VICE Learns What GamerGate Always Knew: Gawker Sucks
Well, you can’t say we didn’t try to warn them. For months we’ve told anyone who would listen about how shit Gawker was. We couldn’t find one single media ally. In fact, a media that had been largely critical of Gawker for years, suddenly got silent when it came time to lend GamerGate a helping hand. That would have meant admitting we were right about something. We did have a mountain of recent reporting, but no one would jump in, and help us finish the job in the here, and now. Instead, outlets like VICE piled on us, and refused to listen. Now that Gawker stabbed them in the back with a bogus report, they want to go on the attack. Better late than never, I guess.
In an article titled “VICE to Gawker: Fuck You and Fuck Your Garbage Click-Bait ‘Journalism” the media outlet finally went at the corrupt Cayman Islands Crook, Nick Denton:
“Gawker, a gossip site that openly traffics in rumor, innuendo, and in many cases straight-up bullshit, and whose founder, Nick Denton, has been slapped with a class-action lawsuit by former interns for violating federal wage laws, recently published an inaccurate and irresponsible story about VICE’s workplace. The story is abysmal “journalism” even by Gawker’s standards, relying on a handful of disgruntled (and of course off-the-record) alleged ex-employees, some of whom reference VBS.tv, a website that hasn’t existed for more than four years. Gawker has been actively trolling for these sources since at least February of this year, when they published a post on their website hoping to draw people into collaborating with them.”
Long story short, Gawker is still peddling shit reporting, and VICE is fed up with it. Although, let’s face it, VICE is also shit. These are the same people who spent weeks misrepresenting GamerGate right along with the Cayman Crook. Personally, I hope they tear each other to shreds. I will kick back with the proverbial popcorn and watch the shit fly. Although I guess if I’m put on record, I want to see Denton burn first. That piece of trash has no business at the head of a major media outfit.
Nick Denton must be placed on the witness stand and asked if he had anal sex with young boys in England. He must be asked the age he was at, and the age of the boys at the time of the anal and oral sex he engaged in. He must then be asked if ever met, or socialized with any of the attackers that have been identified in the British Elite pedophile “Hydrant” investigations. He must be asked if he was aware of any of those young boys coming to harm. He must be asked about his involvement in the British tabloid hacking scanda. Confirming witnesses, who are available from that time period, must then testify. This will certainly clear up the whole matter.
Gawker Sucks
Speaking truth to cesspools
It’s been a fun couple of days for Gawker haters.
First, on Sunday, HBO’s Girls revealed that Lena Dunham’s character Hannah—in the midst of a pseudo-sociopathic episode in which she couldn’t muster up any feelings for a close acquaintance who died earlier in the episode, worrying only how his demise would impact her book and then faking an emotional response to please her boyfriend, Adam—revealed she is a commenter at Gawker and Jezebel.
Adam—who has evolved into the show’s voice of reason—is appalled that she is getting updates about her friend’s demise from the Internet’s trash heap.
“You’re getting your news from Gawker?” he asks, horrified. “Okay. When you die, how would you feel if a bunch of judgmental creeps—celibate against their will—snarkily reported on every-fucking-detail of your body decomposing?” Hannah interrupts, saying “that’s not what’s happening” and then unironically rattling off the horribly snarky things Gawker wrote about her dead friend as if they were a nice eulogy. “That’s fucked, Hannah,” Adam replies. “Those are a bunch of jealous people who make a living appealing to our basest desire to see each other kicked while we are down.” Hannah then talks about Gawker’s sister site, Jezebel, as a sort of safe place where women can get away from slut-shaming and the like—especially ironic given that site’s recent breathless exposé of the photoshop touchups applied to Dunham’s photo shoot for Vogue.
In a couple short minutes, Dunham (and episode co-writer Judd Apatow) both nailed and destroyed the ethos of Gawker Media. It was pretty fantastic to watch.
Then, yesterday, Quentin Tarantino announced that he was suing Gawker Media for disseminating copies of his unreleased screenplay, The Hateful Eight. I’m no fancy big city lawyer and Gawker is sure to hide behind the First Amendment—as if aiding in the illicit distribution of someone else’s commercial works is a legitimate function of the press—so the case may amount to nothing. But it seems pretty clear cut to me: Gawker served as an intermediary for the distribution of someone else’s copyrighted material, material that he had announced he planned to put on sale at some point in the relatively near future. It is unclear to me how Gawker Media’s actions are materially different from, say, Napster circa 2000 when it was sued out of existence for facilitating the illicit downloads of copyright material.
Who knows. I’m kind of hoping Copyhype’s Terry Hart weighs in; he’s one of the smarter defenders of copyright out there.
Regardless, it’s been a tough couple of days for dickheads on the Internet. And that’s always something to celebrate.
(Tarantino Photo Credit: Potatojunkie via Compfight cc)
Gawker Hates on “Ask A Mexican” – the people at Gawker are Racist
Posted by tshirts in Gawker, Gawker Media, Gawker.com, mexican, Racist.
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its a sad day when you have a jewish media owner allowing The guys at Gawker to post up cute and cuddly racist remarks.
Gawker.com is Jealous of Perezhilton.com
Posted by tshirts in Gawker Media, Gawker.com, Perezhilton.com.
2 comments
Gawker.com is Hating On Perezhilton so Bad its not funny
you can also see that every guy posting a response is anti Perezhilton and a Gawker lover.
blogger Perez Hilton‘s tome on gossip and how to get “thousands of dollars worth of swag” from publicists. (Hello, IRS! He’s so going down like Al Capone!) – gawker.com Perezhilton.com get more traffic in a day then Gawker.com gets in 5 months.
Gawker Media properties inserted in copyrighted material
Posted by tshirts in copyrighted material, Gawker, Gawker Media.
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Gawker Media gets traffic with copyrighted material?
I find this bit even more interesting, a YouTube user named ‘belowtheradar’ is posting others’ copyrighted material — but with brand advertising for Gawker Media properties inserted. For example, a clip about the Lite-Brite-challenged city of Boston recorded from a local NBC affiliate has a pre-roll ad for Gizmodo, one of Gawker Media’s blogs. The race is on to figure out who belowtheradar is and what connection that person has to Gawker, if any. [mediabattoir]
wonkette.com Plays the Cute And Cuddly Racist Card
Posted by tshirts in fear-mongering, Racist, wonkette.com.
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wonkette.com for the past months has tried to push there agenda on ever story:
this is an example of the B.S and fear-mongering they post about the Mexican People.
George W. Bush has made a semi-secret pact to combine Mexico with the United States and soon all our children will be speaking Spanish from beneath a burqa.[wonkette.com]
wtf? wonkette.com is always fear-mongering.
wonkette.com Pro Israel Bias Showing Hard
Posted by tshirts in Gawker, JEWS, Jimmy Carter, Nick Denton, wonkette.com, Wonkette.com Pro Isreal Bias.
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The Bias News from wonkette.com
1.)According to CNN, “Israel-hating ex-president Jimmy Carter” and his wife Rosslyn have been entrusted with the physically demanding job of bringing the dead body of pretend president Gerald Ford to Michigan, where it will be put under the snow in a solemn ice-fishing ceremony.[Wonkette]
2.) jimmy-carter-hitler-without-all-the-shouting < attacking Jimmy Carter for speaking out against the crimes Israel commits.
Former President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter is more or less a doddering old man who means well. But when he accidentally mentioned the nearly unmatched influence of AIPAC on American politicians and gave his new book a vaguely controversial title and kinda sympathized with Palestinians, he made a lot more enemies than just dudes who hate houses for poor people. Specifically, he angered the Jews, who control the media.
The rest of it is accusations of “ignoring the Holocaust” and “emboldening the terrorists” and shit like that but we prefer the idea that Prof. Konner is genuinely terrified that Carter will actually show up at his suburban Atlanta house and blow himself up on the front lawn or something..
BTW wonkette.com is run buy a Jewish Guy named [Nick Denton] not that it matters that he is Jewish but you can see that anyone that says anything negative about Israel is attacked on that blog and other Gawker Media websites.
Gawker Gadget Blog Misleads Readers?
Posted by tshirts in Gawker, Gizmodo, Misleads Readers.
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“Gawker Gadget Blog Misleads Readers To Hype Traffic” –psfk.com
Last week saw the Gizmodo gadget blog mislead its readers into thinking that Apple would be launching its mobile phone today. Writer Brian Lam carefully avoided the use of the word Apple in an mysterious sounding post about the launch of a ‘iPhone’ that only said, “I guarantee it. It isn’t what I expected at all. And I’ve already said too much.” The post spawned a frenzy on other blogs and in the media. Even community geek site Digg was fooled as over 1700 Diggers rushed to Digg the article. Meanwhile competitor gadget blog Engadget remained silent.[gawker_gadget_b.html]
The Death Of Gawker
Posted by tshirts in Gawker.
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Here’s an interesting blog post (and graph) about Gawker.com getting CRUSHED by Perez Hilton (a one-man show) and TMZ (AOL’s gossip blog). Even PopSugar has caught up to the struggling Gawker.com. — www.calacanis.com
Everybody Sucks
Gawker and the rage of the creative underclass.
How Gawker Only Hires The Mentally Deranged
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Typographic Illustration by Alan Dye
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At the risk of sounding like a wounded old-media journalist, let me share a story about my experience with the media-gossip blog Gawker.com, which I, like most journalists who cover stylish topics in New York, have read almost every day for five years. In addition to recently finding attacks on some of my female journalist friends—one of whom was described as slutty and “increasingly sundamaged”; another variously called a “tardblogger,” “specialblogger,” and “developmentallydisabledblogger”—as well as a friend’s peppy little sister, who was put down for wanting to write a “self-actualizing screenplay or book proposal or whatever,” I woke up the day after my wedding to find that Gawker had written about me. “The prize,” said the Website, “for the most annoying romance in this week’s [New York Times] ‘Vows’ [column] goes to the following couple,” and I’ll bet you can guess which newly merged partnership that was. It seems that our last names, composed of too many syllables, as well as my alma mater, Wesleyan; the place we fell in love, Burning Man; our mothers’ occupations as artists; and my husband’s employer, David LaChapelle—in short, the quirky graphed points of my life—added up to an unredeemably idiotic persona (the lesson here, at the least, is that talking to the Times’ “Vows” column is a dangerous act of amour propre). Gawker’s commenters, the unpaid vigilantes who are taking an increasingly prominent role in the site, heaved insults my way:
“Grigoriadis writes for New York Magazine. Her last article was entitled, ‘You Too Can Be a Celebrity Journalist!’ With that kind of work and the newfound fame that comes with a Times wedding announcement, she’s on the fast track to teaching a class at The Learning Annex.”
“Sorry, but I’m obsessed with these two. The last names alone? They have nine vowels between them. And can’t you see it when they have their painful hyphenated named children? Does anyone out there know them? Please offer up some stories. Perhaps their trip to Nepal, or her internship with Cindy Sherman. I need more…”
“Those two are such easy targets they have to be made up. C’mon, Wesleyan? LaChapelle? The immigrant artist parents? No two people could be that painful.”
“Immigrant artist parents=house painters.”
Are we ridiculous? Perhaps a little, and I was contemplating this, nervously, when I got a call from my new mother-in-law, who had received the news by way of a Google alert on her son’s name. She was mortified, and I=pissed: High-minded citizen journalism, it seems, can also involve insulting people’s ethnic backgrounds. I felt terrible about dragging my family into the foul, bloggy sewer of Gawker, one I have increasingly accepted as a normal part of participating in city media. A blog that is read by the vast majority of your colleagues, particularly younger ones, is as powerful a weapon as exists in the working world; that most of the blog is unintelligible except to a certain media class and other types of New York bitches does not diminish its impact on that group.
Like most journalists, I tend to have a defeatist attitude about Gawker, dismissing it as the Mystery Science Theater 3000 of journalism, or accepting its vague put-downs under the principle that any press is good press. After all, there aren’t lots of other news outlets that cover the minutiae of our lives, and we’re all happy for any smidge of attention and desperate for its pickups of our stories, which are increasingly essential to getting our work read. The prospect and high probability of revenge makes one think twice about retaliation. Plus, only pansies get upset about Gawker, and no real journalist considers himself a pansy. But there is a cost to this way of thinking, a cost that can be as high as getting mocked on your wedding day.
Nearly five years ago, in December 2002, Gawker made its debut under the leadership of Nick Denton, the complicated owner of the blog network Gawker Media, and Elizabeth Spiers, a 25-year-old banker turned blogger who was fragile in person but displayed a streak of dark cunning on the page. They didn’t exactly invent the blog, but the tone they used for Gawker became the most important stylistic influence on the emerging field of blogging and has turned into the de facto voice of blogs today. Under Spiers’s aegis, Gawker was a fun inside look at the media fishbowl by a woman who was, indeed, “snarky” but also seemed to genuinely enjoy both journalism and journalists—Spiers was a gawker at them—and took delight in putting out a sort of industry fanzine or yearbook, for which she was rewarded with fawning newspaper articles casting her as the new Dorothy Parker. Ironically enough, Spiers craved a job at a magazine. She soon left for a position here, at New York Magazine; two subsequent Gawker editors, Jesse Oxfeld and Jessica Coen, have followed in the past year.
To be enticed, as these writers were, by the credentials extended by an old-media publication is a source of hilarity at the Gawker offices, where, beneath a veneer of self-deprecation, the core belief is that bloggers are cutting-edge journalists—the new “anti-media.” No other form has lent itself so perfectly to capturing the current ethos of young New York, which is overwhelmingly tipped toward anger, envy, and resentment at those who control the culture and apartments. “New York is a city for the rich by the rich, and all of us work at the mercy of rich people and their projects,” says Choire Sicha, Gawker’s top editor (he currently employs a staff of five full-time writers). “If you work at any publication in this town, you work for a millionaire or billionaire. In some ways, that’s functional, and it works as a feudal society. But what’s happened now, related to that, is that culture has dried up and blown away: The Weimar-resurgence baloney is hideous; the rock-band scene is completely unexciting; the young artists have a little more juice, but they’re just bleak intellectual kids; and I am really dissatisfied with young fiction writers.” Sicha, a handsome ex-gallerist who spends his downtime gardening on Fire Island, is generally warm and even-tempered, but on this last point, he looks truly disgusted. “Not a week goes by I don’t want to quit this job,” he says, “because staring at New York this way makes me sick.”
