by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I know why the first days of Gawker meant so much to me — I was going to a pretty dark phase of my generally dissipated life and reading the old Gawker back in the day really helped me out. It was like eaves dropping on a really cool conversation between two New Yorkers who otherwise would never give someone like me the time of day.
But that was the first few years of the “Old Gawker,” not the Undead Gawker that we have now. And, honestly, something really, really weird happened to Old Gawker in its final days. For people who were paying close attention to the site, it jumped the shark a few times to the point that there was not much point in reading it anymore. One a number of occasions, it posted spiteful, hateful and sometimes nearly obscene posts that seemed designed to drive people like me away from it.
By the time it was driven out of business by a Peter Thiel-funded attorney, it didn’t feel like that much was lost.
At some point between when the Old Gawker collapsed and the present day I discovered that one of my publishing heroes — Nick Denton, the founded of Gawker — blocked me on Twitter. I suppose, all things considered, that relative to his world view I probably deserved that. It still hurts, though.
Anyway, I’ve finally reached the age where I have to accept that it’s time to move on. Much of what made the Old Gawker so interesting is now found all over the Internet, specifically Twitter and a few corners of Tik-Tok. Barring something truly amazing, I’m never going to start my own Gawker-like publication.
This is it. Whatever happens, will probably happen in some way because I sell a novel in a traditional manner and even if that happens, I’ll be too old to really enjoy it the way I always wanted to.
