Gawker

What happened to all of those cunts?

New work more suited to their talents

Dl and TPTB sure hate people who really care about the truth.

I loved Gawker. Remember when the internet was fun?

What is Gawker? Was it like a blog?

I still go back to read the old stuff on their website. I hate Hulk Hogan.

Gawker's snark was the best. It grew too big too fast and some very questionable people were put in charge while the owner had his head up his own ass. The hubris of the leadership was Gawker's downfall.

All they should've done is to frame the release of the Hulk Hogan sextape as a valid piece of reporting about Hogan's hypocrisy. Instead, they acted like entitled frat house douchebags high-fiving each other for their attempt to humiliate Hogan not realizing they played right into Peter Thiel's hands.

nasty queen peter thiel killed it

Does anyone renember this debacle: A psychotic gay porn star/escort claimed David Geithner, brother of then Treasury Secretary, had hired him....and Gawker ran the story? He was married at the time.

I will never forgive Gawker ... well, its offshoot Jezebel ... for thrusting upon us Lindy West.

One of her classics:

I was quoted twice on gawker form postings on the DL

R4 These are the rippling effects of censorship. And yet you all bey for it anyway.

I used to get all my news from Gawker. Now I get it all from you bitches here. FML 😭

One of their writers, Ashley Feinberg, is now at Slate and has produced some great, Gawker-ish works, such as digging up Mitt Romney's secret Twitter account.

They threw an odd party at the now defunct gay bar "the Post". took the bus in and did all kinds of crazy things that only NYers coming to philly do. I'll admit it was the only time I've closed that bar.

[Quote]while the owner had his head up his own ass.

More accurately, wasn't Nick Denton's head in a pile of cocaine? Whatever became of him?

R12, remember that terrible article Lindy wrote about Hurricane Sandy not affecting her any and how, like, she felt so like bad about it n stuff?

She even said there wasn't much coverage about Hurricane Katrina so why is there so much about Sandy? It was the dumbest damn thing, it was 24/7 Katrina coverage at the time and she was too stupid and self-absorbed to have even noticed it, apparently.

She got so much shit for it that she got the article removed from Google search engine results and eventually deleted from Jezebel altogether, and you can't even find the old tweets about it, Twitter has removed those from the search results too. Just to protect her from justified criticism.

Gawker was bad, but never Lindy West levels of bad.

I could not stand her writing style, either which was sprinkled with !!!!! and was just very over-the-top, r19. She tried way too hard.

^^ excuse misplaced comma

R19 this title stayed with me because it was so extra. She was like nails on a chalkboard.

A lot of Jezebel writers were annoying (but they occasionally had interesting pieces -- nothing like Gawker though). I haven't been over there in years. I'm not sure what it's like now.

r10 David Geithner was my friend's boss at the time this came out, it was scandalous! He wasn't bad looking for a boss back then...

Forgot to add Gawker Stalker was such fun, is Deux Moi the closest I'll get to that again?

In the early days of Gawker, they posted a livestreamed suicide attempt. The woman survived, and later tried to get Gawker to remove the footage. They refused.

I was never sure how to feel about that.

They were obsessed with Jonathan Safron Foer for a while and his early rich Brooklyn hipster home and marriage. It was hilarious

I thought they were coming back?

Weren't they also obsessed with David Foster Wallace? Or maybe that was Salon.

They used to hate hipsters so much which was hilarious because they were the quintessential Wilhelmsburg hipsters.

Richard Lawson made up rumors about James Fraco being a gay rapist. It did not hurt his career, he is now the chief critic for Vanity Fair.

They all came here. I found DL after Gawker shut down. The only other site with the same cynical wit and snark I’ve found.

R24 Gawker Stalker was gold.

Remember when Adrian Chen exposed the "jailbait" subreddit moderator Violentacrez on Reddit? Some fat schlub IT guy from Texas who would go on about the pretend minors on their threads as his wife sitting in bed next to him would post pictures of puppies and dolphins.

[quote] What happened to all of those cunts?

They're all pushing 40 and no longer the "we're too cool for school" kids. That said, I did enjoy some of their snark.

Did Denton slither away? His Twitter bio sounds as though he doesn't have much going on. Did he ever get married to the hunky young actor?

Tracie and Rich now do a podcast version of Pot Psychology. She had worked for Vice for awhile, but I'm not sure what happened to that.

Every article seemed to be motivated by hate. It was a foreshadowing of Twitter. I'm glad they are gone.

I didn't see it has hate, but more of cynics side-eyeing society's moral values and what society / pop culture thinks is important. Gawker was at its best when it threw shade at authority figures or those who considered themselves authority figures.

R37, more like pushing 50 for many of them.

Kevin Lane took over Wonkette and then escaped to write dystopian novels from some secret rural area. I think it’s PTSD.

I think Choire Sicha is still at Vox. He was the most earnest editor at Wonkette back when they traded duties between blogs.

Elizabeth Spiers pops up every once in a while.

AJ Daulerio knocked up Julieanne Smolinski (who ended up writing on Grace &Frankie) three times, recently got married and I think he writes some sort of addiction newsletter?

I was about to say, R42. Pamie Ribon is 45, for instance.

Hilariously, her Wikipedia is nothing but recounting a time when she complained about a sexist Barbie book back in 2014, plus a list of her meager writing credits. She did pretty well for plagiarizing 24/7 while writing for Mind of Mencia, I guess.

Rich still has the odd pice published on Jezebel. He gets ripped a new one each time because of his inherent white gay privilege viewpoint. I just checked and I’m still allowed to post on Jezebel. No kinja grey for me there or at Lifehacker still.

I still miss Gawker, but the DL helps ease the pain.

Thiel first revealed his Republican cancel culture by shitting down Gawker. Slime. It is honestly one of the most perfect examples of the hypocrisy of the right-wing attacks in cancel culture.

[quote]They're all pushing 40

Rich, at least, is well-past.

After they refused to promote Caity Weaver, she got the last laugh by ending up as a Features writer for the New York Times. That has to be the ultimate Fuck You.

My sex life is eternally interesting and deserves to be described!

I revisited this story the other day and was howling. John Waters should make this into a movie. It’s so great how the bag of bones yellow haired poseur ran off with the Journey guitar player and that the disgraced polo/vintner called the FBI. I think it’s one of the best stories from Obama times.

Choire Sicha isn’t at Vox. I believe he’s a Styles editor at the Times. He recently wrote about Michael Alig dying. He was listed as a Producer (!) for the series on Amazon that was inspired by the insufferable relationships column at the Times.

Fleshbot is still around. They were originally under the Gawker umbrella but spun off from them long before Gawker went bust.

Caity Weaver always wrote fun articles at Gawker so I was glad to see her end up at the NY Times. I know Rich Juzwiak can be a dick but I always looked forward to their "Best Restaurants in New York" postings.

I follow a lot of the Gawker alums on Twitter so I can keep up with their writing. Ashley Feinberg is one of my faves and she writes the most hilarious articles. The one linkes is my favorite and was a highlight of the shitshow that was 2020. Drew Magary is part of the group of former Deadspin writers that launched Defector.

r49, Nick Denton is just as bad as Thiel, they are both assholes. In the beginning, Gawker went after the New York media glitterati and they did it in a snarky way. Those were the fun Gawker days.

Eventually, Denton put so much pressure on the staff to produce more clickbait articles and create drama, it became a toxic environment. They started going after non-media people (posting rape videos and blackmail stuff, refusing to take it down), they knew that they could destroy those lives. They did not give a shit.

Then they went after Hogan and completely misjudged that situation.

Isn’t it funny how the Gawker/Jezebel hipster crew would look down on and mock the NY Times/New Yorker type of journalism? And where did they end up? Hmmm.

Since it hasn't been explicitly stated above, Gawker published an excerpt from a sex tape with Hogan's wife and his best friend. Hogan wanted to sue but didn't have the money. Thiel provided the funds and a first rate attorney.

Gawker lost the case and the amounts awarded as damages drove publisher Denton into bankruptcy, forcing him to sell off most of the other Gawker affiliated sites (which mainly went as a group to Univision) but Denton retained the rights to Gawker itself. It still exists as an archived site without the user comments, for which it was famous.

I too have read that Gawker is to be revived but that was awhile ago and I don't have any idea what the situation is currently.

Wasn't Denton's boyfriend a young black dancer?

^ Forgot to include that Thiel wanted Gawker dead because of various salacious and highly embarrassing -- but true -- posts Gawker had made about him over the years. Thiel and Denton detest each other. Both very bitter queens.

Denton is liberal/progressive, Thiel supported Trump, no?

R60 - sucks that it was archived without the comments. The wit and info peppering the comments often eclipsed the articles!

[quote] Since it hasn't been explicitly stated above, Gawker published an excerpt from a sex tape with Hogan's wife and his best friend. Hogan wanted to sue but didn't have the money. Thiel provided the funds and a first rate attorney.

What? The sex tape was of Hogan himself and Heather Clem. Nothing to do with his wife or best friend.

Oh that was a shame. Back in the day, Gawker was the best. Those Real Housewives recaps by Richard Lawson. Rags McTattershanty!

I had to leave when it got too stridently PC. Eventually every article was about race or trans and it got boring. But, for a while there, it was glorious and fun. Best commentariat outside of the old Dlisted.

They ran out of trans bloggers

I miss the hyperbolic titles with needless profanity

——-Is a Trans Hero and Why It FUCKING Matters

All the trans stuff is more Jezebel territory, and they still are churning it out. Half the writers at Jezebel are transwomen now, and they suck.

Spending all day posting on twitter. Gawker writers were among the nastiest, angriest, most navel-gazing wackos on the internet.

AJ Daulerio and Caity Weaver were their best writers. I miss Gawker.

Gawker was initially hilarious. They were one of the few outlets who were regularly mocking the smarmy, overpaid and arrogant " both sides" op ed writers of publications like the New York times and Wapo. You know, the type who throw a whiny hissy fit every time a Democrat actually fights for progressive policy rather than roll over for the republicans.

Then in the late 2000s they devolved into dreary sanctimonious finger waggers. Who spent way too much time going after random private individuals or d list celebs who had no real power. It was quite disappointing.

Why did they post a video of a rape victim, and refuse to take it down? That move never fit in with their purported image

Nick Denton took the remaining money and headed for the hills.

WHET Brian Moylan? He was hilarious.

I've wondered about this too! I used to love Gawker.

True —Jezebel is the a trans blogger cabal. Is that by accident or by design?

[quote]Caity Weaver always wrote fun articles at Gawker so I was glad to see her end up at the NY Times. I know Rich Juzwiak can be a dick but I always looked forward to their "Best Restaurants in New York" postings.

Their trip to EPCOT, which I think was the last thing she wrote before leaving, was one of the funniest things I've ever read.

Which page had constant articles on bedbug infestations

r74, Moylan writes for Vulture. He mostly seems to do TV show recaps.

John Cook did some great investigative reporting for them, along with some spot-on recaps of that awful HBO show “Girls”.

Some of the writer/owners of The Defector were at Deadspin before Gawker was Thiel-bombed.

Brian Moylan's shtick was explaining gayness (male gayness, lesbians did not exist in his universe) to straight Gawker readers. It got tired very quickly.

Moylan is just one of probably two dozen Gawker writers who prove that their site was never "stridently PC."

If anything, they were one of the sites that featured the upper-class late Millennial/early GenX too-cool-to-care faux edgelords who thought being offensive was the same thing as being intellectual, and might use "PC values" to attack someone on occasion, but never truly cared about anyone but themselves.

No Gawker thread is complete without this video: Emily Gould trying to take on Jimmy Kimmel and failing miserably.

She is still whining about it to this day. Oh, the shame.

Caity and Brian were terrific. Rich would be readable if an editor slashed his posts to a tenth their length.

Emily Gould showing her ass is legendary. A total moron. She still remains completely incapable of self reflection

They tipped over into viciousness with the addition of second-rate "talent" like Joshua Stein and Emily Gould. It turned into an ego-driven mosh-pit of shitting on Z-list nobodies like Julia Allison and that John Foster Wallace Page the III or whoever the fuck he was.

I'd be more curious to know where Karen-Uh-Oh (hilarious) or Mr. Hippety or RollsRoyceRevenge or PartyPants wound up, assuming they ever bothered with anything non-comment-length.

Whoever above said the commentariat was the best on the web was correct.

Bryan Goldberg, founder of Bustle, tried and failed to relaunch Gawker.

R86, I met her several times and wound up feeling sorry for her. I think she's truly crippled by her own neurosis. But she is one of the most hypersensitive loons I have ever encountered. You could barely say "Nice day, huh?" without offending her.

Evidently she linked up with fellow quivering heap of toxic self-regard Keith Gessen. How that's working out I have no idea. It was like Salacious Crumb dating the Trash Heap from Fraggle Rock, with both of them taking turns being the characters.

Gawker is never coming back. It’s deader than Denton’s and most of the other writer’s careers.

You had to be a pretty fucked up person to work there.

After the first year or so they were mostly reduced to destroying the lives on junior employees at PR, publishing and media companies

I assume most of them are struggling big time given that freelance journalists make less than shoeshine boys.

Party Pants started Get Off My Internets AKA GOMI, after having a major falling out with Reblogging Donk, a Julia Allison snark site. GOMI is still around and toxic as fuck.

r91, looks like they are still together.

I wonder if Denton is still rich?

The biggest casualty in all of their nonsense, I think, was Deadspin. I have almost no interest in sports, but whenever a big sports story would break into the regular news, their coverage was always great. They did some of the best writing about Jerry Sandusky that I saw.

Didn't Deadspin survive the Gawker debacle and go on for a few more years before a management issue led their major writers to leave and form defector?

I'm just saying, it was perhaps the last victim. It just took longer to die.

The current, shitty owners wouldn't be there but for everything that happened.

German millionaire Peter Thiel is still out there, lurking in the shadows, with a dangerous agenda, and one less outlet on his tail.

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