THANK YOU! I started skimming after the second tortured metaphor about “flashing your Casper”. The article’s point is just fine - it’s supposed to be a bit of awkward navel-gazing. I think the meandering style works, too, for this kind of article.

He’s building a brand, ok? Getting his name out there. Last week he got 63 stars. God, just, you DO NOT get how hard it is, and how hard he works. Why won’t anyone appreciate it?

Came down here to say this. That was some seriously overwrought prose about a white girl’s self-reflective trip to eat barbecue.

So many wasted words. So many cul-de-sacs. So much SERIOUS patting-self-on-back.

Mostly: So much, “I, the enlightened liberal white person, am the real victim of this.”

I agree, the writing was awful and went in circles.

Dude shh we are supposed to compliment her for liking James Baldwin and hating when girls play basketball (?)!!

This really accurately describes how I feel. Grossed out, Jez.

Man completely agree with that. I just kept thinking, why did you support the business with your money? I also was wondering the point of those epic asides.

Yeah. It’s godawful. It’s just remarkably bad, overwrought writing. I see from the byline that she’s a PhD student, which is alarming.

“I know I just bought into this guy’s race-baiting scheme but then I read some books written by black people, so it’s ok, right?”

I can’t fucking believe it either. Oh, so you paid these idiots and then sat there feeling guilty about it? Riveting stuff.

Don’t worry; she made herself feel better afterward by checking out some James Baldwin books, cause reading a guy who wouldn’t have even been allowed inside the building when he was alive makes it all okay.

This was the weirdest piece. So pretentious and schizophrenic.

And then wrote a barely readable essay about it.

Thank you. What a bunch of pointless, anti-climactic navel gazing with absolutely nothing interesting to say. It reads like a college freshman’s first semester essay.

Interview people going in and out of the restaurant. Do a highlight/review of other BBQ restaurants in the surrounding area. Instead, she went and paid and ate, and purchased a meal for someone who didn’t even go with her? I’m not really sure what the point is?

Wow, do you think so? I thought it was MFA nightmare writing.

You. Gave. These. People. Money. So, you say you are tortured about the ignorance and discrimination of your past and the world that these people live in. To show us that you gave them money to reward them for this bullshit and wrote a piece that made YOU money. What is it that you expect? Do you really want a liberal…