New York Times Magazine Exposes Readers to Blogger [Update]
A "Make Ready" of this week's New York Times Magazine just arrived, featuring the much buzzed about cover story by former Gawker editor Emily Gould. The story is headlined Exposed and features three photos of Ms. Gould excluding the cover. (One photo shows just her hands at a laptop, an Instant Message window and a web page on the screen.)
The article is heavily diaristic; for a magazine that exists to explain "The Way We Live Now" every week, it's light in sociology or cultural grasping, focusing instead on the writer's relationships and her job.
Here are some samples:
Ms. Gould on Star editor-at-large and Time Out NY dating columnist Julia Allison:
Another person I ended up I.M-ing daily was one of Gawker's most frequent targets, a blogger named Julia Allison, who, within a year, parlayed a magazine dating column into a six-figure TV talking-head job and into a reality show, all while updating her blog several times a day. She wore skimpy, Halloween-style costumes to parties and dated high-profile men in a high-profile ways—her tech-millionaire boyfriend collaborated with her on a blog where they took turns chronicling their relationship's ups and downs. I was initially put off by Julia's naked attention-whoring—"Attention is my drug," she often confessed. In thousands of photos on her Flickr feed she posed, caked in makeup, like a celebrity on the red carpet, always thrusting out her breasts and favoring her good side. But in the midst of this artifice she was disarmingly straightforward about how much she craved the attention that Internet exposure gave her—even though it came at the expense of constant, intensely vitriolic mockery.
Ms. Gould on New York magazine's National Magazine Award-nominated cover story "Everybody Sucks":
In October, New York magazine published a cover story about Gawker's business model and cultural relevance. I took the magazine from my therapist's waiting room into her office and read aloud from the article because, I figured, why waste any of my 45 minutes by struggling to summarize it? The article painted Gawker as a clearinghouse for vitriol and me as a semisympathetic naïf who half-loved and half-loathed what her job was forcing her to become. That week, when I walked around at parties, trying to elicit funny quotes from whatever quasi-famous people were there, all anyone wanted to talk to me about was Gawker. How could I sleep at night? someone wondered.
Birth control via the written word, as another blogger says. One thing for sure--Emily won't have to worry about picking out a wedding dress anytime soon.
It amazes me that someone of such no-talent has parlayed it into a cover story for the NYT Mag. Oh, wait! She's good looking—though the tattoos won't be such a good thing in a few years. She'll fit in even better on the Jersey Shore by then.
Gould is talentless, self-obsessed, and creepy. When I run into her at parties, I move quickly to the other side of the room. Ugh.
Shame on the NYT magazine. This piece was entertaining for its voyeuristic nature, but was it good writing? Good journalism? Most definitely not.
The problem here is we have a writer so young that older, more experienced "entertainer's" do not find putting her off balance to be a challenge. Even Jimmy Kimmel.
That's why a buffoon like Jimmy Kimmel was able to dominate the conversation in the Larry King interview.
Someone 10 years older would have shut his ridiculous notions about his pointless lot in life, in no time flat:
"Jimmy, you're a fat, blue-collar, former lackey to a cancelled third-rate comedy show on Comedy Central. You were hired to contrast Ben Stein's "intellectualism" as the stupid fat slob, for a very limited comedic effect. You're where you are right now because somebody at Comedy Central was uncreative. Your act is now supported by paid writers to make you appear as if there is something on your mind. You have a famous girlfriend who has turned a borderline personality disorder into a career, and spends her time on talk shows remarking on how much you like to tittie-fuck. What life lesson do you have to give to someone who works for a living? If you have one, you will pardon me if I laugh in your face, I trust. By the way, you were seen buying a hotdog on 57th and Broadway 3 hours ago, but nobody has ever seen you walk into a Gold's Gym. What's up with that? Gawker readers want to know."
However, the problem with older writers is, though they aren't intimidated by the likes of any celebrities, they simply would rather not deal with them in any way.
I think Emily's a talented writer, and a bit neurotic, like all the interesting writer's I know. As she gets older, she'll come into her own. In the meantime, her growing pains are public knowledge, as the line between the famous and the notorious grows ever wider, and grayer.
This morning, I took a break from thinking about my favorite topic, ME, and read the very lengthy NY Times Magazine cover story about some girl who likes to write about her life and the perils of posting it on the Internet.
Not only was I struck by how uninteresting the topic was, but I barely made it through the second paragraph when I had an epiphany: What I was reading had nothing to do with ME. And then I got really sad and tried to think good thoughts-about ME-and that made me feel better for a few minutes.
But then my mind wandered and I started thinking about all the awful things that are happening in the world--war, hunger, recession, will Britney ever have a comeback-and I got very upset until I realized that this had nothing to do with ME.
But enough about ME. What do you think about ME?
I am an old broad and I don't understand the preoccupation of snarkiness for so many bloggers. I read somewhere that the dude who became Perez Hilton was blogging about his life, blah, blah, blah, like "Today I woke up and ate a peanut butter-and-banana sandwich." (Anyone who eats a peanut-butter and banana sandwich and isn't Elvis has got to be kidding if he or she thinks that is interesting.) I mean, even though Jimmy Kimmel is just a pot-bellied no-talent slob, he can command ticket prices and fill concert halls.
But this Hilton stumbled upon a Blog Truth: when he wrote about how hideous Britney's ass tatoo looked while licking a Tootie Fruitie ice cream cone, the hits on his blog grew exponentially. So he gave up thinking his every move and thought would be interesting to anyone else but himself, focused on feeding the ferocious appetite for celebrity dirt and nasty swipes, changed his name and VOILA! A new brand is born.
Information is not knowledge.
Lots of nasty gossip about someone who has actually done something doesn't level the playing field for you. It gets kind of tired kind of fast.