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

every page just a picture of a politician or director, captioned with delightful morbsian wordplay

When Justine left me that evening to clear out her desk she only got as far as the lobby of her office building before she collapsed on the floor in tears. Later we talked again. I told her what Sam Biddle had said - about how she was probably fine now. I was sure he wasn’t being deliberately glib. He was just like everyone who participates in mass online destruction. Who would want to know? Whatever that pleasurable rush that overwhelms us is - group madness or whatever - nobody wants to ruin it by facing the fact that it comes with a cost.

‘Well, I’m not fine,’ Justine said. ‘I’m really suffering. I had a great career and I loved my job and it was taken away from me and there was a lot of glory in that. Everybody else was very happy about that. I cried out my bodyweight in the first twenty-four hours. It was incredibly traumatic. You don’t sleep. You wake up in the middle of the night forgetting where you are. All of a sudden you don’t know what you’re supposed to do. You’ve got no schedule. You’ve got no …’ she paused, ‘… purpose. I’m thirty years old. I had a great career. If I don’t have a plan, if I don’t start making steps to reclaim my identity and remind myself of who I am on a daily basis, then I might lose myself. I’m single. So it’s not like I can date, because we google everyone we might date. So that’s been taken away from me too. How am I going to meet new people? What are they going to think of me?’

xp just make it a tumblr and they'll shell out a 6 figure book deal in like a month or less if it gets viral attention

then denton will notice the pageviews, have a minor apoplectic fit and gawker will write a post critical of it

we google everyone we might date

is this really true?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jacquishine/its-a-shame re ronson

http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/list_item/morrissey-20101202/morrissey.jpg

"We Google Everyone We Date"

googling dates pretty common here in the U.S., especially among the ladies

amazing what sort of trouble you can dodge when you find out someone is single because they assaulted their ex

as something to pivot a discussion off i dont exactly see a prob w/ jordan's post: that it was something ppl were talking about kinda makes it newsworthy afaict

why were people talking about it can provoke a question that goes in virtually any direction, reflexive or otherwise. It's no surprise that this stuff happens of course so why is it notable to ppl? i think that's an interesting question & putting gawker in the crosshairs seems to ignore that there are ppl who thought it was notable in the first place

it also didnt inspire a virtual mob trying to ID and feather the kid so i dont get the overprotective concerns either

we're the only ones that posted it

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, April 14, 2015 4:00 PM (2 hours ago)

yeah its obv not the kind of news story a traditional org would post ... that's not really meaningful tho

putting gawker in the crosshairs seems to ignore that there are ppl who thought it was notable in the first place

these two statements seem to be contradictions. if no one else wrote about it presumably gawker was the only org to think it was notable.

he's talking about the ppl who found it interesting on i.e. social media

or clicked on the article once it manifested

oh, well i sorta agree that gawker is mostly symptomatic + not the source of the illness. they're a click-driven enterprise so they give the ppl what they want. some of this is a self-feeding loop tho, and i'm not sure moral nihilism should be an excuse.

I was a white teen and I'm not sure if I'll be ok

oh, well i sorta agree that gawker is mostly symptomatic + not the source of the illness. they're a click-driven enterprise so they give the ppl what they want. some of this is a self-feeding loop tho, and i'm not sure moral nihilism should be an excuse.

― Mordy, Tuesday, April 14, 2015 5:46 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what is the problem you're diagnosing? (This an argument in defense of the article no?—that as a symptom it offers the first step towards a diagnosis)

I haven't watched the video, is it J0rd in it?

its a 5 hour video of jord karaoking drakes entire catalog and yelling out FRIEND in place of every nword

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jacquishine/its-a-shame re ronson

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, April 14, 2015 6:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

good read on why ronsons personal anxiety is maybe not the best compass to guide him through the shame wars

btw i heard a radio ad for online reputation management in the barber shop the other day lol

― lag∞n, Tuesday, April 14, 2015 11:05 AM (7 hours ago)

interesting NYer article recently mentioned these reputation companies

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/29/solace-oblivion

Fucks sake things being notable on social media is not interesting

Virality is the most basic online life form. It's not interesting!

wouldn't you say by definition it is interesting to those ppl who are interested in it

like it is quite literally the definition of something interesting: ppl find it interesting

whether its good or bad or boring that they find it interesting can be the point of the discussion provoked by the article

Ok you've expanded the definition of interesting to LITERALLY EVERYTHING fine

Also "finding viral things interesting" is pretty much written on the lintel of ILX.

tbh I think lex is unshameable due to his public persona and I salute him for it

eh ppl in publications just use social media as a test case for what subjects are liable to be scalable to their wider audiences, its more scientific than, idk, intuiting the intrinsic nature of a story, then you end up like the cigar chomping hollywood fatso like "I dunno what she's got, but she's got IT!" about some movie starlet

this is assuming of course that the publications understand that just bc people are interested on social media doesn't mean u automatically understand why or how—might not be the intended purpose...etc

lol the kid is singing but drake... is not https://vine.co/v/eupn0FMLiJ7

White Kid Caught Ecstatically Typing "hollywood fatso"

Also "finding viral things interesting" is pretty much written on the lintel of ILX.

― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, April 14, 2015

new board desc plz "finding viral things interstng"

Fucks sake things being notable on social media is not interesting

Virality is the most basic online life form. It's not interesting!

this isn't true. certainly a lot of things that happen on social media aren't noteworthy -- "teens don't know who [x person] is!" is boring and useless, for instance. but you can't run, or contribute to, a meaningful news-based website without paying attention to what people might be talking about on social media. it's the job of the modern journalist (in certain positions and roles) to figure out how to sift thru and package those things so that you produce work that reaches an audience and does so in a way that is, well, good.

but idk that seems self-evident to me

idk we have had enough random shit in threads that showed up on gawker later that I think gawker could do "ilx things intersting"

your inner neetzan got u hired for sure

lol "moral nihilism" from a cheerleader for an apartheid state

hey now we're talking about true evil in the world here, not the israel/palestine conflict, Morbs

morbs : D

i was much more offended by j0rd's post calling Joan Rivers a gay icon

neetzan is the wrong analogy. i don't have an inner neetzan.

it's more like: gawker -- and any good publication -- exists as a place for its writers to write about things they find interesting. my twitter feed is tailored to show me things i think i might find interesting. there is not a direct connection between the two but sometimes my twitter feed shows me something i find interesting enough to put on gawker dot com. if several people on my twitter feed are talking about one thing i might consider if other people will find it interesting, too, and sometimes i put something on gawker dot com, though in the large majority of cases i do not.

or in other words: deej otm

tbh it feels more like spectacle and shaming whereas maybe your real vibe on this kind of post is "we are this dude"

don't become an editor

i think about three years ago i got into this argument with jordan and his suggestion to me was, go read a newspaper
that's worked out pretty well for both of us so I am recommending it as an answer to anyone who takes issue with gawker

bonus: i'm consistently knocking out the friday nyt xword

^BRAGGIN '15^

c'mon. if you deal in the blood of a person's reputation, at least expect repercussions. in fact, own that shit. internet's picking up heat on a call for jordan's head on this post, and can you blame them? it comes with the territory. all the successful tabloid people i've known have had ice in their veins, real motherfuckers. if you can't own that shit, get out of the game.

lol if you think i didn't expect the exact response that the post got

did anyone reach out to get comment from the kid in question?

xps to forks that's a pretty good way of looking at it, I mean you engage with the sites that are properties of new media robber barons and you should m/l know what you're getting into- some of it will be entertaining and funny, some will be legitimately valuable, some will be petty trash or worse; you read papers and other straight up news properties and you prob get boring news w/ another set of potential issues

(insert devil's advocate "newspapers are compromised/dying/trash sometimes too" caveat here)

I think j0rdan has been pretty forthcoming about what he was doing w/ the post, like what he was trying to convey, obv there's a pure clickbait aspect to it on some level but this is Internet writing so what does anyone expect and on that level dude is just doing his job

the blood of a person's reputation ... who afaik no one has identified or seems interested in identifying

if he ends up ID'd it's more likely it'll be from someone interested in making a "point" about media shaming ppl than it would be someone actually trying to shame the kid

i suspect, anyway. i think you guys think there are a lot of people interested in exposing a kid who sang along with the n-word at a concert and while i'm sure there are a lot of people put off by it or annoyed by it or seeing it as a reminder of an entire society of injustice, i doubt many of them thing it's worth the time to track down this kid to make an example of ... that's like some anti-Political-Correctness paranoia IMO.

Also I think ppl trying to ascertain Jordan's specific underlying motives are doing a disservice to this argument, or are only picking up on it bc he is here to respond (more than he needs to IMO). As it relates to the great argument, um, death of the author & all that