Dispatches #150: Crap marketing, child psychopaths and butterfly men

Thursday, 25 May 2017

Welcome to Dispatches, a weekly summary of my writing, listening and reading habits. No new words this week, nor enough sounds to warrant inclusion. Onto the reads!

Reads:

Vote The Rock by Caity Weaver in GQ (5,300 words / 27 minutes). Did you know that Dwayne Johnson – aka former professional wrestler The Rock – is the world's highest paid movie star? I did not. That's just one of many fascinating details gleaned from this hugely entertaining profile of the man. Caity Weaver clearly had a ball in his company, and her enthusiasm for his enormous personality shines through in every sentence here. I dare you to read this and not smile, or maybe change your opinion about him, if you (like me) thought the guy was pretty naff. Also, the accompanying photos are fantastic. I can't get enough of those butterfly wings above. This is a 10/10 celebrity profile, and hard to top.

When Dwayne Johnson meets you (and I can assure you, he would love to), the first thing he will do is ask you six thousand questions about yourself, and remember the answers forever. If you are a child, good luck getting past Dwayne Johnson without a high five or some simulated roughhousing; if you're in a wheelchair, prepare for a Beowulf-style epic poem about your deeds and bravery, composed extemporaneously, delivered to Johnson's Instagram audience of 85 million people; if you're dead, having shuffled off your mortal coil before you even got the chance to meet Dwayne Johnson, that sucks–rest in peace knowing that Dwayne Johnson genuinely misses you. For Johnson, there are no strangers; there are simply best friends, and best friends he hasn't met yet. I've known the man for only two hours–and have been in his car now for only a few minutes, listening to the Dixie Chicks, headed to what he's luxuriously described to me as his "private gym"–and already it's apparent that I am Dwayne Johnson's greatest friend in the entire world.

When Your Child Is A Psychopath by Barbara Bradley Hagerty on The Atlantic (6,900 words / 34 minutes). This is a chilling and fascinating read about psychopathy, which has long been considered untreatable, and can be spotted by experts in a child as young as three or four. But as detailed here, a new clinical approach offers hope to children diagnosed with psychopathy: by forming meaningful attachments with callous kids, and downplaying punishments while dangling rewards, researchers in a particular program have found that patients tend to respond enthusiastically. Moreover, regular exposure to such a program might help to reshape the decision-making part of the brain, which continues to evolve into one's mid-20s. It's like neural weight-lifting.

This is a good day, Samantha tells me: 10 on a scale of 10. We're sitting in a conference room at the San Marcos Treatment Center, just south of Austin, Texas, a space that has witnessed countless difficult conversations between troubled children, their worried parents, and clinical therapists. But today promises unalloyed joy. Samantha's mother is visiting from Idaho, as she does every six weeks, which means lunch off campus and an excursion to Target. The girl needs supplies: new jeans, yoga pants, nail polish. At 11, Samantha is just over 5 feet tall and has wavy black hair and a steady gaze. She flashes a smile when I ask about her favorite subject (history), and grimaces when I ask about her least favorite (math). She seems poised and cheerful, a normal preteen. But when we steer into uncomfortable territory–the events that led her to this juvenile-treatment facility nearly 2,000 miles from her family–Samantha hesitates and looks down at her hands. "I wanted the whole world to myself," she says. "So I made a whole entire book about how to hurt people." Starting at age 6, Samantha began drawing pictures of murder weapons: a knife, a bow and arrow, chemicals for poisoning, a plastic bag for suffocating. She tells me that she pretended to kill her stuffed animals. "You were practicing on your stuffed animals?," I ask her. She nods. "How did you feel when you were doing that to your stuffed animals?" "Happy."

In Wreckage of the Fyre Festival, Fury, Lawsuits and an Inquiry by Joe Coscarelli, Melena Ryzik and Ben Sisario in The New York Times (2,500 words / 12 minutes). You might have read about Fyre Festival in recent weeks. It was a luxury music event in the Bahamas that booked Ja Rule and Blink-182 before it crashed spectacularly on the day it was meant to begin. Its rich, young, stranded attendees were widely mocked and derided on social media in the days that followed. In contrast to that wave of derision, I enjoyed this heavily reported and soberly written news feature from The Times which offers a window onto the hubris of the team behind the festival, including the 25 year-old founder, Billy McFarland, who clearly bit off more than he could chew.

A few days after the spectacular collapse of the Fyre Festival, just as federal investigators began to circle the wreckage, the event's would-be mastermind, Billy McFarland, was still making promises. His failed event was sold on social media by the likes of Kendall Jenner as an ultraluxurious musical getaway in the Bahamas. Scheduled for two weekends starting in late April, it was supposed to up the ante in the competitive festival market. Instead, Fyre had become a punch line for its aborted opening, with reports of panicked millennials scrounging for makeshift shelter on a dark beach. Yet, speaking on May 2 with unnerved employees at his TriBeCa office – with its $30,000 sound system and frequent fashion-model visitors – Mr. McFarland deflected blame and vowed that Fyre would survive to mount another festival next year. The coverage had been "sensationalized," he insisted, according to a recording obtained by The New York Times. (Fyre has attributed its cancellation to a combination of factors, including the weather.) Ja Rule, the rapper and Mr. McFarland's celebrity business partner, looked on the bright side. "The whole world knows Fyre's name now," he said. "This will pass, guys." Their company, Fyre Media, however, was already facing the first of more than a dozen lawsuits seeking millions and alleging fraud, breach of contract and more.

The Marketing Was Crap by Terri-Ann White in Sydney Review of Books (2,100 words / 11 minutes). A thoughtful and informative essay about the state of Australian book publishing, written by someone who's been involved with books since she was 23, and now works as director at UWA Publishing. The essay's excellent title is taken from this perceptive statement: "If you are a writer, or know one, there is no doubt you would have heard the statement 'My book could have done better but the marketing was crap.'"

I want to talk about publishing and writing in Australia today. We have an old publishing industry that clings tightly to some of its early twentieth-century etiquette while dealing with a world in flux. Many of our evergreen habits are likely to be gone soon. We've spent years now debating the future of the book and what it might look like in e- and p- formats but we haven't spoken about enough of the future, really, such as the sale or return policy we extend to our bookseller colleagues in the age of online selling. Or the advance/royalty system we conduct with our authors, 90 per cent of which is largely symbolic and an act of faith rather than a proper financial exchange after the first year or two. Thankfully, we've started to stop the waste of excess print runs so as to get unit costs down but that's because the technology has improved. Most of our problems are understood yet I don't think we address them very well.

The Definitive Account Of Shannon Noll's Rise And Fall by Alex McKinnon on Junkee (1,700 words / 8 minutes). An enlightening and largely irony-free analysis of Australian pop star Shannon Noll, who has become a meme in the last couple of years to his apparent confusion. This is the best article I've read about the matter, and while I enjoyed reading McKinnon's astute observations of the singer and his role in popular culture today, it would've been nice to hear from Noll himself. Another time, perhaps.

Hermann's Bar at the University of Sydney is not a venue most bands aspire to play. Tucked behind the student food court and best known for its comprehensive selection of Skittle-flavoured vodkas, the lightless, charmless drinking hole has long played second fiddle to USyd's relatively glamorous Manning Bar, which has hosted everyone from the Foo Fighters to Leonardo DiCaprio trying unsuccessfully to eat his lunch in peace. Shannon Noll was supposed to kick off a national tour promoting his new single 'Southern Sky' at Manning, but lacklustre ticket sales forced a late relocation. When he last played Sydney Uni, invited to do a surprise gig at the 2016 O-Week by the student union, it was at the height of his brief, weird run as everyone's ironic fave. He was greeted by a delirious, hyperactive crowd of kids barely old enough to remember who he is, let alone the words to most of his songs. Not many of those kids have shown up this Friday night. Despite playing Sunrise that morning, Noll's only filled the room about a fifth of the way, pulling maybe 80 people. Prominent among them is the small but fiercely loyal band of middle-aged rural women who travel at their own expense to as many of his concerts as they can afford. Before the show starts they move through the crowd with collection tins, soliciting donations for Shannon-affiliated charities. If anyone's told them their man is no longer the tongue-in-cheek darling of the rich, young and bored, they seem entirely indifferent.

The Tallest Tree by Patrick Witton in The Monthly (1,000 words / 5 minutes). An excellent story about a man who is devoted to researching and saving Australia's tallest trees. It's a really close study of the guy, seemingly based on Witton accompanying him on a trip whereby he comes across the tallest tree on the Australian mainland, measuring 87.6 metres. 

In 2015, Brett Mifsud received some curious information from a contact at VicForests: a map of a heavily forested area 80 kilometres east of Melbourne that showed some unexpected altitude readings. Mifsud knew this region well – any spare moment he would head there in his late-model Subaru, which was scattered with GPS devices, rangefinders, tape measures and a dog-eared spiral-bound notebook thick with scribbles. His main aim on such excursions was to find, and register, large specimens of Eucalyptus regnans. These trees, more commonly known as mountain ash, are impressive when they reach typical heights, but when they grow even taller they can evoke the kind of gasp usually saved for Gothic cathedrals. Over the years Mifsud had found numerous massive mountain ash trees, and by registering their presence with VicForests he affected what loggers could and could not touch in the vicinity. His research contributed to VicForests' development of a protection plan, which excludes core areas of large trees from harvest and regeneration burns. But, "if anything," Mifsud says, "letting people know about these trees is like saying, 'Stop. Look! If these trees exist, then so does a rich ecosystem down to the micro level.'"

The Freelancers' Roundtable by Eva Holland on Longreads (6,300 words / 26 minutes). The final link this week will likely only be of interest to my fellow freelance writers who are reading this, but I found this article from 2016 to be a fruitful and fascinating email discussion between four accomplished American freelance writers about how they pitch stories, negotiate contracts, and break into a tough industry. The most surprising bit for me was when Jason Fagone advocated having a lawyer on retainer, a couple of hours at a time, to help negotiate rights and contracts. "I thought it would be prohibitively expensive but I was wrong, wish I'd done it years ago," he writes. "I've never had a lawyer send a letter to a publication about payment issues, but I have to think it would work better than sending tweets."

There's been more talk than usual lately about the state of freelance writing. There are increasing numbers of tools for freelancers: among them, the various incarnations of "Yelp for Journalists." There's advice floating around; there are Facebook support groups. With the exception of one 10-month staff interlude, I've been freelancing full time now for seven and a half years. I've learned a few things along the way, but I also still have a ton of questions, and often feel as if I've outgrown some of the advice I see going by in the social media stream. So I gathered a handful of well-established freelance writers and asked them to participate in a group email conversation about their experiences and advice.

Thanks for reading. If you have feedback on Dispatches, I'd love to hear from you: just reply to this email. Please feel free to share this far and wide with fellow journalism, music, podcast and book lovers.

Andrew

--
E: [email protected]
W: http://andrewmcmillen.com/
T: @Andrew_McMillen

If you're reading this as a non-subscriber and you'd like to receive Dispatches in your inbox each week, sign up here. To view the archive of past Dispatches dating back to March 2014, head here.