Tag: Gawker

Vibe Shift: There’s A Media Space Not Being Served And It’s Aggravating

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Pretty much no one reads this blog. Most of the traffic comes from a trickle of people in Red States who have a boner for a civil war looking for how they can start murdering people like me for political reasons.

But, from my obsession with the analyzing the Web traffic of this Website, I can give you some sense of how one might start a new publication. The key take away from my all-consuming obsession with my traffic is there’s a real audience for celebrity news. It’s insatiable. The celebrity topic is one of the few things that people are willing to leave their passive media bubble to search for.

As such, if you wanted to start a new publication of some sort, I would suggest you really lean into covering celebrities, at least at first. So, I suppose if you wanted to get high concept you might say my idea is for TMZ meets BuzzFeed meets Spy Magazine Meets the old Nick Denton version of Gawker.

Or, put another way, I might suggest starting a podcast first that is hyper focused on snarky hot takes on celebrity news then build a Website out from that. Celebrity news definitely seems to be the clit of the infotainment industrial complex at the moment.

If you were to focus — as I’ve long suggested — on Julia Fox’s every public twitch then leverage that into politics and other infotainment elements you would have a hit on your hand.

Julia Fox

But who am I kidding. No one listens to me. Everyone gets all their information passively from Twitter, Facebook and Tik-Tok now. The only way my dream will ever come true is if I somehow managed to win the fucking lottery and do it myself.

Ugh.

‘Manifesting Destiny’

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Occasionally, I’ll feel a sense of dread, or just the feeling that Something Big is about to happen. Sometimes, it’s nothing. Other times, I fucking break my ankle.

I generally think gambling is the devil’s business, but I’m so desperately poor and it fits into my general belief that I’m special and destined for some sort of quirky greatness (wink) that I do, on occasion play the lottery.

I probably spend way too much brain power thinking what I would do with a sudden, significant windfall. The last time I checked, Mega Millions was up to $600 million. That may have changed recently, but I’m too lazy to double check.

Anyway, in my effort to manifest me winning the lottery, here is what I would do with all that sweet, sweet cash if I somehow miraculously won it.

  1. Move To A Big City
    The first thing I would do is become one of those smug bi-costal people who humble brag about taking the Red Eye for this or that reason. With a few hundred million dollars to play with, I would buy two places to live — one in NYC and one in LA.
  2. Start A Publication
    With all that money, I would hit the ground running. I would, I don’t know, buy The Village Voice brand or something. Or think up a new name. But whatever it was called, I would throw some money into starting a publication in the tradition of Spy and Gawker. Building this new media empire would consume my life, just like ROKon Magazine in Seoul did.
  3. Hire Research Assistants For The Novels
    I would continue to develop and write six novels, but I would hire a few research assistants to lighten the load and make the end product much, much better.
  4. Be A Bon Vivant
    Rather than be one of those lottery winners that flamed out, I would be like Mark Cuban who, if we’re honest, pretty much just won the lottery when he sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $1 billion back in the day. I would become an insufferable media personality that was always shooting my mouth off and doing weird, interesting things for the same of doing weird, interesting things.
  5. Start A Dive Bar
    I would find a small venue somewhere cool in NYC and start a dive bar like Nori in Seoul where I used to DJ. I would be the DJ on the weekends and it would be really cool. Sort of a Studio 54 meets CBGBs vibe.
  6. Become A Fashion Photographer
    I would throw money into buying all the equipment I need and then figure out how to become a fashion photographer. I have the talent, I just am very, very, very poor and if that changed in a big way then I would make myself known in the fashion industry.

    None of this, of course, is ever going to happen. It’s just a daydream. I suppose if I sold my novel and it was A HUGE SUCCESS then some of the above might, eventually happen. But I wouldn’t count on it.

    For the time being, at least, I’m reasonably content living in oblivion.

Julia Fox Is An ‘It Girl’ Without A Publication To Obsess About Her

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It is a testament to where things are right now with American pop culture and media that Julia Fox is out there, being a walking meme…and there’s not really any one blog or magazine (or even podcast) that I associate with her rise.

I mean, back in the day, there was Gawker and Julia Allison. That was an interesting dynamic that was a lot of fun to see unfold. She was young and dumb and Gawker enjoyed documenting her hot girl silliness.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that Julia Fox is one of a number of post-pandemic things that are part of the general “vibe shift” that is occurring in America at the moment.

And, in a different world — one where I had, like, friends and stuff — I would try to start a blog or a podcast that would do what the old Gawker did with Julia Allison. But, in a sense, I think that says more about my lost, squandered youth than anything else.

I just love the process of starting a new media outlet, however small, and it would be so much fun to start a new blog or podcast that hoped to not only document Julia Fox’s ever twitch, but also follow in the snarky tradition of Spy, Late Night With David Letterman and, of course, Gawker.

But it’s not to be.

Even if I managed to pull it off, it couldn’t be a blog, it would have to be a podcast. That’s where all the buzz and energy is these days. I can go months without looking at any media outlet other than Twitter and YouTube. And, I suspect, millions of other people are the same way.

I look at New York Magazine’s blog or the Undead Gawker’s blog and…it’s all very underwhelming. Meh. So what. Give me something hyper modern that talks about all the interesting, cool cultural developments in post-pandemic America.

Sadly, I doubt it will ever happen.

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.

Podcasting 2022 Is Where Blogging Was In 2002

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s not one to one, but as a rule of thumb, the podcasting space is around the same level of development as blogging was around 2003. If I have my chronically correctly, I think Gawker Media was founded around 2002 – 2003.

Anyway, the point is — podcasting is still somewhat under developed. There is still room for a blow out podcast network to blow up out of nowhere. There are a few really powerful podcast networks floating around, but there remains a bit of excitement in the podcasting sphere.

There is a window of opportunity for something cool to happen. I doubt anyone will do anything about it, though.

Pondering A Publication Of The ‘Vibe Shift’



by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

This is all very moot for various reasons, but it is fun to idly daydream about this idea again. Listening to British duo “Wet Leg,” I can hear a deep music echo of the last time there was “good” music on the radio — that gauzy era known as “the 90s.”

Anyway, I keep thinking about the idea of a “vibe shift” and if it’s even possible for there to be one for various reasons. It’s a lot harder for a real vibe shift to happen than you might think. The reason is simple — for a vibe shift to happen, everyone has to be exposed to the same thing at the same time and make a collective decision as to what it all means.

So, yes, there may be the occasional general vibe shift, but I just don’t see there being a huge swings in vibes that happened up until the rise of social media. But, having said that, I was reading New York Magazine’s personality profile of the new Executive Editor of The New York Times, Joe Kahn, and it occurred to me we desperately need a new Spy-Gawker type publication to record this surreal post-Trumplandia world we live in.

I will note, as an aside, this passage from the piece, which definitely gives one some insight into who gets things published in New York Magazine.

Until last fall, I spent four years working at the Times, as a clerk for the columnist Maureen Dowd, whose only real input on this story was that she’d personally strangle me if I didn’t give Kahn a fair shake.

I mean, where’s snark?

The answer is, of course, snark is all over Twitter and no one cares about blogs anymore. Yet, it sure would be fun to have a blog that was obsessed with Julia Fox and mixed silly celebrity snark with biting media commentary. That’s just not going to happen. And if it does, I will be no where near it when it does happen.

But having said that, it continues to be extremely frustrating to me that I know that I could do something really interesting given the resources. We need a blog in the tradition of Late Night With David Letterman, Spy Magazine and Gawker. I just don’t see that ever happening again.

If it happens, it’s going to happen in, I don’t know, the metaverse or something. The era of print blogs is over. Long, long over. That will be the real vibe shift, when we’re so consumed by the metaverse that some snarky application of it will become popular.

Anyway, it is fun to think about.

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.