I recently encountered this “alt lit” thing so I’m learning about that now. http://joshspilker.com/more-thoughts-on-status-update-lit-3-other-newish-styles-of-writing/

In The New Yorker there’s a differing opinion. I guess there are generational differences. http://www.newyorker.com/…/cultura…/memoir-status-update

This is probably a better overview. http://maribiella.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/alt-lit-the-internet-and-the-state-of-self-publishing-part-2/

There’s a guy on Vice who hates it so I guess it is pretty polarizing. http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/alt-lit-is-the-worst-thing-to-happen-to-literature

The guy on vice makes a common, annoying mistake. While he’s in the middle of talking about how bad something is, he simply quotes it, which is fine, but then he goes on to say nothing about how/why it is bad, as though to say that it is objectively bad. Well, even if something is objectively bad, it isn’t good criticism to just paste something in there and assume we’re all going to see it in exactly the same way. You gotta spell it out for people.

(this is my first post on hi.co.)