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

Gotta sober up after all those drinks with gr8080 this wknd wooo party lol!

the way max broke his twitter silence was interesting, can't tell if he's quoting plies

https://twitter.com/max_read/status/622119321620381696

maybe he'll tweet all your good posts, but I don't think you can just post something with no text

― lil dork (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, July 19, 2015 12:32 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

good one!!!

can't tell if he's quoting plies

lmao

J0rdan has already posted in the thread about him and max and 77. No speculation required.

i think the underlying theme behind all of this is class. gawker's position being the story is justifiable because anything goes against a member of the elite.

elites obtain enormous financial and legal privilege via exploitation of ordinary citizens, so it is at least reasonable to assume ordinary privacy rights do not apply to them. the controversy surrounds the definition of elite. because it was tim geithner's brother, and not someone directly in public view, he is presumed to be held to the same privacy rights as ordinary citizens. gawker's argument is that elites come in all shapes and sizes, and regardless of being under the public spotlight this is still a person who thrives in the criminal capitalist market & deserves to be pegged down a notch (however possible).

the story is justifiable because anything goes against a member of the elite

... and their families.

unto the seventh generation

http://defamer.gawker.com/louis-c-k-will-call-you-up-to-talk-about-his-alleged-s-1687820755
― See the Belz up in the sky, somebody cancelled SVU (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Saturday, May 16, 2015 9:31 PM (2 months ago)

I desperately want that to be bullshit but it doesn't seem likely, alas.
― fuck me, archipelago (Simon H.), Saturday, May 16, 2015 9:37 PM (2 months ago)

it's not
― J0rdan S., Saturday, May 16, 2015 9:55 PM (2 months ago)

We had no means of verifying Jason’s claims directly. He said the women he knew had told him they wouldn’t come forward, citing C.K.’s reputation and power in the comedy world. The two members of the comedy duo who were supposedly subjected to the Aspen jerk-off incident wanted nothing to do with the story then, and did not respond for comment when contacted before the publication of this post.

We’ve reached out to C.K.’s rep about these allegations and are awaiting word back.

Have you been sexually harassed by Louis C.K., or do you know someone who has? Have you heard rumors of the sort? If so, please leave a comment below or contact me at jor✧✧✧@gaw✧✧✧.c✧✧, anonymity guaranteed.

is now a bad time to ask how the research for the follow up to this article is coming along?

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/OAnkxbOyfm0/maxresdefault.jpg

The work continues

more like

http://kingoftheflatscreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/11324884_519865994835883_1448528504_n.jpg

i think the underlying theme behind all of this is class. gawker's position being the story is justifiable because anything goes against a member of the elite.

I've this logic bandied about, and I think the idea that revealing the secret personal habits of the wealthy is empowering or helpful to "ordinary citizens" on any level, or will have any effect on social inequality, reveals a worldview that is pretty shallow and naive.

Beyond this, Gawker itself is not exactly a merry band of proles, and a fascination with elite dirty laundry seems to me to be basically the flip side of modern wealth and celebrity worship.

J0rdan has already posted in the thread about him and max and 77. No speculation required.

― Something Called Fudge (Old Lunch), Sunday, July 19, 2015 2:26 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ah i missed this. took a minute to find it too since i assumed you meant it was on 77 and not a thread about 77 on MRF. i guess i miss a lot by looking at the individual boards instead of SNA.

Beyond this, Gawker itself is not exactly a merry band of proles, and a fascination with elite dirty laundry seems to me to be basically the flip side of modern wealth and celebrity worship.

that's underscored by the self-contradiction of natasha v-c saying both "no, I LOVE amy pascal! She's a queen!" and "oh was i mean to the powerful millionaire film exec? sorRY!" when getting shit over posting her amazon purchases

Beyond this, Gawker itself is not exactly a merry band of proles, and a fascination with elite dirty laundry seems to me to be basically the flip side of modern wealth and celebrity worship.

― intheblanks, Sunday, July 19, 2015 1:45 PM (6 minutes ago)

yep.

I kinda forgot the Louis CK thing began with a blind item. The Jen Kirkman thing is harder to dismiss imo.

Did Kirkman not walk back the apparent implications of her comments once they were seized on, from vague-but-ominous to "he hit on me while still married"?

Idk I know she deleted the podcast

One thing I had no idea about re: gawker was the James Franco stuff. I don't know how he's put up with it so well.

_i think the underlying theme behind all of this is class. gawker's position being the story is justifiable because anything goes against a member of the elite._

I've this logic bandied about, and I think the idea that revealing the secret personal habits of the wealthy is empowering or helpful to "ordinary citizens" on any level, or will have any effect on social inequality, reveals a worldview that is pretty shallow and naive.

Beyond this, Gawker itself is not exactly a merry band of proles, and a fascination with elite dirty laundry seems to me to be basically the flip side of modern wealth and celebrity worship.

Obv otm and we all know that wealthy editors-in-chief that try to argue this line are actively lying, what's nuts is seeing idiot defenders get all "eat the rich!! (except entertainers who should be protected from the court of public opinion)"

Some of the actors in the happening were high middle class I guess

This is what I was thinking of (the second excerpt, below the jump)

http://starcasm.net/archives/318469

you know what I mean, not the shyamalan film xp

I think the idea that revealing the secret personal habits of the wealthy is empowering or helpful to "ordinary citizens" on any level, or will have any effect on social inequality, reveals a worldview that is pretty shallow and naive.

IMO that kind of gossip only helps to protect the truly wealthy and powerful by focusing the public's attention and resentment onto celebrities who are merely kind of rich and not at all powerful.

You can almost see a gross pattern forming between the Pascal and Geithner articles. Both target people who could be read as "liberal" (powerful woman in hollywood / Obama connections) and smear them in a reactionary way, using information obtained by a criminal, while seemingly trying to insulate the publication from criticism by presenting the homophobia through a gay writer and the misogyny through a female writer. I don't know, maybe that's a leap. The specifics and results of those two articles are quite different but I can't help but feel like they spring from the same world view which is somewhat more complex than simply being "for the clicks" or "we print it cause it's true."

And in both cases they tried to protect the criminal information source and blamed the victim. With the Sony hack stuff they helped perpetuate silly conspiracy theories that it wasn't actually the NK govt and anyway Sony deserved it because their security sucks. And in the Geithner article they kept the source anonymous and implied that Geithner deserved the blackmail and outing because he was a "married c-suite executive of a major media company fucking around on his wife."

IMO that kind of gossip only helps to protect the truly wealthy and powerful by focusing the public's attention and resentment onto celebrities who are merely kind of rich and not at all powerful.

but the whole line of argument is "this person is not a celeb, and so this is not newsworthy otherwise well fair game".

so some of my discomfort is "well, if rich executives who don't seek the public eye explicitly are not considered 'newsworthy', maybe they should be?"

like to me in some sense, the idea that people with a certain amount of money will as a matter of course fly hookers out to vegas and pay them thousand of dollars for weekend flings, that's sort of interesting and... maybe not what people think of the world?

imho it does inspire sort of a "burn babylon burn" reaction but i know that also comes with reactionary moral ideas as well. it feels like the intention is "they tell us this is wrong, but then they go do it." and you say "but is a cfo who i've never heard of one of 'them'?"

and this is where, in a sense, my answer is... yes?

now see if you'd just said "idgaf how they get the rich and powerful, get em" people wouldn't have been repeatedly telling you to go fuck yourself

does being a rich white person in america have any correlation at all with homophobia? Since when does a "c-suite exec" imply "they tell us this is wrong, but then go do it?"

Since when does a "c-suite exec" imply "they tell us this is wrong, but then go do it?"

"they" = "anybody one feels like not affording the basic standards of decency one would otherwise afford to fellow human beings"

it's a massive and deeply convenient category, "they"

but the whole line of argument is "this person is not a celeb, and so this is not newsworthy otherwise well fair game".

srsly

xp I thought that was 'them' shit I've been punching all the wrong ppl up

nah darraghmac them's good people and you owe them an apology

lol nobody apologises in July 2015 u just sound ridiculous now

at best, now I mean at best, somebody with more class/sense than I will remove the relevant posts and then (as I understand it) I get to have a tantrum.

darraghmac you joked that you'd been apologizing to "them" instead of "they" and I riffed further on that joke, it actually had zero to do w/the thread otherwise and was an in-context joek, do keep up. perhaps if I'd've all-capsed THEM or something but one has one's pride

ouch,punsplained

http://www.betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Them.jpg

c-suite

http://bitterempire.com/on-social-media-culture-and-the-hellscape-of-writing-in-the-era-of-new-media/

saw that linked on facebook, hard to argue with

will gawker editorial be resigning en mass in the morning y/n? when you've beat the streets and put in all the hard work finding reliable sources to out someone, having the philistines upstairs shove him back in the closet the next day is a v. serious breach of the sacred firewall between editorial and biz. and if you lose yr journalistic integrity, well, what have you got left really

I don't think there are enough PR and marketing firms hiring to absorb Gawker editorial, so probably not.

http://adamweinstein.tumblr.com/post/124342415120/goodbye-to-all-that-gawking

this made it sound like the low number of abrupt public firings at gawker is due to them usually giving people the chance to quietly make other arrangements and slowly slip out the door, so i'm guessing we won't really know whose future at gawker was effected by this until some time has passed and it's easy to put 2 and 2 together

Apart from anything else, Gawker probably considers ex-Gawker employees sufficiently notable to eviscerate, which might keep the number of tell-alls down.

if this article was published and pulled from any other site, though, Gawker would have run 3 posts in the past few days digging into the author's personal life, possibly with info gleaned from ilx posts

Well the career prospects of any of the key players here aren't exactly likely to have improved in the last three or four days.

xp nose's post sums up my biggest problem with Gawker: using progressive politics as a moral smokescreen for trash journalism. The approach isn't "we believe in social justice and these are the tools we're using". It's "we're a gossip site and we need excuses to gossip". At least the paparazzi don't pontificate about holding the elites to account. I remember Jordan justifying posting some nasty rumours about Wayne Coyne's divorce on Gawker because Coyne had just offended people over the headdress thing. One has nothing to do with the other. It was just an excuse.

kinda disappointed in my man lag∞n -- in whom i place a fair bit of trust media-criticism-wise -- focusing on the definitions of blackmail and extortion, which are, after all, essentially beside the point. as is par33ne's series of tweets arguing that it wasn't done for pageviews because happy fluffy stories are what earn clicks

do u think it should have been posted?

― mookieproof, Friday, July 17, 2015 8:12 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha i was just distracted by greenwalds extremely lawyerly habit of throwing whatever extremely stupid shit at the wall just to see what sticks, which boxall joined in on because... lol lawyer

imo i suspect theres an argument to be made that this story is newsworthy because it falls under the commonly reported category of "crime", which is not to say that i personally wouldve reported this story, but i prob wouldnt have the stomach to report a lot of stories that are totally normal and universally morally defensible, also i am not a reporter so who even knows what that feels like

in answer to yr question i guess im like not totally sure but expressed as a percentage id say im at 90% this story shd not have been published, i have some sympathy for the whole exposing the seedy playground of the rich and powerful, but its hard to ignore how nasty and petty the whole thing is particularly the outing

cldnt believe this thing broke right as i was gonna be offline for an entire weekend lol

i will say i find the universal piling on gawker in general to be pretty incurious and lacking in insight and perspective

Welp.

http://gawker.com/tommy-craggs-and-max-read-are-resigning-from-gawker-1719002144