Unsolicited praise for sportswriter Jon Bois -Kate Wagner for theBaffler
June 20, 2019 12:36 PM Subscribe
For all the Bois bois (and everyone else, too) on Metafilter - unabashed praise for a transcendent sportswriter. Kate Wagner does a great job diving into what makes Bois something special.
"his work brings together sports and art, sports and media culture, sports and history, sports and creative nonfiction, sports and fiction-fiction. Armed only with a high school diploma and a computer, Jon Bois renovated the genre of sports writing for the internet age. "
" As a cultural critic, most people only get to hear about what I hate, and few ask me what I like. Well, I like the work of Jon Bois."
Maybe the most impressive thing about Bois' body of work is that you can write a piece like this that covers a bunch of different reasons he's great, looking at multiple video series, experimental fiction, etc., and never even get to the fact that he's fucking hilarious.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:59 PM on June 20, 2019 [15 favorites]
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 12:59 PM on June 20, 2019 [15 favorites]
He's pretty good
posted by Reyturner at 1:02 PM on June 20, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Reyturner at 1:02 PM on June 20, 2019 [5 favorites]
I like it when people i like like other people I like.
posted by q*ben at 1:05 PM on June 20, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by q*ben at 1:05 PM on June 20, 2019 [7 favorites]
ctrl-f "beeftank"
0 results
Every word Wagner writes is a good and correct one, but she needed to write at least one more.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 1:11 PM on June 20, 2019 [17 favorites]
0 results
Every word Wagner writes is a good and correct one, but she needed to write at least one more.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 1:11 PM on June 20, 2019 [17 favorites]
Examples of Bois' humor work on MeFi previously: The perfect game of baseball; Breaking Madden and its second season; NBA Y2K; the GIF oracle.
And one that's not from MeFi but I have to promote whenever I get the chance: Do not do a balk please
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:12 PM on June 20, 2019 [11 favorites]
And one that's not from MeFi but I have to promote whenever I get the chance: Do not do a balk please
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:12 PM on June 20, 2019 [11 favorites]
This is good but I find it super weird that a piece of this nature—especially one that calls attention to the fact that Bois' work is "inextricable from the internet as medium"—does not once link to any of pieces it discusses.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 1:35 PM on June 20, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 1:35 PM on June 20, 2019 [4 favorites]
17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future is a transcendent piece of speculative fiction that remains one of my favorite things I've read on the internet in the last five years.
posted by yasaman at 1:50 PM on June 20, 2019 [19 favorites]
posted by yasaman at 1:50 PM on June 20, 2019 [19 favorites]
I'm partway thru 17776 and really enjoying it. And I can't stand football or football culture.
posted by a halcyon day at 2:14 PM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by a halcyon day at 2:14 PM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
Didn't put it together until now but Wagner's got the description of the aesthetic right.
Q : What if vaporwave gave a shit about people? A : Jon Bois.
posted by suckerpunch at 3:05 PM on June 20, 2019 [9 favorites]
Q : What if vaporwave gave a shit about people? A : Jon Bois.
posted by suckerpunch at 3:05 PM on June 20, 2019 [9 favorites]
I enjoyed Breaking Madden but I think it was his Eulogy for Radio Shack that made me a fan.
posted by davros42 at 3:47 PM on June 20, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by davros42 at 3:47 PM on June 20, 2019 [5 favorites]
This is good but I find it super weird that a piece of this nature—especially one that calls attention to the fact that Bois' work is "inextricable from the internet as medium"—does not once link to any of pieces it discusses.
I was going to make a funny link here to one of the old Baffler's cranky remarks against the internet, but of course they haven't put any of them on the internet. But I remember one of them (down in the tiny type on the digest's copyright page) that said something like "We've been asked when we're going to ditch the past and hit the Information Superhighway. We think we'll stay parked right here where at least we've got the double-wide paid off."
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 4:36 PM on June 20, 2019
I was going to make a funny link here to one of the old Baffler's cranky remarks against the internet, but of course they haven't put any of them on the internet. But I remember one of them (down in the tiny type on the digest's copyright page) that said something like "We've been asked when we're going to ditch the past and hit the Information Superhighway. We think we'll stay parked right here where at least we've got the double-wide paid off."
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 4:36 PM on June 20, 2019
Oh wow she is the creator of McMansion Hell!
posted by brainwane at 5:06 PM on June 20, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by brainwane at 5:06 PM on June 20, 2019 [2 favorites]
Every so often I think about a particular line in 17776 that has stuck with me to this day (though, until just now, I'd misattributed it to a follow-up piece Bois had written about 17776, rather than the work itself):
No other creature in the universe woke up every morning knowing it was guaranteed to die one day. Just us. Nobody should have to live with that. It's too much, it isn't right. No one ever should have had to bear it.
It breaks my heart on a regular basis.
posted by chrominance at 6:18 PM on June 20, 2019 [6 favorites]
No other creature in the universe woke up every morning knowing it was guaranteed to die one day. Just us. Nobody should have to live with that. It's too much, it isn't right. No one ever should have had to bear it.
It breaks my heart on a regular basis.
posted by chrominance at 6:18 PM on June 20, 2019 [6 favorites]
Jon Bois might be my favorite artist making any kind of art right now. I agree that he is a genius and I also feel like really protective of him in he way I felt protective of my favorite alternative music bands when I was 13 or 14. I anticipated part 2 of the Bobs video more than any record release I can remember. My dream job would be writing database queries for his shows. I get nervous showing my friends his videos because I know I will think less of my friends if they don’t totally love his videos like I do.
What is my point? I don’t know but I am actually really stoked that someone is doing something that I can STAN SO HARD and it’s a good feeling.
posted by capnsue at 6:24 PM on June 20, 2019 [5 favorites]
What is my point? I don’t know but I am actually really stoked that someone is doing something that I can STAN SO HARD and it’s a good feeling.
posted by capnsue at 6:24 PM on June 20, 2019 [5 favorites]
I'm still hoping for a Chart Party about the Google Form he created to ask for food recommendations in various European cities.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:21 PM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
please fill out this form i made if there’s a restaurant in London, Paris or Lyon you love, or if you just enjoy vandalizing forms. thank you!At one point there is an unlabeled, 8-point LIkert scale for no reason. Dying to know what the top pick was.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 7:21 PM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
whenever I need to laugh til the tears literally go down my face, I go back to the first Jon Bois thing I ever sa, the legendary, infallible GIF Oracle.
It's not the GIFs themselves (though they're great), it's the writing of his setups. Go ahead, go down the rabbit hole.
posted by martin q blank at 7:57 PM on June 20, 2019 [3 favorites]
It's not the GIFs themselves (though they're great), it's the writing of his setups. Go ahead, go down the rabbit hole.
posted by martin q blank at 7:57 PM on June 20, 2019 [3 favorites]
i still await, forever and undying, for bois to repost the pretty good about the near nuclear apocalypse that was taken down for copyright infringement or some such bullshit. to see it is my white whale.
posted by wibari at 8:49 PM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by wibari at 8:49 PM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think about 17776 literally every day.
I do not understand or enjoy football even a little.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:36 PM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
I do not understand or enjoy football even a little.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:36 PM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
While in principle I understood that people who crunch sports stats for fun are just as nerdy as any other kind of nerd (and I don't say that in a bad way), it still blew my mind when I watched sports comedy videos in Jon Bois articles that featured Cocteau Twins music.
posted by Bugbread at 9:36 PM on June 20, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Bugbread at 9:36 PM on June 20, 2019 [3 favorites]
As someone who runs in sportswriting circles, I want to say that there are plenty of fantastic writers out there who are nominally sportswriters but have been responsible for some of the best writing over the last few years (nobody has managed to capture the essence of Donald Trump like David J. Roth, for instance). I will however freely say that it's no secret that Jon Bois is the best and has been since the days of "The Dugout."
posted by HunterFelt at 3:27 AM on June 21, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by HunterFelt at 3:27 AM on June 21, 2019 [2 favorites]
Hunter S. Thompson started out as a sports writer. I can't wait for Jon Bois's second act!
posted by sjswitzer at 10:42 AM on June 21, 2019
posted by sjswitzer at 10:42 AM on June 21, 2019
everyone thinks burger king is so great because they make the burgers for everyone. well guess what? you have to pay money to get the burgers. that’s how they get ya
His twitter account is fun.
posted by good in a vacuum at 3:03 PM on June 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
His twitter account is fun.
posted by good in a vacuum at 3:03 PM on June 21, 2019 [1 favorite]
Wow. Just found out, 17776 is really something!
posted by ovvl at 8:15 PM on June 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by ovvl at 8:15 PM on June 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
« Older Hack the planet! Err, Moon. | as with anything that goes mainstream, something... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by cgc373 at 12:53 PM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]