Tag: Undead Gawker

The Blogging Era Ends With A Whimper

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

So, (Undead) Gawker is wrapping up publication….AGAIN. It definitely seems as though this is the end of an era. I don’t know about you, but I live in something of a passive infotainment bubble that is centered around Twitter and Tik-Tok. I can’t think of one blog or news / entertainment site that I go out of my way to view on a regular basis.

And it’s probably only going to get worse with the advent of things like chatbots that scan the web then give you your answer based on a dataset.

I kind of makes me sad for a number of reasons. We — or at least I — have to accept that it’s over, all the fun I used to have with the old Gawker is never coming back, just like my wasted, dissipated youth.

So, in that regard, the Web is fully mature. We’re kind of waiting around for the Next Big Thing to happen and it’s not going to be some cool, new, snarky Website. It might be the equivalent of that in the metaverse or somehow something via a chatbot but the traditional blog is just no longer a viable commercial option.

In a way, Twitter does what Gawker used to do, but instead of a funny article, you just see a funny viral tweet. I will note, however, that the most traffic this lowly site has ever gotten came from something celebrity related. I think if you were going to try to start something like Gawker up, you would have to lean into celebrity culture in some way.

Though, I suppose there remains a very, very limited window of opportunity for someone to create a podcasting network that covers the major cities of New York City, San Francisco and LA then direct listeners to a blog of some sort. That’s the only way I can think of you might, just might, be able to bring back the fun of the original Gawker before it went nuts and got all nasty for no reason.

Thanks For The Memories, Old Gawker, or ‘Don’t Meet (or Get Blocked By) Your Heroes’

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.

The Vision Thing: How I Would Bootstrap A New Spy Magazine-Like Publication

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

There are a lot, and I mean, A LOT of problems with any suggestion that there might be anything like the old Gawker. Now, when I say “the old Gawker,” I mean the Gawker of around 2003-2004 that was very similar to the even older idea of Spy Magazine. The later Gawker was shit and the new, Undead Gawker is just…undead.

But it’s a nice summer evening and I think I’ll give you my vision for how I would bootstrap a new Spy Magazine-Gawker type publication.

I think if you were serious about doing it, you start the process by starting not a blog, but a podcast. You get someone like Emma “It Girl” Chamberlain (or even SNL cast member Sarah Squirm) to talk about pop culture in a way that The Youngs like. You might, in real terms, build the product from the ground up around her personality. Or something. Maybe find someone else who is cheaper.

But the point is — find a really interesting person to host a near-daily podcast about celebrities and pop culture. Then once that’s gotten some traction, you establish a blog that you point people to from the podcast. That’s how you would build traffic to the site.

Now, from my obsession with Webstats, I can tell you that there is an insatiable interest in celebrities and pop culture. Some of the most traffic that comes to this blog — that almost no one reads — comes from people interested in a stray post about this or that celebrity.

I would suggest you obsess about Julia Fox’s every twitch. She’s such an interesting person that it’s a shame that there’s not one specific publication that simply details what she’s been up to. And then, once you get enough traffic to the blog, you start to cover politics. And then you maybe build out a podcasting network.

Ta-dah!

Sick Sad World

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really love zines. I’ve done a number of them over the years and I love the process of thinking them up and putting them out each month. And I know that under the right circumstances, I would probably have done well at the old Gawker.

Or, put another way — if there was some way for me to magically live in NYC, I probably would find myself making a name for myself one way or another because of what an extrovert I am. And, in all honesty, if I was in LA instead of NYC, then THAT would probably be a place where I would make a name for myself.

But now I’m old.

And I find myself thinking about what would actually happen if I became a success. I probably would be canceled for various things I’ve done and said while drunk. But whenever I think about that, I remember, “It is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.”

So, I suppose I would rather suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune than lie in my bed and stare at the ceiling all day because I knew I am probably going to get canceled anyway.

A High Concept Blog: Buzzfeed Meets Gawker Meets A Site Obsessed With Tik-Tok


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m feeling kind of sad about the state of modern online journalism. The late, great Gawker is undead. Buzzfeed continues to cut its news staff. Ugh. Everything sucks.

And, yet, there is a space in the media universe that isn’t being served — Generation Tik-Tok. So, what I would do is start a blog that was a fusion of Buzzfeed, the old Gawker and a site obsessed with Tik-Tok. You generate buzz by really taking seriously the pop culture that Tik-Tok generates on a near moment by moment basis.

Now, there are obviously some problems with this idea. First of all, blogs are demonstrably dead. So, too, are apps. They’re both mature mediums. As such, it’s difficult to establish a new site or app these days without a lot — and I mean A LOT — of investment.

And, given that the metaverse is just around the corner, it’s simply impossible to get the investment necessary to successfully start something as antiquated and gauche as blog.

Nonetheless, I find the concept of such a blog intriguing. It would be fun to have a pop culture obsessed blog that was good enough that I went out of my way to read it instead of just passively learning about its coverage via Twitter. But, I don’t know — am I just being my usual delusional self to think such a thing is possible?

Probably yes.

And, really, I think what’s going on is I’m old and am being nostalgic for things that made me happy when I was a lot more younger. So, lulz. I suppose the era of both blogs and apps is over.

Now, we just wait for Silicon Valley to get around to rolling out the metaverse.

Undead Gawker & The Dog That Hasn’t Barked



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

What a curious state of affairs. Not only is rock dead, but it seems as though snark is, too. I occasionally look at Undead Gawker and am taken aback. That’s it? Undead Gawker is extremely boring. It doesn’t have any of the spunk (or punk) of the living Gawker.

Oh well.

It makes me wonder if This Is It. No matter how many vibe shifts we may have, because of modern sensibilities — and technology — we’re just never going to have what I thought we would always have — a snarky publication of some sort that comments on the day’s events.

It could be that if it happens, it will happen in the Metaverse. Now isn’t that going to be something. I have a feeling us Poors don’t appreciate how much Silicon Valley is sitting on its hands when it comes to investments as it waits for the kinks to get out of the Metaverse.

So, here we are.

No new Late Night With David Letterman. No new Spy magazine. And no new Gawker. We just have to wait until, maybe, until we’re all being snarking virtually with no legs.

It’s all very disheartening. Even more so when I know that I have the vision to pull off a new, real reboot of Gawker, but for, well, waves hand. Everything else in my life besides vision.

Anyway. I have five novels to develop and write.

A Bit Of Meaningless Daydreaming



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s really annoying to me that it’s pretty obvious there is a media niche that’s not being filled at the moment — a successor to Spy Magazine or Gawker. Now, some context.

Twitter has pretty much so absorbed the snark of Gawker that, lulz, it’s kind of pointless to try to start something that would be a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. As I keep saying, blogs are dead. Apps are dead. I get all my news passively from my Twitter feed. If I wan’t snark, I got to Twitter.

So, lulz, this is all moot.

And, yet, come to think of it, it would be nice as an Old to have a blog that was completely obsessed with Tik-Tok pop culture. It would be something of a companion piece to it. With that in mind, here’s what I would with Julia Fox.

Julia Fox is “the moment” as they say, and it would be fun to run around New York City with her. Have her wear a GoPro or something. Something, anything to be weird and different and NOT BORING. And, in that context, do a really up close and personal personality profile of Ms. Fox.

Anyway, absolutely no one listens to me. No one cares. It’s just irritating that I can see there’s a need for a new media outlet and yet I am, in real terms, powerless to do anything about it.

Vibe Shift: A New Gawker For Generation Tik-Tok



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The Tik-Tok generation doesn’t really have a blog of its own. I’m old enough to see the progression from Late Night With David Letterman to Spy Magazine to Gawker to….uh…..nothing? And I use Tik-Tok a lot even though I’m an Old and it seem pretty obvious that Tik-Tok is Ground Zero for modern pop culture.

Julia Fox — Tik-Tok icon.

If you believe we’re in the midst of a “vibe shift” then it makes a lot of sense that the new vibe would have its own publication. It’s kind of sad that Gawker is now an undead husk of itself — even though the original version was fucking hateful and nasty before its demise.

Anyway, here’s what I would do. I would start a site that was ostensibly obsessed with Tik-Tok and the pop culture it flings off at an astonishing rate each day. But, I would also produce a lot of really interesting, serious commentary about other topics — politics, what have you. You get The Youngs hooked on this new blog by taking Tik-Tok deadly seriously, then prepare them for the Adult World by presenting them with hot takes on what’s going on in the broader world.

And, if I was involved, I would occasionally throw curve balls involving doing something silly with Julia Fox around New York City or whatever. Or maybe the occasional sexxy snap of this or that celebrity simply to be ornery. The issue is — do anything not to be meh. Not to be boring. The whole reason the blog would exist would be to provoke a response of some sort.

As best I can tell, Generation Tik-Tok doesn’t have its own Gawker at the moment. Of course, there is a risk that, lulz, by definition Generation Tik-Tok doesn’t want it’s own Gawker-like blog and fuck you.

But it is something to think about.

Generation Tik-Tok & A Vision For A New Gawker-Like Blog



By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Now, I’m not saying that I would be involved in this in any way, but just doing a back-of-the-envelope study of what I see in my Webstats and here’s my suggestion for how to start a successful new blog.

The first thing you would have to do is realize to manage your expectations. Blogs are dead. Apps are dead. We’re all in a holding pattern while we wait for the kinks to get worked out of the Metaverse.

And, yet, I think if you flipped the script some on your traditional blog that maybe, maybe you could pull it off. But you would need a wealthy patron to help you with the backend and marketing. Here goes, though.

My magazine in Seoul.

If you were actually going to try to start a new Gawker-like blog now, you would really have to focus on celebrity news. But here’s the catch — you would need two or three people on staff who would simply use Tik-Tok all day and then turn around and write stories about what trends they saw. Tik-Tok would set the blog’s editorial agenda.

As such, right now, such a blog would be doing profiles of Julia Fox — or, hell, even turn her into the blog’s de facto mascot like Julia Allison was with the original Gawker way back when.

The point is — the reason why the undead Gawker is so meh right now is it has no spunk, no snark and it’s not laser focused on what Generation Tik-Tok is interested in. That’s the thing I’ve noticed about the new, undead Gawker. It just seems kind of indifferent to what’s really going on with pop culture.

If you want to be a pop culture media outlet, you have to be on the cutting edge of what people are talking about, and by definition, that means you have to be obsessed with Tik-Tok.

Anyway, the point is — you use the pop culture element of the blog to hang all the rest of the blog’s content on it. Come for the Tik-Tok meme talk, stay for a snarky feminist polemic or maybe a sexxxy snap of Julia Fox doing whatever it is that Julia Fox is doing at any particular moment.

This is just me mentally masturbating on a Sunday morning. I have no money and, hell, I don’t have any friends. I guess I occasionally get frustrated because I know, given the opportunity — and resources — I could probably bring back the spirit of the old Gawker with a new blog.

A Drunken Autopsy Of Undead Gawker — Or, There’s A Metaverse App For That



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I’m kind of drunk, but cognizant enough to give you my hot take on undead Gawker. The issue with undead Gawker is it’s trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist — I don’t know about you, but I get 99% of my content passively on Twitter these days. And, what’s more, the very thing that made the original Gawker both great and problematic — snark — has so become a part of Twitter culture that, lulz, undead Gawker is moot.

The Best of The Old Gawker

And, really, I don’t even know if my go-to solution to this moot problem — turning undead Gawker into a really cool Twitter clone with a paid staff — would even fix the problem. That ship has sailed. That window of opportunity is no more.

In fact, I would go so far as to say the entire content production universe is kind of in a holding pattern until the kinks are figure out with the Metaverse. Blogs are dead, if you will. Apps are dead, if you will. There’s just nothing going on right now.

It is simply impossible for undead Gawker to bring back the glory of the hateful old Gawker because that moment in media history has past. For Gawker to exist at all is a self-indulgent nostalgia circle jerk. Now, because I have a huge ego, I believe if they would like me write for them that I would at least make things interesting in my little corner of its online presence.

I may be a kook, but I’m at least a thought provoking kook. I’d be a really cheap hire and would love to do crazy, nutty things simply to get attention. Though, of course, either I would have to work remotely or they would have to pay for me to crash on someone’s couch in Brooklyn.

This reminds me — if I ever somehow magically found myself living in New York City, I would start up a zine again. It would be so much fun to see if I could create a successor to the Village Voice. The process of starting a new print zine is so much fun, especially the handing it out ot strangers part. I would stake out the New York Times building and hand the zine out, hoping one of their writers might like it so much that they wrote about it.

Bring back zines! And someone help me move to NYC! Wink.

Jesus Christ can I be a delusional dreamer at times. But one man’s delusion is another man’s dream, I guess.

Anyway, the point is, in a sense, undead Gawker is like undead Newsweek. It’s coasting off the fumes of its namebrand without much point. The old Gawker live in moment in time when blogs mattered. That moment in time is over. Bring on the Metaverse!