Big Website Used To Be So Awesome But Totally Sucks Now, Say Cool Dudes

Today designer and illustrator Frank Chimero decides that Boing Boing sucks now, in implied form, by way of an “oh-so-shocked” list of that site’s recent headlines. (“HOWTO make a motorcycle out of cigarette lighters”! “Insects made of human hair”!) Efficiency expert and consultant Merlin Mann chimes in: “I’m the last person to begrudge a talented person his success. But, it’s hard not to begrudge the deliberate perversion of that person’s talent in the service of gavaging a profitable but pathologically undemanding audience.” He closes with an editorial observation on Boing Boing: “Yuck.” He also makes the classic observation: “I haven’t deliberately visited the site in question in at least two years.” Ha! So you know, he just didn’t know that it had become oh so awful! Thank God he was informed! This kind of slagging-off is pretty normal for the life cycle of a website — someone cooler-than-thou has to do a drive-by dismissal, and then everyone can pile on, and we all get to feel very secure in our delicious special taste. (For the record, The Awl used to be so awesome, back in like May of 2009, and now, I mean, if you really look at it, oh my God, it’s just a crummy pile of blog posts.) Anyway, at least it’s nice to be reminded that the word “gavaging” is available for our use, particularly in the situation of expressing that an entire editorial product and its entire audience are now so far beneath you. Thank God there are other things to read that are still in their first few weeks of existence and therefore still unsullied by popularity and the natural following of their instincts over time! There’s probably like some really cool Tumblr about cats that’s not run by total sell-outs. (Also apparently I’m a web philistine, because my first thought is: who the hell wouldn’t want to learn how to make a motorcycle out of cigarette lighters?) Update: Ahem!