college degree for that, and neither do any of Trump's shitty uneducated supporters. I've told Candice, this is NOT a political disagreement for me. It's a moral one. And me not having an especially educated or privileged upbringing means I understand this reality more than many well-meaning educated Democrats, who believe Trump voters have been misled and brainwashed, and are good people deep down.
They are not. This is not hard. It does not take a Master's degree to look as a guy with a whiny nasally voice, tiny hands, a repulsive face with lips that look like a puckered anus, who wears women's make-up and think this is the OPPOSITE of a person projecting strength. It's weird some liberals believe "misled" Trump voters are due that cover. Take it from a white dude who barely graduated high school, who grew up in the extremely racist state of Massachusetts. This shit is actually not so hard for actual grown-ups and decent people. This is not the actual ordeal everyone is insisting it is.
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