Well, Lanier admits, in the past, "Internet idealists like [him]" felt that the whiny creatives demanding to be, like, paid for their digital contributions were going about things all wrong, as proved in a previous essay called "Piracy is Your Friend." Kind of like the old "the invisible hand of the market will eventually correct everything" theory.

But! "I was wrong. We were all wrong." Coulda told you that ten years ago, buddy.

"Idealism and hope are no longer enough... to help writers and artists earn a living online," he says, adding that "People happily pay for content in certain Internet ecosystems," citing the virtual marketplace of Second Life (he's also an adviser to its creator, Linden Lab).

This idea seems to be based on the "Radiohead method" which is that most people might sorta pay at least something if given the choice.

So can artists & creatives make money on-line after all? Is the honor system better than no system at all? In a word: Maybe!

On seeing the preview, I thought I could relate, a bit, to our heroine Hannah. (That's the idea, right? She's supposed to represent a generation.) And she's my age, and her job seems to basically consist of sitting around cracking jokes with her coworkers all day in a fake office, and she's bad at relationships. She can't break up with her going-nowhere musician boyfriend so he has to break up with her by saying "I'm just going to make this easier on you. I'm breaking up with you because you're breaking up with me." She then immediately starts dating a coworker, who seduces her by telling her how "bright" she is (though there's very little empirical evidence of this in the film). He finishes his spiel about how great she is by saying, "and that's why I go to work every day." Awww! EWWW.

This is when the movie started to strain credulity. For starters, the actress who plays Hannah, Greta Gurwig, is megahot, like a 9.5 at least, with fantastic tits, too. And the guy who plays her coworker-seducer, filmmaker Andrew Bujalski, is so irretrievably fug. Seriously, there's a scene where he's in boxers during which I was basically cowering under my seat. The moles on his back, my God! His man-teats! His TEETH! The notes I took during this scene read, in toto, "Omg dude is so fug. Omg his JEANS. I wish I had gone to see the Bourne Supremacy Ultimatum."

What strains credulity even more is that this repellently ugly dude eventually starts ignoring Hannah. He's, theoretically, distracted because a "New York agent" is a "fan of the blog."

"Oh my god, your blog's gonna be a book!" shrieks Hanna upon hearing this news. Ha, as if. This scene made the movie seem at least two years old. Anyway, maybe he's really ignoring Hannah because she's fucking annoying? There's nothing worse than when actresses try to convey "quirky and neurotic" by basically acting drunk or stoned all the time and trying to convey "incredibly naturalistic" by just taking forever to spit out a sentence. Here's a tip, indie filmmakers: sometimes, in real life, people are quite articulate! Maybe write a movie about those type of people.

Also I just think that the fetishization of "neurotic hottie" as a lady-type should be banned. Seriously, guys, Annie Hall was great but get over it.

At the hour and a half mark, the audience began to fidget as one as a predictable love triangle emerged. Eventually, an overlong set piece where people play the trumpet badly in a bathtub finally ended the film (of course, right?). There was one good speech Hannah has at the end, though—it's excerpted in the trailer that made me think I might like this movie. It's about how "Do you think having crushes on people is kind of manic? And after it becomes real it stops being thrilling." On the one hand, some people can't hear this often enough. On the other hand: Duh.

Because, here's the thing. Brownstone Brooklyn is pretentious and prohibitively expensive and full of self-righteous smug NPR-listening ultraliberals who are willing to get into a flamewar over a gender pronoun. But deep down, is there any other place you can imagine being an adult in this city? I kind of can't think of any. Those restaurants near there are yummy. Prospect Park is so nice. Brownstones are beautiful and I would like to live in one someday. I love dogs and babies. Babies are so cute! I'd like to have one. Not now! But someday. I like doing yoga and eating organic produce! I don't really care about cool bars. Cool bars are sort of lame.

So after you, or should I say "I," come to all these conclusions, the only reason left to hate Park Slope is that you're jealous of the people who can afford to live there because you assume that you'll never have the cash for a down payment on a Safran Foer-Krauss house. Ok, well. True enough! But why not just decide to yourself that, if living in a brownstone in Brooklyn is really what you want, you'll find a way to make it happen. That way, you can stop feeling hatred towards those who live there and schadenfreude towards the people who live there who embarrass themselves online and in print so regularly. [Ed. Note: Particularly if you take their brownstones from them!]

And with all the energy you won't be expending on hatred, you'll be able to focus your energies on, like, making wise investments or excelling in your chosen field or marrying rich or buying scratch-off tickets. Because, thing is? Living in Park Slope seems super fun and maybe even worth it.

The Park Slope Parent Trap [NYT]