T/S: Defamer v. Gawker

probably the worst site for those stories that i've read is LAist (don't know about the other "ist" sites)

Jalopnik and Deadspin are good reads IMO.

i liked gawker when it first came out, back when it focused mostly on the NYC publishing and media scene. otm tho gawker stalker was gross back then too.

love me some gawker

yeah, i don't want to be disingenuous, i probably read gawker too much for my own good

This was the most tone deaf thing I've read so far this year:

http://gawker.com/woman-who-sleeps-22-hours-a-day-craves-unhealthy-food-1678481884

This is a sensitive topic for me because my wife has a debilitating sleep disorder. It has ruined her life. And one of the challenges that people with sleep disorders face is that there's almost no public understanding of them, and a tremendous stigma around them. So here we have a Gawker writer mocking somebody with a debilitating disease, undermining its severity, like, "lol, you sleep 22 hours a day? who hasn't been there? I wish I got to sleep in all day!"

I just don't get the lack of basic sensitivity. I'm sorry, but if you can't understand how having to sleep 22 hours a day would completely torpedo even your most basic hopes and dreams, or your ability to live something resembling a normal, happy life, then you are a monster. The basic lack of decency/sensitivity our society extends to the disabled is utterly appalling, and I don't get how somebody could write this, or how an editor could allow this, without realizing how cruel it is.

Again, sorry to vent about all this, but lack of public awareness about diseases is a huge challenge that many disabled people face. Insensitive shit like this, as inconsequential as it might seem on the surface, can actually have a huge on people's quality of life, because it fans the stigma around certain conditions. I usually try to temper my outrage over stupid Internet content, but in this case it's actually making people's lives worse, so I feel the need to try to do something to correct it.

having been in the professional blogging trenches, i think in the grind you become a cross between joel mchale on the soup and jake gyllenhaal in nightcrawler

p4reene to reenter Gawker trenches btw

dan lyons seems not very bright and very un-gawker-like :(

Lyons, whose idea of a joke involves strikethrough text and whose idea of a lede is "Imagine a room full of these things,"

loool

i'm never ever #teampando but their piece on lyons was in very nice form http://pando.com/2015/01/18/dan-lyons-career-an-obituary/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/28/why-i-m-coming-out-as-a-christian.html

a fish a barrel and ilx

St. Ann O'Tate