WE NEED GIANT ROBOT!
Hands down, the coolest thing ever to happen to Yellow people’s pop culture is Giant Robot Magazine.
Think of it this way: On this day 16 years ago, there was no glossy print publicasian featuring rising Asian/Asian American artists or filmmakers or writers or toymakers or skaters or bands. There were not yet hilarious Asian YouTube Stars, no awesome slant-eyed bloggers. Asian and Asian American pop culture certainly existed–but most of us couldn’t touch it, taste it or claim it.
Giant Robot was founded during the summer of 1994. And for the last decade and a half it has, with the slimmest of operations, given Asian right-brainy creasians their due merit and venue. Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong work their asses off (aided by a handful of equally rad staffers) to put out a class-A product every single month–reminding each of us every day how totally killer our peers are, and how fuckin’ cool it is to be Asian. They did it before anyone else did, and they continue to do it better than anybody else does.
Here comes the crappy news: Right now, Giant Robot is hurting. And they’re reaching out.
You can argue that hey, it’s 2010, and the world is shifting to Kindles and blogs (ahem) and Twitter and poorly-spellchecked digital news and Hulu; it’s the digital age and change is not only inevitable but neccessary. We should let these old media institutions die with dignity, as we would with pandas and VHS tapes!
But we say: FUCK THAT.
If we can’t find a way to support GR, we’re telling them that it’s okay to make sacrifices–it’s just ASIAN stuff, just WHO WE ARE, after all. It’s merely our creative girth, our essence, our rightful place of distinction on magazine stands and in the art spectrum. If the magazine loses its print abilities this year, it means we’re perfectly satisfied as niche, talking to ourselves in web acronyms, fleeting cultural visitors in an ephemeral world. Let Condé Naste and all of its ivory-skinned royalty revel in old media. We clearly can’t sustain it. Let’s all move on.
Is that really what we want to say to Eric and Martin? Perhaps we’d prefer to say–in the wise words of Golden Girls theme song scribe Andrew Gold–”Thank you for being a friend!”
Donate to Giant Robot here.
If donasians ick you out, just buy some stuff at the GR stores: (LA, SF, NYC or the webstore). Cuz like, all that shizz is cool!
[GR: Giant Robot Magazine Needs You]
Filed under: Blogs, Culture Vultures, Death of Print Media, Donasians, Down Economy, Due Merit, Eric Nakamura, Giant Robot, Giant Robot Needs You, Giving Back, Godfathers, Goodbyes, GR, Martin Wong, Pop Culture, Print Publicasians, Sadness, Save Ourselves, The Art World
There are so few media outlets that are uniquely Asian American. Giant Robot absolutely deserves support! So says the white girl.
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by klyushka: save giant robot !! RT @disgrasian: WE NEED GIANT ROBOT! http://url4.eu/1JFfR...
Yikes this sucks! I wonder if the Hyphen crew ever worked with them. Wonder why these two magazines didn’t merge as one. Seems like same style and audience. I’m not sure if I’ve been to the SF store but I’ve been to the LA one and it’s super neat. Would hate to see it go out of business.
it’s been a while but i’m subscribing once again.
I always thought adverts from the likes of Toyota and other heavy hitters could carry a magazine. Sadly, that ain’t the case. I’ll go and grab a copy today.
Nice.