Much like the NYmag piece on Gawker and the n+1 piece before it, the VF “story” is 90% recap in an attempt to make an insular story interesting to a wider audience. This predictably fails, as this story isn’t interesting anymore even to those who saw it happen and/or were directly involved. Throw in some labored connections (Megan Meier! oh yeah!) about the bad ol nets, use comment numbers as metrics of consciousness penetration (the new version of rattling off Google search hits, journalistically speaking), and close with your story basically falling off a cliff with no resolution, and you have the latest in the series of grandiose point-missing articles focused on Gawker Media and Nick Denton. Perhaps saddest of all is the Gawker post this morning on the subject, which is about the faintest possible condemnation of Denton’s behavior while still trying to seem righteous. Leaking the blowjob video was “beneath” him! How unseemly! (monocle pops out in dismay) He “secretly smeared” Emily Gould? What about “openly smeared”? That’s kinda the point of declaring her fair game, right?

All that aside, I’m ready to forgive everything about the VF story simply because of this line. “The Internet, for now, is made largely of words.” FOR NOW.

youngmanhattanite:

(via caro)

It’s like watching grass grow, except nothing but weeds are coming up. We’ll stick to the grass.