hey gawker dudes. what the fuck is wrong with you?

is scocca a stodgy asshole republican, or just stodgy in general? i didnt know anything about him personally, just liked the on smarm piece a lot

Pando has one of the weirdest "About" pages:

http://pando.com/2012/01/16/why-i-started-pandodaily/

As a founder, I have a personal goal that’s just as important and just as core to our culture: I do not want to sell this company. I have opened nearly every meeting by telling potential investors and potential employees this, so I guess readers should know it from the beginning as well.

Of course, there’s the caveat that if someone calls me tomorrow and offers $1 billion, I might cave. I do have investors after all, and everyone has a price. And I’ve been around enough entrepreneurs to know the journey changes you in ways you can’t expect. I’m as aware as anyone this resolve might soften over time.

Nah he's probably a solidly liberal white dude from an upper middle class background

His writing is just fucking awful, that's all xp

dayo must've missed the internal cool kids club memo that it's ok to like on smarm

Or maybe dissing ON Smarm is how I got into the cool kids club in the first place *runs hand through hair*

Pando has one of the weirdest "About" pages:

http://pando.com/2012/01/16/why-i-started-pandodaily/

― polyphonic, Saturday, February 21, 2015 5:53 PM (29 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is legitimately odd

Gawker's community is occasionally fantastic. I mostly read Deadspin and Jalopnik for the comments. However, both websites have fostered their respective communities for years. I really like Magary's posts too.

I don't care too much about the other websites. I find the content on io9, Kotaku, and Jezebel horrifying so I actively avoid them. I used to read Gawker more but have stopped for unknown reasons. However, I know News Feed didn't help. I'll still read posts from people I know and such. lagoon's Google Glass post ruled, for example.

I just skimmed the Gawker front page and it reminded me of the Reddit front page. The top post is a photo of a red panda. I don't think Gawker is for me anymore. And that's fine (except for this mystifying post http://gawker.com/the-real-thing-1687200510). It isn't like the Internet is absent of content.

You're welcome for this hot take.

“One time I said to a guy that, ‘I loved learning new things. I’m a bit of an infomaniac.’ And he thought I said NYMPHOMANIAC….so he fucked me. And I said ‘No, no no…I said INFO. I’m an INFOmaniac’ And he said ‘Well, here’s some info…you just got fucked. Clean yourself up.’”

― iatee, Saturday, February 21, 2015 11:15 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is really funny btw it's just less funny written down

thx allen!

what gawker is missing is new heads of product and data

agree 100%

pando totaly sounds like some site for plushies

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B-ddl3FCEAA0CAO.png

taylor swifts dog

Cats! Cats.

Does she even have a dog??

lol idk prob

Taylor had 2 Siamese-Tabby mix cats called Indy and Eliehsen who didn't like anyone else in her family apart from Taylor. She has also had two dobermans called Bug and Baby. Currently, she only has two cats named Meredith and Olivia Benson.
On Twitter she has posted pictures of her cats with funny things written on the pictures.

"has also had"- so she no longer has two dobermans called Bug and Baby? what happened to them?

She ate them

http://i.imgur.com/SRaHprP.jpg

They ate her and now operate what's left of her body, panto horse style

wow lag00n was a cowboy itt.

at least we can all agree the ny times is sleazy, except maybe for benbbag lol.

i dont think the times is sleazy idk like if there are things that all orgs that do that are bad it might say something more abt the environment in which they are operating and what they need to do to flourish rather than like that the people are bad

wow lag00n was a cowboy tedious internet addict itt.

sorry bam i have to cyberbully u now

you have to go outside

um hello i have already been outside once today

I was outside once to go get coffee and read my blogs but I forgot to buy food and now I'm eating dinner and reading ilx and have to drive home in the cold

i was outside once, never made that mistake again

I once had to chase the pizza delivery guy and few steps outside my door because he left without giving me my 2 liter Mountain Dew. My legs hurt for weeks.

i once went outside and became lost, never again found my way home. i am currently gnawing voles and communicating via pilfered iphone from beneath a freeway overpass outside burlington, vermont. i do not recommend it.

pray for contenderizer

Curious what dayo's issue is with on smarm. Don't know that it's a flawless essay as much as it is a useful one from the perspective of making an intellectual case for ppl not dodging the issues

"On Smarm" is incoherent trash. The author cherry picks examples of people who have written about or mentioned "snark" and and based on these snippets pretends that there's a consensus of negative sentiment that people have for "snark," or that there is an authoritative tone floating in the ether that gives the appearance of consensus, when it's clear to anyone who's heard the word or seen it in print that it's often an approving way to describe one's own or another's sense of humor and overall sensibility.

His definition of "smarm" is unwieldy and cannot be summed up in a sentence that an average English-speaking adult could understand; it doesn't match the dictionary definition of the word, and I think you'd be hard-pressed to find an English corpus with entries predating "On Smarm" that upheld the author's definition in any way. His attempts to shoehorn smarm's more tradition definition of, basically, smug unctuousness, doesn't really fit the horoscope meaninglessness of his paragraph long definition of smarm that he is trying to use to unsuccessfully to describe the tone of Julavitz and Leland and others in the new sincerity school of journalism or whatever you wanna call it. As a demonstration of how flexible and all-purpose his definition is, I will quote it here to characterize "On Smarm":

("On Smarm") is a kind of performance—an assumption of the forms of seriousness, of virtue, of constructiveness, without the substance. ("On Smarm") is concerned with appropriateness and with tone. ("On Smarm") disapproves.

A so-called "snarky" tone is definitely not a reaction to the above definition, as the author claims. A snarky tone is for being humorous or irreverent or ironic. A snarky tone might be used to disguise the weaknesses in an argument or to punch up a piece (or post) lacking substance. A snarky tone might even be a mere habit, but it's never a retaliation against an attitude or an intellectual pose.

If somebody objects to something, we absolutely live in a culture where openly objecting is just as socially acceptable as it always was, if not moreso. Dave Eggers is not the first asshole to say, eg, try writing a poem before you criticize one, and we don't need this overlong, creaky, poorly-constructed new media jack off sesh to remind us that everything is open to criticism by everyone. On the other hand, the Julavitzes are right to at least ask themselves and their readers what is the purpose of criticism, to say, for instance, that a descriptive criticism is more useful and edifying and sometimes even more entertaining than a judgmental criticism; and although there's room to disagree, "On Smarm"'s author is too foggy a thinker to mount that disagreement convincingly. He's also too priggish and goddamned smarmy and too full of shit to publish that article without looking like a hypocrite.

Dodging what issues? Are buzzfeed commenters and authors politicians caught in a scandal? Do they owe the public more than any other content farm? Do they owe the public anything at all? Are people really incapable of sniffing out bullshit, of seeing that their new media pastime is basically 21st century toilet reading? If one content farm has an editorial code of conduct that the "snarky" disapprove of, does that prevent another content farm from cannibalizing the same story from reddit or the chans or their tip inbox or wherever they're copying it from and putting it in the house style?

testify

i think the scocca article is good at identifying a certain mood, or cluster of ideas and rhetorical tendencies, which hadn't been named before. "smarm" seems as good a name as any other.

however, bamcquem otm that "snark," or kneejerk sarcastic dismissiveness, is a dumb reaction to eggers-style sanctimonious anti-intellectualism.

sometimes in the morning a bit slow just clicking on bookmarks without looking at what they are bump into that 1000 word bamcquern screed and am pretty sure i couldn't have bookmarked a thread where that would happened but here i am i guess, gotta be more careful with this shit mondays are hard enough already right?

Landmines could be anywhere. Cambodian cleaning lady missing her jaw and has a prosthetic leg. No one is safe.

that one was prob in cambodia tho

sometimes in the morning a bit slow just clicking on bookmarks without looking at what they are bump into that 1000 word bamcquern screed and am pretty sure i couldn't have bookmarked a thread where that would happened but here i am i guess, gotta be more careful with this shit mondays are hard enough already right?

http://www.chinafile.com/sites/default/files/styles/system/public/assets/images/books/system/beijing_welcomes_you_tom_scocca.jpg?itok=DSaGPvxb

Curious what dayo's issue is with on smarm. Don't know that it's a flawless essay as much as it is a useful one from the perspective of making an intellectual case for ppl not dodging the issues

― deej loaf (D-40), Sunday, February 22, 2015 10:28 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

I don't really have strong feelings about the topic matter I haven't been beaten by the smarm police

I just think he's a bad writer, awful is maybe overstating it

He mistakes labored over concision for profundity

You can see the bite marks on his sentences, where they've been gnawed

His words don't work. There's no rhythm

That's just how I feel.

Agreed

i know i shouldnt contribute to this thread but i think dayo should take a long look at the ppl agreeing with him and consider if those are the people he wants to agree with

gawker has a whole subblog for pokemon?

http://pocketmonster.kotaku.com/

no, it's a whole subblog about my penis

smarmander

http://kotaku.com/the-best-pokemon-cosplay-1683899139/+patriciahernandez

Dylstew
I think I fell in love the first time I saw this one.

Forsaken18er
She's definitely captured my heart. Didn't even need to use a pokeball.

Zom-B
The only one that I'd say is in here based solely on attractiveness. I mean, outside of the hat, she could be any chick in a Vice Dos and Don'ts.

mistressjellyfish
I agree, I don't know why everyone is saying hers is the "best". This is one of the most effortless of them all, honestly she's mostly just a pretty face and a good body compared to the effort of some of the other costumes.

Zom-B
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/dnd/1210...

Essentially, she's a cute girl in a cute outfit. I guess a hat = cosplay now?

the worst thing about kotaku are the dudes that review pedo anime statuettes and japanese candy and shit http://kotaku.com/dead-or-alive-is-more-than-breasts-1686627572#_ga=1.187729133.416047259.1422305690

i know i shouldnt contribute to this thread but i think dayo should take a long look at the ppl agreeing with him and consider if those are the people he wants to agree with

― max, Tuesday, February 24, 2015 10:25 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

I'm fine with it tbh, I know that flopson likes me in plenty of other contexts (i l u flopson ;) )

I mean look if you're all into rewritten DFW with some sort of weird ten-word-per-sentence limit that guts what makes DFW good, go ahead?

Maybe another way to look at it is that I'm fine with what he's saying he's just saying it very poorly