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

http://gawker.com/parks-rec-exec-found-dead-from-apparent-overdose-1686895611

Which wouldn't be so bad but you couldn't help but link to

http://defamer.gawker.com/its-because-youre-a-cunt-harris-1168629718/+johncook

Really?

link maybe automatic, related story, tag or whatever.

The "obit" doesn't seem so bad.

A lot of gawker is gossip, never going to be the classiest website.

Oh yeah the link is in the text /illiterate

if you include the link you're shameless. if you don't you're whitewashing your record. kind of a no win situation

Ehh idk, pretty sure you could choose not to hyperlink that shit in an obit, and I know that gawker is the new cool kid ILX crew, but fuck that noise.

i think it's sad that ppl think gawker is cool -- like the ppl who write for it seem like a mix of college student newspaper dorks that felt they were "edgier" than their peers but not extroverted enough to be sketch comedy dweebs

gawker media, jjjusten wants a word with you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64sy-053698

reading this thread i thought it was going to be like, one of those embedded links with an image. that would have been pretty hilarious/fucked up. but a hyperlink in the text? meh

if you include the link you're shameless. if you don't you're whitewashing your record. kind of a no win situation

It isn’t white washing if it’s a minor story. And it was an extremely minor story.

the new cool kid ILX crew lol

new cool kid ILX crew needs to be doing more to prevent plushie-fucking garbage like this imo

http://io9.com/10-superheroes-who-can-never-have-sex-5015295

The first two grafs of the Hulk item are a good an argument as any that comic books and comic book movies should never be consumed by anyone over the age of 14

it would have been really disingenuous to write about his death but pretend like we have no history with him

new cool kid ILX crew needs to be doing more to prevent plushie-fucking garbage like this imo

sure we'll do this right after you storm into will dana's office and put your foot down over the new U2 album getting 5 stars

agree that it was such a minor story that it'd of been fine and a scosh classier to not include it

lol @ plushie-fucking garbage

In the future all celeb obits will include a disclosure about the writer being blocked on Twitter by the deceased

i still dont REALLY get this complaint but im glad you posted about it here and on facebook

frankly it would be really weird and shady to pretend we (or really a couple ex employees) had never gotten in a stupid fight with this guy? its not that the story is or is not newsworthy its that we were directly involved as an institution. better to err on the side of transparency

and even then i guess i dont quite get it. are obits supposed to be safe spaces?

are obits supposed to be safe spaces?

yes

it's called 'decorum' usually

It's bad form to call out or air the dirty laundry of someone who is no longer around to defend him/herself. And I'm sure it's pretty much the last thing anyone who cares about that person wants to read about when they're grieving.

I mean, write an article or a book or whatever after some time has passed and tell the world how much of a d-bag the person was if you need to, but slipping funeral atendees pictures of the deceased with his mistress just makes you look like a ghoul.

When Norm McDonald dies does Rolling Stone have to print that he tweeted a critique of their Best SNL cast list?

i don't think mentioning gawker's history with the guy is nec. a bad thing but the way it's inserted into the article is really weird to me, like it's vague enough to invite you to click on it, had it been prefaced with something like "we should note in the interest of transparency that we engaged in an angry blah blah blah...." i would understand more

i still dont REALLY get this complaint but im glad you posted about it here and on facebook

Maybe Gawker can run an article about it and link back to it when we die

take it to kinja

xp: lololol

"Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism." - Graham Greene

^^ GG firing shots at gawker over ethics in journalism

lolololx2

clearly the gawker keepin' it negative dickhole cool kid crew should run ILX

clearly they should

― carne asada, Saturday, January 17, 2009 2:38 PM (6 years ago)

i think it's sad that ppl think gawker is cool -- like the ppl who write for it seem like a mix of college student newspaper dorks that felt they were "edgier" than their peers but not extroverted enough to be sketch comedy dweebs

― Mistah FAAB (sarahell), Friday, February 20, 2015 4:01 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think gawker is cool. i guess i buy into their self-image of bravely flaunting politesse standards of establishment journalism, and the writers not caring who they piss off definitely makes for interesting reading. disrespecting the death of some random tv producer i've never heard of doesn't necessarily quality as "brave," but idk it's hard to care either way. i like how the nothing gets the gloves off on ilx like obits

We are clearly in need of higher standards for reading.

comic books and comic book movies should never be consumed by anyone over the age of 14

― pro stroke Johnny Gill songs would rub you the right way (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, February 20, 2015 7:50 AM (5 hours ago)

i hope you are consistently making this argument on all the relevant ilx threads, sugar

i see people get all excited about these movies and then I see this woman is describing a scene in which the Hulk gets a boner

not to be trenchant or anything but everyone lies in obits it's the american way. *thanks obama for gawker*

i mean gawker dudes, thanks dudes

i see people get all excited about these movies and then I see this woman is describing a scene in which the Hulk gets a boner

― pro stroke Johnny Gill songs would rub you the right way (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, February 20, 2015 1:08 PM (6 minutes ago)

you don't get boners?

Whiney gets a boner every time he gets the opportunity to neg on pop culture he doesn't approve of.

how exciting

i can't help but be a little curious why a small business owner in the midwest is outraged about an obit published by a young hip but increasingly conservative new media outlet about a sad comedy ca druggy with a tumblr book deal in which there is what seems like a minor concession to past beef. small world i guess?

Mumble! Sigh! Sob! Comics aren't just for adults anymore!

Sorry, couldn't think of better sound effects for stereotypical alt commix.

don't care about this controversy but can't wait to make good use of this thread in the future

just what we need -- another cis-het white man talking about the hulk's boner

*tumbls furiously*

comic books and comic book movies should never be consumed by anyone over the age of 14

― pro stroke Johnny Gill songs would rub you the right way (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, February 20, 2015 7:50 AM (5 hours ago)

what about Kevin Smith movies

Hey hip-hop nerds. What kind-of hip-hop is this?

will do

don't you live in greenpoint where's it's like 90% polish people and upwardly mobile white twentysomethings pretending to be broke? who are you scared of there?

― imo phillips (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, February 21, 2009 11:34 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

are you scared of getting a seitan taco from the taco truck?

― imo phillips (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, February 21, 2009 11:35 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

best thread ever

"grim reapah!" burbbhrbhbbhbburbbb never fails to brighten my day

Max rip

His lowest tier of paid subscription is $50/year, so he's comfortably making six figgies. Not bad.

That’s like £75,000/$101,000~ based on annual subscription rates? That’s honestly not bad and I assume other sources of income/work? For a pretty niche substack?

Even better, it’s minimum $130k (a few grand short of £100k if exchanging today).

OK I'm gonna reread this thread today starting from the top *slips into hazmat suit*

Anyway Max is smart and worth reading and this thread reminded me to finally subscribe to his blog so good work all around imo

i'd like to think we can all agree that podcasts are worse than the av club

Well I hey

Current AV club worse than most podcasts, though also reasonably easy to ignore (unless you're googling a film).

I like the idea of this thread continuing to get bumped once every few years until it's just a bunch of Grandpa Simpson types rambling about things that are now totally incomprehensible to the majority of living people - "did I ever tell you kids about 500 Days Of Kristen?"

― Platinum Penguin Pavilion (soref), Wednesday, May 7, 2025 7:40 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeeeees, Grandpa, everything is some good-ass Kinja

― hiroyoshi tins in (Sgt. Biscuits), Wednesday, May 7, 2025 7:58 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I never got out of the grays and now I've gone gray.

in his last interview with Jon Ganz the conversation stopped because Ganz froze, whereupon max removed his sweatshirt

Paste AV Club much less terrible than G/O AV Club

Max actually posts details of his Substack income every year. In the most recent one from October (https://maxread.substack.com/p/how-to-substack) he says

as of publication this leaves me with a little over 2,600 paid subscribers and a little over 42,000 total subscribers. Substack counts my gross annualized revenue at about $141,000 (that’s a forward-looking projection, to be clear; over the past year I’ve made a little around $125,000 gross); the platform takes a 10 percent cut and Stripe takes a further 3 percent in processing fees. But even less fees and expenses that’s enough for me to live on and pay for housing, childcare, tickets to see Megalopolis once, etc.

what going to occidental gets you

who will gawk at the gawkers? 3 sad dudes on ilx, that's who.

Can we get a detailed breakdown on yancey’s finances now

do TED Talks pay?

https://blog.ted.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/04/TED2025_20250407_1JR4550-medium.jpg

Can we get a detailed breakdown on yancey’s finances now

£300 iirc

deep cut

max . . . otm

https://i.imgur.com/XVbQt7h.jpeg

"Googling “500 Days of Kristen” brought up a Reddit thread from 10 years ago and the top comment is our own Ashley Pomeroy!"

He gets about. I think it's a combination of smooth, polished prose and a general unwillingness to stir up controversy. That's why Google likes him. He doesn't get many upvotes though. Long after his physical body dies his mind will live on inside ChatGPT. Zathras have sad life, probably have sad death, but at least there is symmetry.

My recollection is that the series just wasn't funny. And if there's one person who knows about not being funny, c'est moi. From a British perspective I had no idea who Kristin Cavallari was, so it probably wasn't aimed at me, but I suspect that even if it had been about the nearest British equivalent I would have been equally unentertained. And yet from what I remember Gawker continued to publish it up until the very last edition.

My impression of Gawker was that it appeared to be written for a small number of people who lived in New York and worked as interns for Conde Nast. It was full of articles about minor executives at media companies. The very first link in this thread is about an executive producer for The Sarah Silverman show. The other stories from that day include coverage of a Bar Mitzvah Party at The New Yorker, an article about a senior executive at Vice spending a lot of money on dinner, and something about a boutique fitness boxing studio in Manhattan.

Perhaps the idea was that the site would attract an audience of people living in Ohio who dreamed of being an intern in New York. But it actually, genuinely did appear to be written for New York-based interns, hence all the stories about executives at media companies. As if it was Private Eye magazine, but exclusively focused on the Fleet Street stuff, with the articles shortened to just seventy-five words, and no jokes.

Re-reading those articles from 2015 I'm struck by the way that the writing imitates subversive, snarky satire without actually saying anything substantial, or perhaps more importantly legally actionable. It also seems to be full of paraphrases of other articles. It reminds me of the odd dance that The Guardian does, where it complains about climate change and celebrity culture, but widely covers the Met Gala without a whiff of criticism, presumably because the dour lefty Trots left a long time and and a girl (newspaper (woman)) has got to eat (sell newspapers (food)).

Harris Wittels was mostly a comedian and notable for inventing the term humblebrag, executive producer credits kinda misleading there, it's not like he was a big shot (also very much not a NY guy).

Listen, fair play.

Christ I completely forgot Yancey used to tread the borads here.

What a poster he was, by the way.

:)

Yancey was a dick! He said “Mr. Snrub you are a motherfucking idiot and with each post you make I believe this more and nore” I mean, it’s true. But he shouldn’t _say_ it.

great revive

Eerily prescient for this thread to be revived yesterday

With Terry Bollea's (Hulk Hogan's) death yesterday, it's a good time to look back at the biggest thing I was ever involved in. For over 3 years, I spent more than half of my worktime on one case-- Bollea v. Gawker.

It was Charles Harder's case-- I handled "the appeal side".

— Dilan Esper (@dilanesper) July 25, 2025

@grok is this true

Gawker published recorded footage of a rape of a young woman in an Indianapolis sports bar restroom. Yes, you read that right. They kept the footage up even after the victim's father asked them to take it down.

— Dilan Esper (@dilanesper) July 25, 2025

I don't even remember this

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/news/a55146/gawker-editor-sex-tape-aj-daulerio/

Of course it was on Deadspin, because sports people are the worst

can someone make max not be on substack please

but what’s up with the hipster grifter these days

― Allen (etaeoe), Tuesday, May 6, 2025 11:13 AM (nine months ago) bookmarkflaglink

She wrote a memoir!

https://y.yarn.co/b78aa2e2-cdf8-4b8d-a2e1-4a0c5886bfea_screenshot.jpg

This is old news, about a year before etaeoe even mentioned it. But someone on another board used her hotdog/hallway analogy and it made me wonder the same thing, so I googled.

Hey we know one of them.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/inside-gawker-legacy-1236585677/

props to best beloved max for leaving substack (for patreon)

he's quite thoroughly made a point of saying it was for purely financial reasons and not, like, the awkwardness of being tacitly aligned with 'various kinds of vaccine deniers, transphobes, and Nazis'

yet perhaps those issues are intertwined??

anyway that's cool; i enjoy hearing about what max is reading

is there a, uh, summary out there of people's beefs with substack? being full of vaccine deniers, transphobes, and nazis is just a fact of having an internet platform in 2026, so i assume there's a feeling that substack cultivates or promotes them, or that the people who run it are politically aligned with them? i read a few different substack blogs but have studiously avoided interacting with it as a platform, downloading the app, etc.

The only thing I remember is that at one point Substack offered guaranteed income to some well-known writers (Taibbi, Greenwald, etc.) as a way to draw people to the platform. I don't know if that's still in effect.

circles, from my understanding a lot of people have left because the company won’t censor these sorts of noxious views being spread along their platform— “free speech” and all.

is there a, uh, summary out there of people's beefs with substack? being full of vaccine deniers, transphobes, and nazis is just a fact of having an internet platform in 2026, so i assume there's a feeling that substack cultivates or promotes them, or that the people who run it are politically aligned with them? i read a few different substack blogs but have studiously avoided interacting with it as a platform, downloading the app, etc.

...

circles, from my understanding a lot of people have left because the company won’t censor these sorts of noxious views being spread along their platform— “free speech” and all.

There are two things going on. 1) Substack allows people to post any goddamn thing they want. This means there are a bunch (or so they say; I've never encountered them) of Nazis with very small circulation newsletters using the platform. Plus a bunch of standard-issue right-wing assholes. 2) When they started, Substack paid a bunch of high-profile writers to bring their existing newsletters to the platform, and this included a bunch of right-wingers and transphobes and all-around assholes (along with, I think, some non-scum).

My arguments for continuing to use Substack are:

1) At one point, they promoted my newsletter and I got a bunch of subscribers (I only had about 500 when I started; I have 5200 now)
2) You don't see anything you're not subscribed to, because Substack isn't a website, it's a newsletter platform - as someone said this week, "it's Blogger plus Patreon".
3) I'm confident there are plenty of right-wingers and other assholes using the other newsletter platforms, too (Beehiiv, Ghost, etc.). I don't know for sure because I don't subscribe to any of their newsletters. See how easy?
4) Substack is free to use; they take a cut of any revenue you generate, but you can keep your newsletter entirely free and they'll never take a dime from you, or limit how many people you can send it to. Ghost and Beehiiv charge up front. If I moved my newsletter to one of them, I would need to spend money I don't have.

I still have the app because of like three people I follow who only post occasionally. All the regular posters I was still reading, including the one I pay for, have moved to Ghost or Beehiiv.

Honestly I think I prefer getting my regular newsletters in my email; it’s really nice to get something fun to read in email and not just crap from our daughter’s school and online shopping receipts.

they push the app pretty aggressively where newsletters appear in a blog style, and it absolutely does show you things you are not subscribed to, and has pushed recommendations for things that are objectionable. I would guess a plurality of people read and interact via the app and website, not the email newsletters

I think the only times I've visited Substack were through links on this board.

I follow probably a half dozen substack blog/newsletters but the only ones I am currently paying for are max’s (now on patreon) and philip sherburne’s, I think

there was just an article in the verge last week about writers leaving substack for other platforms because they were paying fees 2x-8x what other platforms charge them. some also cited diminishing returns in terms of what substack can do/is doing to grow subscriber bases

Unlike some of its biggest rivals, Substack takes a 10 percent cut of total subscription revenue. That tax may not seem substantial at first, but it quickly adds up as creators gain subscribers and begin charging more for their subscriptions. A calculator on Substack’s own website estimates that for a newsletter charging $10 per month with 400 subscribers, the total monthly cost — including the platform’s 10 percent cut and credit card processing fees — would add up to $636. That cost jumps to $15,900 per month with 10,000 subscribers and skyrockets to $79,500 per month for 50,000 members — nearly $1 million per year.

Many Substack rivals charge a flat monthly fee, rather than a commission. Ghost, an open-source platform for blogs and newsletters, starts at $15 per month with 1,000 members for website creation, email newsletter capabilities, and a custom domain. Beehiiv, a creator platform with tools for launching a newsletter, website, and podcast, is free for up to 2,500 subscribers with limited access to certain features, like a built-in ad network, while its other plans vary in price based on subscriber count. A person with 10,000 subscribers, for example, will pay $96 per month for Beehiiv’s “Scale” plan.

https://www.theverge.com/tech/927294/substack-tax-ghost-beehiiv

FWIW, Substack newsletters all have RSS feeds so if you use a feed reader you can just read that way.

Did they get around to adding rss to the paid posts yet? That was the main drawback the last time I tried to follow them that way

paid substack posts show up in my rss reader, but i have to click through to a logged-in browser tab to actually read them. i'm just learning that patreon only does rss for podcasts, which is pretty annoying.