Gawker Media - Feat. Kotaku, Jezebel, and Friends

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Anyone else notice the internet is drowning in "X reasons you'll read our bullshit article" crap?
So they can get X clicks per article, and that many more ad impressions. That's why it is called clickbait.
 
So they can get X clicks per article, and that many more ad impressions. That's why it is called clickbait.
Oh I know how it works. I just think it's sad how they stoop to Cracked levels of stupid, especially now that their only funny writer is Seanbaby.
 
From David Auerbach's excellent essay "How to End Gamergate:"

Gawker Media, in particular, needs to overhaul not only their approach to Gamergate but their entire journalistic reputation, especially if they would like Gamergate members to stop writing to their advertisers asking them to drop Gawker. (It appears that BMW and Mercedes have already dropped them.) Owner of Kotaku, site of the initial “scandal” that sparked Gamergate, Gawker has led the charge behind the demonization of Gamergate. Yet Gawker has been terrorizing celebrities—especially female celebrities—for years, helping to foster an online culture of misogyny and exploitation. Gawker claims to be about journalism, but they’re actually about harassment. Gawker published stolen nudes of Olivia Munn and Heather Morris, outed Peter Thiel, slut-shamed Christine O’Donnell, violated Amanda Bynes’ privacy, and used the tone-deaf headline “Gooks don’t get Redskins joke.” (And let’s not forget Gawker’s initial reluctance to address Jezebel’s rape-GIF problem.) Gawker-owned Jezebel dubs Gamergate a “hate group” in an article by Willamette sociology undergraduate Jennifer Allaway, even as it offers $10,000 for unretouched pictures of Lena Dunham and links to stolen nudes of Christina Hendricks. Now Gawker is stirring up a new bogeyman for clicks, not social justice, defending women only after its revenue streams are threatened—a ploy some advertisers evidently see through. Gawker, if you want to claim any moral authority on Gamergate, I would first issue a public apology to all you have wronged—from Asians to Heather Morris to Amanda Bynes—issue new clear guidelines to guard against any backsliding, and change the company name to mark a clean break with the toxic Gawker brand. Failing that, Gawker publisher Nick Denton should at least turn the site over to a journalist with a pristine ethical track record.

http://www.slate.com/articles/techn..._end_gamergate_a_divide_and_conquer_plan.html
 
From David Auerbach's excellent essay "How to End Gamergate:"

My main problem with Gawker at this point is their staggering, shameless hypocrisy. I could care less if they whore for clicks by posting nude celebs and other such bullshit. I have about zero sympathy for celebrities who take nude pics and then leave them on their cell phones. If they're going to live their lives as attention whores, they should expect to be treated like the whores they are, male and female alike.

But when they portray themselves as some kind of paragons of virtue while trashing others, even though their position was based solely on what side of their bread they thought was buttered, I'm glad to see their whole empire come crashing down because they chose poorly.

They were always morally repugnant, but at least at the outset, they were funny while doing it. Now, they're just shit, and the only funny thing about them is watching them take a swan dive into the swirling abyss of the toilet of history.
 
Gawker's kinda gotten into a bit of drama as of late. They decided to post a really shitty article about Condre Nast CFO David Geithner (which happens to be owned by one of their rivals, Reddit). The article is down, but here's the TL;DR version.

- Geithner solicits sex from a male prostitute named "Ryan", a gay porn star.
- Geithner is married and has three kids.
- They agree to meet up at a hotel in Chicago.
- "Ryan" discovers that Geithner is related to former White House Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
- "Ryan" is having issues in Texas, where he was kicked out of an apartment complex for his profession.
- "Ryan" attempts to extort Geithner into helping him out in his current situation.
- Geithner backs out of the arrangement, but agrees to pay a certain sum to "Ryan".
- "Ryan" sends information to Gawker.

A++ journalism, indeed. Personally, I would've run the story, but would've turned the tables on "Ryan" for being such a shitty escort while protecting Geithner. As you can see from the comments from the above article, a lot of people hated the article and called Gawker out on their shit. That's when the Gawker execs pulled the article and wrote a backpedaling essay about how they were above this now and something about striving for (non-existent) journalistic ethics.

And then the editorial staff got massively butthurt and rage began.


And then people decide to blame fucking GamerGate for the ethics slipup, because boogeyman.


Get the popcorn ready, everybody. We're about to see an implosion.
 
A++ journalism, indeed. Personally, I would've run the story, but would've turned the tables on "Ryan" for being such a shitty escort while protecting Geithner.

And how would you do that? The only "story" here was Geithner's involvement with a male escort, which was nobody's business but his. They just outed him for no legitimate journalistic reason at all. None of the excuses for outing people was even present. He hasn't done shit like attack gays while being gay himself, and while he was pressured to do something corrupt, he actually refused to do it.

It's just pretty shitty all around and wasn't a news story, although Gawker being pretty much shit is now the story.

I suppose they managed to make SJWs mad about something cruel and pointless done to a rich cis white guy, though. So there's that.
 
And how would you do that? The only "story" here was Geithner's involvement with a male escort, which was nobody's business but his. They just outed him for no legitimate journalistic reason at all. None of the excuses for outing people was even present. He hasn't done shit like attack gays while being gay himself, and while he was pressured to do something corrupt, he actually refused to do it.

It's just pretty shitty all around and wasn't a news story, although Gawker being pretty much shit is now the story.

I suppose they managed to make SJWs mad about something cruel and pointless done to a rich cis white guy, though. So there's that.

Mainly censoring out David's info while calling out "Ryan" by exposing him. More of a pipe dream but it was incredibly shitty for him to do. Isn't prostitution supposed to be all about client confidentiality or something?

Now "Ryan" will still have some semblance of a career while David Geithner's career has pretty much been destroyed. What's that, Gawker? He has homosexual tendendcies? Seriously, who gives a fuck about that sort of thing anymore.
 
And how would you do that? The only "story" here was Geithner's involvement with a male escort, which was nobody's business but his. They just outed him for no legitimate journalistic reason at all. None of the excuses for outing people was even present. He hasn't done shit like attack gays while being gay himself, and while he was pressured to do something corrupt, he actually refused to do it.

It's just pretty shitty all around and wasn't a news story, although Gawker being pretty much shit is now the story.

I suppose they managed to make SJWs mad about something cruel and pointless done to a rich cis white guy, though. So there's that.

Being homosexual only makes you a minority if you're a pornstar charging $800 an hour for your time and access to your holes. If you are kicked out of your apartment for making your room into a whore-house, you are obviously disprivileged. If you own a house and 3 kids, you're a member of the privileged oppressive society of systematic sexism/racism/homophobia/classcism.

To SJWs, privilege is a matter of relativity. Whoever is relatively worse off is the victim, no matter if both people are homosexual. There must be at least one oppressor and at least one person oppressed. It's not about being a "minority," homosexual, POC, WOC, BBQ, or anything. It's whoever is less well-off overall is a victim of oppression.
 
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