I Cheated on Tracks with BeachGrit and the Comments Section Ate Me Alive

"There was the serious critic, the authority, the wild one, the encourager, the discourager, the jealous one and the hate-filled and resentful one. The one thing they all had in common was that they were self-appointed."

I have just had my first real online postmodern experience. Which has both surprised and fascinated me. Seeing as Tracks magazine, for whom I have been a freelance contributor for almost 40 years, has reduced publication from monthly to quarterly, I have found I have too many articles and stories for the magazine.

​It’s a very tense time in publishing. It’s tense everywhere. Editors don’t want to alienate half of their already diminishing audience by being seen as on one side or the other of the current political divide.

Being a longtime fan of South Park, I found myself wishing there was a juvenile, irreverent and controversial publication I could send some material to.

Of course, I thought, BeachGrit.

​For me, BeachGrit had been emblematic of something akin to the Tale of Two Bondis. There was the Bondi I grew up in, represented by Luke Kennedy at Tracks, and then there is whatever Bondi has evolved into, represented by Derek Rielly.

When I was last living at the city-side beach five years ago, bumping into Luke or Derek was a bit like seeing someone from the past or the future. Luke has been a Bondi boy all his life, whereas Derek was swept ashore more recently, from Glamorama, I imagined.

I also thought Derek looked a little like an alien, in a good way, and wondered whether he might be a cryptid. I’ve always liked that there is plenty of room for both down at the beach. We’re the capital of diversity, don’t you know?

​Obviously, both editors are good surfers, but far more interestingly, they’re both great writers.

But while Luke seemed to me more like a New Testament character, Derek seemed to me like a figure from the Book of Enoch. While both could be seen cruising the waves, the promenade, and perusing the shelves of the Hall Street book shop, Gertrude and Alice, Luke appeared to me like his namesake, the Luke of the Gospels, while Derek described himself to me perfectly as a wannabe George Hamilton.

​Having just had a review I had written about Fred Pawle’s provocative new documentary The Heart of Sharkness rejected, for being too controversial, and considering it an important film, I decided to fly the coup and send it to a few other publishers. All of whom said they were excited to read it and watch the film, none of whom are now returning my emails.

What weird times we live in, I thought, remembering the Hunter S Thompson quote, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

​I felt uncomfortable telling Luke a few weeks ago that I was thinking of sending a story to BeachGrit. To me, it felt like I was being ungrateful, almost like sleeping around.

Truth be known, I felt a little dirty.

But knowing Derek well enough to recognise this as his preferred state, I thought this might be a nice fit. Predictably, Luke said he understood that I was writing a lot and needed to get my stories published somewhere.

​So, I sent Derek the nine-chapter Jaws-like fictional story I had just completed, with a one-sentence synopsis.

“It’s called The Freeport Feeding Frenzy and is about a Ballina-like town where four shark attacks occur in one day, and then the media descend, which is when the real feeding frenzy begins.”

He responded, “I love it,” and starting the very next day, he published a chapter online every day.

​And this is where this story begins. For the first time in the forty years I have been paid to contribute to publications, I have found myself subjected to a comments section. It’s not something I hadn’t heard of, but as I said, it wasn’t something I had experienced.

​Without going into the actual comments, many of which were hyper-critical, it didn’t take me too long to realise what was happening. The commenters wanted to be a part of the story, and were writing themselves into it, the only way they knew how.

Who amongst us wouldn’t like to be superimposed onto history?

To be honest, the frame grabs from Jaws Derek is using along with my story online make me feel like I worked on the actual film, fifty years ago. They were coming up with dialogue any screenwriter would be proud of.

But more than that, they had cast themselves as actors in the play, and they were performing perfectly.

“I’m not an extra! I’m one of the stars of this movie!” they shrieked, albeit subconsciously.

​Presciently, I had finished writing the story the day before the double attack in Crowdy Bay, ironically, where the story was geographically set. But what really made it an interactive self-fulfilling prophecy was the way each of the commenters who superimposed themselves on the developing story interacted with each other, in a baby-oil-drenched, orgiastic fashion, like a P. Diddy freak-off of neglected or forgotten child stars.

And, fascinatingly, their co-dependent behaviour was determined by each other.

​There was the serious critic, the authority, the wild one, the encourager, the discourager, the jealous one and the hate-filled and resentful one. The one thing they all had in common was that they were self-appointed.

No one pays that gig. Discussions ensued, encouraging each other to write any of the many stories or articles they had been threatening to write but not got around to. How delicious.

​A couple of my favourites are as follows.

​Gravy: Fuck this shit. Can I submit my short story, Only Cowards Cry For Shark nets? It’s written by me, also a nobody with no credentials in the field, but I am a coward so I am close to the subject matter.

​Rich Marx: The cool thing about using fiction to argue policy is that you can just make stuff up.

​Bob: “What’s with the Webber family shark attack fetish? Something going on there.

​Chazz: With any luck the shark will eat the next six chapters.

​Deek: Aagh, Fuck, it just keeps coming back, again and again and again! Not the shark…this fucken story.

​The Bitchy Crab: You don’t like? I think paced well, very life like etc.

​Deek: Alright, alright, I’ll read it then.

Perfection. A character directly from the pages of the story he was commenting on that he admitted to not having read. 

Life doesn’t get any better than this.

And we’re only halfway through!