An Oral History Of Gawker, By Reddit
When the history of the web is written, the final word will obviously belong to Reddit. What else will be left?
And: what will we remember of a network of blogs called “Gawker Media”? Here is the collected wisdom on the topic of Gawker from Reddit over the years, in the words of Redditors themselves.
WHAT WAS GAWKER
Do you guys even remember how Gawker got started? The original website was called gawker stalker and it was supposed to be a TMZ type of site that would provide the location and info of celebrities in NYC. The foundation of the brand was started by a celebrity stalker.
Gawker is a decentralized blog network, meaning a bunch of independent contributors write articles that get featured on Gawker, who then pays them a cut of the advertising revenue. It’s a lot of gossip and news-type stuff.
Gawker has exposed and slandered plenty of people and organizations that did not deserve it.
Gawker is a great example of the leftist lynch mob.
The Gawker crowd is a pretty strange lot that seem to be universally convinced that they are the golden content creators of the internet.
Gawker has always been one to violate copyright for fun and profit. Gawker is just an ad-click bait site.
I feel like Gawker has baited us for page views.
They wanted more hits and more hate hits, you know, like “OMG you won’t believe what this IDIOT wrote — link.” It’s called link bait. It’s worked pretty well for them so far
I feel like the Gawker Media group is worse than the Daily Mail and Fox News put together. Lifehacker and Jalopnik are the only ones that can be saved from that group. Gawker, Jezebel, Gizmodo, Kotaku, io9 and Deadspin are second-hand garbage. Who in their right mind can even conjure the idea of a Gawker acquisition? Am I alone in this?
Richard Blakeley isn’t the editor-in-chief. Nick Denton is.
Denton founded Gawker and owns it but the editor-in-chief is Remy Stern.
It’s too bad jalopnik had to be thrown into this mess. I still remember before they were part of the gawker network. I like that site.
Gawker is just a Reddit feed reader with a Hipster-Docuhe filter turned on.
The Gawker.com is ridiculously not credible.
WHO RAN GAWKER?
The New Yorker had a great piece on all this back when Nick Denton took control of Gawker by forcing out Chris Batty.
Ever since Denton took over, Gawker has made more and more questionable decisions — iPhonegate, the whole “Fuck you contributors” post by Joel Johnson, and articles becoming less and less researched, and more just reposts/tweets linking to other sites.
That and their sister site Jezebel, which recently paid $10,000 for some unretouched Lena Dunham pics to make some point about the artifice of entertainment. Who is running the Kinja network?
Fun fact: one of Gawker’s favorite things to do over the past couple of years is attack large corporations, Republicans, etc for using the Cayman Islands as tax shelters. I’ll give you one guess where Gawker Media Group, Inc is based out of. The whole entity is operates like an international money laundering organization. Much of its international revenues are directed through Hungary, where the tech side of the company was originally based out of and it uses a shell company in the Caymans to avoid having nearly any taxable income.
Denton thinks he is smarter than everyone, including usability experts, designers, his audience, etc.
I know you’re not trying to emulate The New York Times, but if you have any respect for your craft as a journalist, then start by applying some maturity to your writing style. Cut the gloating, for one. You think this will be your only exclusive? Then stop acting like it was. Cut the French, for another. I know you’re a part of the dredge of society on the Internet that is Gawker, but if you want your readers to respect you then start by respecting your readers.
WHO WAS ADRIAN CHEN?
He tricked reddit with a fake AMA, they got mad that their gullibility was shown.
You’ve got the egg before the chicken there. The whole mess started when Adrian Chen decided to troll /r/AskReddit by faking cancer, and the thing snowballed from there.
I think the inciting incident in the “blackball” of Gawker was when the president pretended to be a terminal cancer patient on reddit to illicit sympathy, was found out, and then mocked reddit for believing him at all.
“President of Gawker” isn’t exactly a prestigious title. He’s just some douche who got lucky in life.
They give money to Adrian Chen, a guy who faked a suicide here on reddit. He’s literally paid to troll.
That guy is a fearmonger of the highest order.
This guy absolutely hates any sort of freedom, that much is obvious.
Why the fuck should anyone believes anything this wannabe sad sack of karma-whoring shit writes, especially about Reddit? Hasn’t he been totally discredited? Shameless Gawker still employs him, and still has him write about Reddit? Fire the dumb fuck, Gawker, then we’ll talk. Hey Douchebag, did you ever consider having enough journalistic integrity to recuse yourself from a story because of possible bias? No? Well that’s no surprise because no matter how much you want to be, you’re not a journalist, you’re a sad sack of karma-whoring shit. And no, not all publicity is good publicity. Just ask the other wannabe journalists who lied their way right up to when they were exposed as frauds. It’s you who raves from the crater of your own self-fulfilled exile, and your insane jealousy of a legitimate and successful crowd-sourced public forum from which you can take absolutely zero credit. Fuck you, and fuck Gawker.
Adrian Chen does it for money, while others do it by hate. Knowing your enemy is an important thing.
WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE OTHER PEOPLE?
Brian Lam, Jason Chen, Jesus Diaz are the biggest douch nozzles on the Internet. They beg you to be their friend on Facebook.
The straw that broke the camel’s back for my putting up with Gizmodo was the whiny, entitled, Joel Johnson.
Well if that isn’t a face that would feel good to punch, I don’t know what is.
Wow, he looks so smug and arrogant, I think a good face punching is in order.
John Cook’s most recently recco’d article is titled “I Can’t Stop Staring at This Picture of Stevie Nicks with a Dog Vagina”. So there’s that.
I go there for Caity Weaver. Because Caity is amazing.
Richard Lawson was the Shakespeare of Real Housewives recaps.
WHAT DID GAWKER EVER DO TO REDDIT?
Notably, they exposed the name, picture, addresses, phone numbers, job details etc of Reddit moderators whom they disagreed with.
It has been revealed that Gawker media have attempted to blackmail subreddit moderators to gain modship of their subs.
Adrian Chen killed journalism when he gave violentacrez an interview this one time.
When adrian chen calls Reddit terrible, he is talking as an official member of Gawker media, whose front pages are daily posted with articles specifically designed to destroy people’s lives for profit.
Gizmodo has proved time and time again they do not have the maturity to maintain a healthy relationship with hardware manufacturers.
They hate any website that allows opinions and content to be generated without soviet style censorship and disgustingly biased, ideologically motivated editorial oversight.
Jalopnik.com is technically part of Gawker, yes, but I know the 2 guys who started it and they have nothing to do with Gawker. This is ludacris! I mean, imagine if Conde Nast screwed up in one of their magazines and in the shitstorm Reddit got banned from, lets say, mainstream media or something. Is that fair? No.
WAS THERE ANYTHING GOOD ABOUT GAWKER?
I’ve found that Gawker consistently has great comments for their articles. I wonder how they of all people pulled that off.
Strangely, gawker seems to have one of the most respectful comment sections I have seen in a long time pertaining to Detroit.
ON THE OTHER HAND….
Gawker’s awful comment system turns comments into an exclusive “boy’s club” while insightful and interesting comments are hidden away in light grey because people aren’t “starred.”
WHAT SHOULD GAWKER’S PUNISHMENT BE?
The site that slams Reddit everyday and yet is entirely made up of Reddit posts. Fuck Nick Denton!
I would love to see a lawsuit break Gawker…. just locking up everything the owners of Gawker have would be enough.
Living in Toronto I’ve had to listen to the gawker editor belittle the Toronto media and rant and rave about how he’s such a pioneering journalist for accepting the invitation to have a video of our mayor smoking crack. He turned this into an even bigger circus, and it drove me crazy. Gawker and Journalism are two words that are not ever allowed to be spoken in a row. I hope they get sued to bankruptcy.
They treat contributors like shit anyway, like the guy who leaked the iPhone 4S and treat their unpaid interns like shit also.
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
Without reddit complaining about gawker I would literally have no idea it exists.