I really dislike Slate magazine. This piece about the sexual habits of writers got me thinking about why I dislike Slate so much.→[More:]I always feel dirty after I read something in Slate. The pieces there are really annoying because they aspire to a kind of knowing, culturally informed worldview that I imagine Slate's editors think is shared by an educated, upper middle class readership. But I find that the actual quality of Slate's articles falls far short of Slate's pretensions. It partakes of a really unseemly, almost prurient interest in vapid topics at the margins of educated culture. For example, this Mason Currey fellow who is writing (excerpting?) a series of articles on "Daily Rituals" I guess indulged in by famous artists. These pieces are fueled by such a cheap voyeurism and curiosity, they're embarrassing. Like I said, I feel like I need a shower after reading this dreck. There's just something so tawdry about Slate's prurient patrolling of the culture in search of something juicy and some way to make worthy topics into something vapid. Slate reminds me of a two-faced kid who is sort of on the margins of the popular crowd who milks his position on the margins to pass tidbits from the lives of the popular kids to the unpopular kids, a kid who is despicable for his constant rummaging through the leavings of other people for stuff to make him feel accepted and worthy.

Slate is just so cheap and tawdry.