What the fuck is happening to the New York Times Magazine

It's been more annoying than it used to be for some time now, ever since they brought in their new editor last year-ish. They started going nuts about first-person non-fiction narratives that weren't about much of anything, and their contribution to the growing literature about Afghan police atrocities was called Bad Guys vs. Worse Guys in Afghanistan, and if the headline wasn't enough of a "fuck you we think you're a child" for you, consider that the article's accompanying photojournalism was made up entirely of iPhone photos taken with Hipstamatic ("[the photos with which we are shamelessly pandering] were more exciting and dynamic; the rich palette and high contrast brought clarity and texture and even poetry to the scenes" -- yeah, all right, sure fucking thing).

But it hadn't necessarily been objectively shittier until this awful thing, which, guess what I think of it when I just tell you the title: Steve Jobs: Vampire. Bill Gates: Zombie.

To be fair, this was printed in the "Riff" section, whose overriding philosophy, so far as I've been able to tell, is letting people babble on about stupid shit, so it's not completely off base in that respect. Still though.

As Halloween approaches, we find ourselves awash in dead people. Lots and lots of dead people, though not all dead people are dead in the same way.

Some dead people are sexy, and other dead people are repulsive. Some dead people make teenagers swoon, while other dead people make grown adults hide out in dark houses, aiming their rifles out the window. Some dead people, in short, are vampires, and some dead people are zombies.

This is structured like a middle school essay.

The epidemic of both vampires and zombies in our culture has been widely noted, of course.

And yet, here we are.

But with “True Blood,” HBO’s vampire dramedy (and who could have guessed, even five years ago, that you’d ever see those three words together?)

Literally anyone, because those are three extremely popular things, and that is how the entertainment industry works: three popular things are combined to make one new popular thing and uncritical thinkers like this writer are fooled by the superficial appearance of novelty and write essays about it for the New York Times Magazine.

having just wrapped its fourth season and AMC’s zombie hit, “The Walking Dead,” staggering into its second season, it’s tough not to ponder the two different types of dead people.

I'm trying really hard to not ponder it, but I can't help it! It's just too tough! I'm tossing and turning in bed and I haven't slept in three days I need prescription drugs.

Vampires and zombies seem to reside at the polarities of our culture, telling us (almost) everything we need to know about (almost) everything in between.

There it is, (almost) the most reductive, meaningless sentence ever written.

For example: Vampires are smooth and charismatic. They drink blood as if it were the finest pinot noir. Zombies, on the other hand, are awkward and clumsy, yet un-self-conscious about the fact that their eyeballs are falling out.

Didn't you already basically say this in the second paragraph?

Vampires prance. Zombies plod.

Oh my God stop repeating yourself.

Vampires romance you, then strike quickly, then suck all your blood out of your body. Zombies chase you, very, very slowly, in a pack, then gnaw on your flesh like dogs. (Unless, of course, they are so-called fast zombies, in which case they chase you very, very quickly, then gnaw on your flesh like dogs.)

HOLY SHIT WE GET IT.

Vampires are solitary and antisocial and sleep in the ground. Zombies are extroverts, hanging out in big, rowdy clusters, moaning and shrieking, and apparently never sleeping at all.

Jesus Christ she's not going to stop.

Why do these sound like people I know?

Because you lack the intellect to appreciate or respect the richness and complexity of actual human psychology, and instead enjoy jamming the entire spectrum of personality into two insultingly reductive categories? Or because you're getting paid like a dollar a word by the New York Times Magazine to just talk for a while about popular things that will get easy pageviews? Quick! Say something about Millenials! Are we vampires or zombies? Totally vampires, am I right? I mean, Facebook! Gchat! Internships! Buzzwords!

Maybe because these two approaches to being undead mirror two very different approaches to being alive.

Rrearllg graayummun oggmmumm (sorry if you can't understand me it's because it's hard to talk with a gun in my mouth).

You’re either a vampire or a zombie, and it’s easy to tell which one.

The vampires are the narcissists, the artists, the experts, the loners: moody bartenders, surgeons, songwriters, lonely sculptors, entrepreneurial workaholics, neurotic novelists, aspiring filmmakers, stock traders, philosophy professors. The zombies are the collaborators, the leaders, the fanatics and obsessives: I.T. guys, policy wonks, comic-book collectors, historians, committee heads, lawyers, teachers, politicians, Frisbee-golf enthusiasts.

A couple things.

First, vampires are lonely and asocial? I don't think they are.

Ok. And then. Zombies. Are the "collaborators?" They collaborate with each other? That's what they do? I haven't seen a ton of zombie movies. But they WORK TOGETHER? They are SOCIAL? IS THAT RIGHT? I thought they were mindless hordes.

Ok. That. And. These categories don't even make sense. I mean, in any way. Vampires are lonely, neurotic artists and songwriters -- and then they're also stock traders? How can you put stock traders exactly in between aspiring filmmakers and philosophy professors and not realize you have no fucking idea what you're doing? And the zombies! Holy Christ! How can lawyers and politicians be the same anything as comic book collectors and fucking Frisbee-golf enthusiasts? There is no overlap there. I just checked the research and there has never been a lawyer and a Frisbee-golf enthusiast who have ever had a single thing in common in the history of civilization. Oh except they're both zombies. Because they're both collaborators. Both lawyers and Frisbee-golf enthusiasts are well known for their collaborations.

Even though zombies are generally less suave than vampires, they’re much more likely to join a group or rally a big crowd around a cause. Zombies go to raves, Burning Man, Grateful Dead shows and Occupy Wall Street rallies. Zombies embrace narratives that concern huge movements, sea changes, trends, critical events, paradigm shifts. They volunteer, form support groups and fixate on the Next Big Thing.

Zombies are idealists? That cannot be. They don't have minds. Please don't stare at the words "zombies embrace narratives" for more than a few seconds or you will go literally insane.

Vampires aren’t joiners. Vampires are internally directed, to the point of being self-indulgent, aloof and a little bit hedonistic. They live to please themselves. Vampires define the world based on what’s inside their heads and their hearts. They stay up late watching old movies, or reading books from cover to cover, or writing bad poems about how lonely it is to stay up late writing bad poems. You could never write “Twilight” about zombies.

Enough, seriously. I am dying.

A Few Famous Examples of Zombies And Vampires

Stephen King: Vampire. J.R.R. Tolkien: Zombie.

Sean Parker: Vampire. Mark Zuckerberg: Zombie.

Sid Vicious: Vampire. Bono: Zombie.

Steve Jobs: Vampire. Bill Gates: Zombie.

“Six Feet Under”: Vampires. “The Sopranos”: Zombies.

New York: Vampires. Washington: Zombies.

A-Rod: Vampire. Jeter: Zombie.

Twitter: Vampires. Facebook: Zombies.

Any reason why? Nope. Just keep on going. I mean, I can't even -- Jeter is a zombie? Because he's a collaborator, I suppose, or else because he is a comic book collector, or because he always goes to Burning Man, unlike his teammate A-Rod, who is an aspiring filmmaker and a lonely sculptor and a successful stock broker.

Why It’s Useful to Frame the World Through A Reductive Dichotomy, Based on Monsters

Hopefully the next section will be called Why This Shit Was Printed In A Magazine.

Awakening to this vampire-zombie polarity can feel like turning up the contrast on your cultural X-ray-vision goggles.

Well I certainly can't make any sense of this. I will mention that this is the second appearance of the word "polarity."

When Steve Jobs’s death prompted people across the globe to snap loving photos of themselves next to their various Apple-branded digital devices, referring to Jobs as a “member of the family,” the power of the vampire was on epic display.

...

Jobs was the quintessential vampire:

!!!

he followed an idiosyncratic path to personal fulfillment, then took his obvious talents for punk ideology and religious iconography and applied them to brand identification. How else could a bottom-line-focused capitalist be embraced as everyone’s favorite uncle? Compare that with the zombie Bill Gates, who, despite a profound commitment to charitable causes, consistently strikes onlookers as about as high-minded as Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons.”

Mr. Burns The Zombie, who was, of course, famously portrayed as a vampire.

The same forces seem poised to dominate the 2012 election. When Obama speaks, we hear the passions of a vampire, expounding upon the romantic ideals that formed his core identity.

Honestly I think the feeling of powerlessness I had reading this essay is probably exactly what it feels like to be inside a crashing airplane.

And ultimately, like any vampire, Obama trusts his own instincts and judgments over the consensus of his constituents.

I think this is false about Obama and vampires and maybe about constituents, I'm not sure.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is zombie through and through. For Romney, a practicing Mormon who often praises his father, identity is always determined by the group. Superiority born of patriotic or religious zealotry makes logical sense to a zombie, as long as it’s based on consensus.

No nothing makes sense to a zombie because they literally have no thoughts.

Zombies believe that the true meaning of life can be determined only by a collaborative crowd. In fact, zombies love the idea of bringing together an enormous group of the greatest leaders and thinkers of our day, breaking them into various committees and subcommittees, then having them systematically tackle the mysteries of the universe.

Again, this sounds a lot like Obama, so this is just stupid, and again, zombies are nihilistic killing machines with no thoughts, saying things like "zombies love [...] an enormous group of the greatest leaders and thinkers of our day" is the dumbest possible thing.

Some Famous (If Unlikely) Vampire-Zombie Teams

Dick Cheney (vampire) and Karl Rove (zombie)

John Lennon (vampire) and Paul McCartney (zombie)

Johnny Carson (vampire) and Ed McMahon (zombie)

Michael Jordan (vampire) and Scottie Pippen (zombie)

George Lucas (vampire) and Steven Spielberg (zombie)

Jay-Z (vampire) and Beyoncé (zombie)

Marx (vampire) and Engels (zombie)

None of these make any sense at all, obv.

But who will ultimately rule the world, zombies or vampires?

Vampires have an advantage at the outset, because they’re masters of seduction. While our first impulse might be to hide from zombies (as we hide from Facebook, and Microsoft, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the cops),

Facebook; Microsoft; Jehovah's Witnesses; the police: all the same. We all hide from all of them, especially Facebook, which has zero registered users worldwide.

our instinct with vampires is to invite them into our homes (as it is with sexy artists, talking Apple products, charming hitchhikers and the Marquis de Sade). Giving in to a vampire feels just like signing an iPhone contract: you’re titillated, sure, but you sort of know in your bones that you’ll live to regret it.

Just like it. Feels just like it.

That said, vampires are more easily disarmed: flattery, flirtation, a quick retweet — anything that caters to the vampire ego will do. Corruption and overindulgence will often take a vampire down, because vampires tend to put too much faith in their own urges and instincts.

Brought down by corruption, just like the legend of Corrupt Dracula.

For either vampires or zombies, the most important thing is to understand which one you are. When you get confused about your identity, you’re headed for a fall. Bill Clinton may have a zombie’s ability to memorize facts, but he’s obviously a vampire at heart. Despite Arianna Huffington’s zombielike aggregating instincts, no one but a vampire could beguile the rich and powerful into blogging for her free. Tiger Woods never would have fallen from grace had he listened to that stodgy inner zombie voice of his, rather than running with the vampire crowd.

Got that? Understand which made-up, contradictory, overlapping category you are.

If you marry a vampire, don’t introduce him to your friend’s teenage daughters. Or your housekeeper. Or that whole roasting chicken in your fridge.

Fuck you Hugo Lindgren for printing this. It's not like this shit isn't all over the internet in a million other places. Why do we need it here too?

1500+ words, one piece of information (Steve Jobs died).