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

totes

i wonder if ppl are combing ilx archives looking for something on either jord or max

I luxuriated in the thread where Chaki busts out the 'milquetoast kiss ass' slur. It's on The Church; happy reading everyone!

Part of me feels bad for J0rdan. He's always "pushed it" even by gawker's standards and clearly was encouraged to do this, and convinced by gawker's editors that invasions of this kind were a normal thing for journalists to do. Now he's crossed the line and even gawker writers are distancing themselves from the piece.

He's an adult of course and ultimately has pursued this life and is responsible for what he's published, but still.

Had pretty much this exact thought this morning.

― Something Called Fudge (Old Lunch), Friday, July 17, 2015 4:25 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ditto

im sorry if im irrational or coming off self righteous itt. it's upsetting and a reality shock that... people i've interacted with for years even on a tiny scale, that post on ilx, can pull this kind of stuff and my stomach is turning and my heart physically hurts and the world is shit.

jordan will be fine

Beyond all that, Gawker has an ongoing war with Reddit, owned by the magazine company for which the CFO works, which suggests this is part of some petty, vindictive drive for vengeance, with the CFO as collateral damage.

not that reddit doesn't deserve to be attacked for maaaaaaany fuckin reasons, but that g.g. point is otm in laying bare the what seems like the motivation for many gawker media exposes

Outing the CFO of their parent company will, I'm sure, have an earth-shattering effect on Reddit.

xxxps I don't think anyone needs to pretend JS is an innocent naif led astray - he's clearly known what his role was at Gawker and who he had to be to get the job. He deserves zero sympathy.

i think the weirdest thing to me about all of this is that the escort was stupid enough to think that geithner would (or even COULD) help him with his lawsuit, and even moreso stupid enough to try to play that hand before they'd even met up. like, as a shady plot it's just bizarre to watch a writer try to explain.

feel like all the beefs between these new media robber barons should maybe be settled through some sort of bracketed MMA tournament or something, i mean these ppl would prob rather kick each other repeatedly in various sensitive areas than post really good kinja (or insert your comparable blog format here) about each other given the chance

the escort v clearly has major mental health concerns

Another (v small, in comparison to everything else ) problem is that the article is really badly put together

xxp AMA tournament

xpost It sounds like the escort is mentally ill, so I don't really expect his role in this to make much sense.

The hogan one was positioned as an exploration of the online sextape phenomenon, this one's kind of breathlessly thrown together without any larger goal

xpost yah he's like preparing for the race war and is a 911 truther so...

too much time on ilx

is anyone really surprised that jordan would write something so disgusting? He's always been a nasty piece of shit.

can't quite parse the franco angle but the lawson tweet is interesting at least

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-womack/james-franco-gawker_b_7816032.html

xxxxp could have used an editor that's for sure

When the escort discovered the real-life identity of his prospective client – he’s the brother of a former top Obama official – he began blackmailing the CFO by threatening to expose him unless he used his political connections to help the escort in a housing discrimination case he had against a former landlord. Gawker completed the final step of the blackmail plot by publishing the text messages between the two and investigating and confirming the identity of the client, all while protecting the identity of the blackmailing escort

I'm still having trouble understanding the blackmail scheme. The first mention in the story of going to the press is this: "This afternoon, Ryan reached out to Geithner, because he felt Geithner deserved to know that he had gone to the press." I thought that in blackmail, you were supposed to threaten first, and then do it. At what point does he tell Geithner that he's *going* to go to the press unless Geithner helps him? Taking the story at face value, it reads more like an odd kind of revenge: you didn't help me, so I'm not going to feel bad about exploiting this situation to get my case mentioned on Gawker. I can fully believe that it was blackmail, but this part of the story is rather obscure and it's hard to tell for sure.

if we can hold off on diagnosing the sex worker that'd be cool

is anyone really surprised that jordan would write something so disgusting? He's always been a nasty piece of shit.

― Eric Burdon & War, On Drugs (Cosmic Slop), Friday, July 17, 2015 12:58 PM

damn son

nah jordan's a prince. i think working on the really trashy gossip side of things skews, churning out the stuff at a fast clip, you have to be pretty hard-nosed and cynical and perspective goes out the window. i don't he or max realized at the time what a huge fuckup it was

where is lag∞n

yeah i'm comfortable calling a stranger dumb but nothing about their brain beyond that without a doctor's note (xp)

his annual spirit quest ? xp

The article stated that the escort was suffering from PTSD, by his own admission. Maybe 'mentally ill' isn't quite correct, but it seems fair to say he's suffering from a mental health condition.

was wondering that myself xxxp

Maybe whether it was an ongoing extortion would depend on whether the escort thought he was still capable of stopping Gawker from publishing if Geithner, once made aware of their involvement, agreed to make some phone calls on the escort's behalf. That would have been a smart decision, because it's at least possible the story could have still developed into something closer to actual corruption or at least malfeasance involving a government employee. But while the escort claims Geithner belatedly acquiesced, there isn't even a screenshot as proof - given everything else about the story, why should anyone believe that he did?

That's why it was interesting to me that when defending the story in a private email to another journalist, max added one thing to the defense he made on Twitter (the one Greenwald and others demolished) - he personally vouched for Geithner's agreement in the scheme.

look no need to defend armchair diagnosing the guy... let's just not do it. his past does come into question as to why jordan thought it was a good idea to work with him though and the whole "they didnt realize it was this much of a fuck up!" thing speaks to their entitlement.

damn son

― (•̪●) (carne asada),

he's never been shy about his hatred of me and given me abuse. Karma.

unfair imo

i just mean, the mental state of the source isn't relevant tho, the article shouldn't have been published whether he was functional & lucid or floridly schizophrenic

i don't he or max realized at the time what a huge fuckup it was

― flopson, Friday, July 17, 2015 6:06 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

or, apparently, now

you're right, ps. just another "wtf were you thinking" aspect to the whole thing to pile on the rest.

xxp It will often be relevant to the question whether conduct met the legal definition of a crime met the definition of extortion, but I agree with your point otherwise.

maybe they will realise their mistakes and hopefully become better people out of it.

That's why it was interesting to me that when defending the story in a private email to another journalist, max added one thing to the defense he made on Twitter (the one Greenwald and others demolished) - he personally vouched for Geithner's agreement in the scheme.

Even if there was a screenshot of him "agreeing to the scheme," I actually don't think that's the same thing as actual, real corruption. In a desperate situation, telling a stranger blackmailing you that will try to talk to the president is many, many steps away from actually going to talk to people in positions of power.

I guess what I mean is, just because he told the person "blackmailing" him he would help, it doesn't mean he actually did help or was planning on helping. For all we know his next conversations were with his wife and his lawyer, or with no one at all.

That's a good point also.

if you have the stomach for it: chuck johnson (yes, the real actual worst guy on the internet) got a hold of the escort and he does indeed sound like a paranoid chemtrails infowars lunatic (politically, not on a mental health level)

johnson's take is that the whole conde nast story is a hoax but frankly i only skimmed it and won't be going back.

i should say, got a hold of someone claiming to be. chaki's pic up there does lend it some credence.

ftr i think a story like this hangs on the notability of the subject, and since he was not, there's no real justification.

i'm all for assumed hostility to anyone making more than x5 the median wage, and yet...

From this

Top Gawker editors and a number of other journalists, including some from The Huffington Post, were on hand at the party. One attendee, Capital New York’s Peter Sterne, noted in his site’s morning newsletter that Gawker editors were "glued to their phones" and seemed “genuinely surprised” by the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the story.

Feel like Gawker/Sargeant mixed up "we know who this guy is" with "this guy is a public figure whose personal life deserves serious scrutiny."

Gawker editors were "glued to their phones" and seemed “genuinely surprised” by the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the story.

feel like that's sort of a deeply resonant thing here -- these bros are legit surprised that everybody is repulsed by this, but instead of investigating that they're going to go straight into defensive crouch; they won't learn anything, everybody else will be stupid for their wrong ideas about what journalism is, etc etc

Grasping for a truth-to-power justification is just so tiresome; you're not Seymour Hersh in 1969, dudes

closer to Seymore Butts amirite

@petersterne
Scoop: Gawker is taking the Geithner post down.

well whaddaya know