I keep hearing rumblings that Gawker is coming back in some form. While I’m all for something like Gawker coming back, I don’t know if bringing the Gawker brand itself back is all that great an idea. It’s too loaded. Any new version of the site would be judged by the old version.
Also, the Web is a lot different than it was nearly 20 years ago when Gawker first came out. The Web is now a mature medium. It’s almost impossible to organically grow a brand. A lot of the youthful vigor that helped grow Websites back in the day now is found on video services like Tik-Tok.
As such, I think literally bringing Gawker back may be a bit misguided. I would love to be involved in founding a new site similar to Gawker. I could do a really good job. I love shit like that.
But no one listens to me. I will note, in passing, how strange it is that the audience has moved on from the snarky, heady days of 2003-2004. There’s a fundimental change in audience tastes that I struggle to understand.
Now that the COVID19 pandemic is gradually beginning to abate, at least in the United States, it makes one wonder What’s Next. It would be nice to think that we might be entering a post-Rona world tan, ready and rested. That there might be the shock of the new in some respect on the cultural front.
And, yet, it definitely seems as though that’s not going to happen.
It definitely seems as though we’re going to continue to go through the paces. No new musical genres will burst forth. No new publications will stir new points of view. No new movies will will shock and delight in new, innovative ways. Something pretty big would have to happen for this not to be the case.
I can only speculate that maybe because the Internet is mature and Silicon Valley is thinking way too small that this is it. For the foreseeable future, American culture will continue to be in a vague neutral.
What’s so frustrating about this is I know, given the opportunity and resources, that I, personally, could do something really cool. I do have a novel I’m working on, and I’m pleased with how that’s shaping up. But it would be so nice to be able to work on a successor to Gawker or something. Something that would shake the media landscape up.
I think I’m just going to have to be content with pinning all my hopes and dreams on the novel.
Because of all my obsessive ranting about Gawker over the years, its founder Nick Denton has blocked me on Twitter. I have to say that one kind of hurts — even if, from his perspective, I can see I kinda deserve it.
Now, let me be clear — I’m working on a novel (which is going well, thank you) and so this is just me letting off some steam. Absolutely no one, but NO ONE, listens to me. I really am, for the time being, just talking to myself on this blog. I’m a complete and total nobody. But occasionally, I like to think, I do write something interesting on this blog.
And I know I’m writing some pretty interesting things in the novel I’m writing. Some of them are pretty thought provoking, in fact.
Regardless, I’m old enough now to have some perspective .Looking back on what I’ve experienced, it definitely seems as though occasionally a New Era pops up that changes things in a big way. Thinking back, it seems as though there were big shifts in mass perception just after Watergate and in the 1991-1992 era.
It seems logical to me that…maybe?…the fact that both Trumplandia and Rona are set to end at just about the same time might be enough to reset things? A New Modern era? Young people will reference THIS as “the modern” going forward?
A lot depends on the economy and how stable things are on an economic front. Though, of course, you could say that the next four years may be the last gasp of America as a liberal democracy, so, as such, we’re ripe for some Weimar Republic levels of creativity in a short burst before ICE agents begin to patrol Broadway looking for “non-American themes and ideas.”
I wish I was joking.
But the point is — where’s our new Gawker? It would be fun to have a new Gawker-like site that would follow in the traditions of Late Night with David Letterman, Spy Magazine and Gawker. I know what’s going on — the Internet is just as mature as the rest of media, so the start up costs for a Gawker-like site would be staggering.
The dynamic just isn’t there for a site to grow organically anymore.
As such, I think we’re in for just more of the same. The economics of the infotainment industry as such that we’re just going to have bland everything from here on out.
I’m doing my part to create something fun and different with the novel I’m working on, but it just takes time. Be patient.
If I somehow magically came into a sizable chunk of money, I have the proper skill set to necessary to start a decent Website like the late, great Gawker. One thing I’m obsessed with is my Webstats. Something about seeing the origin of the few people who look at this site is very addictive. If I was running a major site like Gawker, I would be extremely obsessed with what, exactly, was popular on the site and how to make sure those things were written about as much as possible going forward.
One thing I’ve noticed is I spend a lot of time ranting about fascism coming to America and what gets the most engagement? My occasional post about celebrities. It makes you wonder what’s going on. One of the biggest mysteries about the world of celebrities is how much they interact with the online world. My guess is there is a spectrum. On one end there are celebrities who are very active online via burner accounts, etc and then on the other end there are celebrities too busy being, well, celebrities to care.
The only reason why I think a lot of celebrities might be active online via burner accounts is they’re extreme narcissists to begin with and why wouldn’t they want to know on a personal level what people are saying about them? It is interesting that many, many major stars are — at least on a superficial level — completely off social media. It’s for the best, of course, but it makes you wonder how they pull it off, especially the younger ones.
Of course, they may not pull it off. It’s possible that far fewer celebrities are completely off social media than you might think. The thing that is so frustrating, is there is definitely a marketplace for something like the old Gawker. And, yet, the obstacles are enormous.
You would have to have a huge amount (in real terms) of startup money. And, even then, the world of 2003-2004 when Gawker was launched is ancient history. I only look at three or four Websites on a regular basis these days, so to start a new celebrity-infotainment site like Gawker now is probably a bridge too far.
Anyway, why do rando losers like me even care about this kind of shit? I have a novel to work on.
When I was in Seoul, there was this nebulous little group of creative-types who were doing Broad City-like videos with their phones 15 years ahead of their time. It just occurred to me that it would be cool if you did something like that today. Or, put another way, I think there’s both an audience and a marketplace for something of a micro-video version of Gawker.
If I lived in New York City (which I don’t) and if I had money (which I don’t) I would found a Website devoted to combining the best of The Daily Show and Broad City. Instead of fictional little adventures around New York City, I would find really funny young people to do field pieces about “real” street news.
These field pieces would be no more than two or three minutes long and would have a blog post associated with them that would flesh out the story for nerds who would actually like to, like, read and stuff. The trick is, of course, to find really funny young people who are so young that they aren’t already going the YouTube star route out of UCB.
Anyway, absolutely no one listens to me and I’m just letting off steam while I charge my batteries to get back to writing my novel.
Here’s the video where I gradually came up with this idea.
Executive Summary:Since the demise of both The Village Voice and Gawker, a market and audience in New York City is currently being completely unserved.
I do not live in New York City.
Let me repeat — I do not live in New York City.
Having said that, I was recently in the city New Year’s Day and I found myself in a nice dive bar in the East Village, the name of which eludes me. While I was there, I was wasted and I had an “ah-ha” moment — right now, there’s no small gritty publication that covers New York City that is known outside of the city itself or individual neighborhoods that micro publications might cover.
As such, the following is not even a daydream. It’s more of an idle observation about the state of the publishing world in New York City. As of right now, there’s a young, hip audience in New York City (one that frequent sets trends nationally) that is not being served in a manner that is known outside the confines of the city itself.
I’m not saying I’m the person to fix that issue because, well, like I mentioned, I don’t live in the city. What’s more, I don’t have any money and don’t really know anyone in the city. I do, however, have a unique skill set that if I was to magically find myself in the city for, say, six months, I feel could probably endup in something pretty cool happening.
But absolutely no one, but no one, owes me anything, so the following is more about me letting off steam while I develop a novel that any belief that it will cause anyone to help me out. I have a proven track record in strategic thinking when it comes to a publication, in the guise of the late, great ROKon Magazine in Seoul about 10 years ago.
All this verbiage is me simply me realizing that an audience and its associate market is currently not being served in any demonstrable manner. Of course, there are two things that are causing this — one is the Web is mature. Blogs really don’t have the cultural cache that they used to have because of the other big issue — the diffuse nature of social media.
What young people used to find on a site like, say, Gawker, they now find on Twitter or whatever video platform of the moment they might be interested in. So, in a sense, this post is more about me lamenting my lost youth than anything else, I guess.
I would idly note that you might be able to game the system by doing essentially a zine at first that you handed out in front of major publications around the city and then once it got some attention then you could launch it as a Website.
Maybe.
But it’s just fun to think about.
No one owes me — or anyone else — anything. And besides not having any money, not living in the city and not having any contacts in the city, the entire idea of a blog is now kind of passe.
Anyway. Maybe this blog post will inspire someone else to do what I can’t.
Shelton Bumgarner is a writer and photographer living in Richmond, Va. He may be reached at migukin (at) gmail (dot) com.
I’m just idly avoiding developing a novel at this point on a sunny summer afternoon, so indulge me. The only way to establish a new online media Website is to completely break the mold. I’ve talked at great length about social media platform based on the concepts of Usenet, but it seems as though there is only one niche that it would actually work with.
If you were going to start a new Website like, say, Gawker, it just wouldn’t work in the traditional sense. The Web has grown too large and apps like Facebook and Twitter have segmented the online media world to such an extent that it’s pretty pointless to throw the necessary money at a blog to grow it into something like what Gawker used to be.
But what if you managed to buy the Gawker domain name, what could you do with it? It has an established mind-share, so it would really help in starting a new site. But don’t try to bring back the old Gawker, do something revolutionary. Use my concept of a social media network based on the concepts of Usenet to completely disrupt how we think of online content delivery.
You get a small, young passionate group of writers to churn out snarky material that doesn’t go into a blog, but starts threads in this new social media service. If you did it right, the service could be quite successful in my opinion. It would be hailed as the “Uber for online news” by the industry press. This concept is so obvious that it’s sad no one will ever do anything with it. I could go into an enormous amount of detail about this all, but I’ll refrain.
It’s times like these when I wish Gawker still existed. Gawker was felled, as you may recall, by its sheer hubris. It did not take very seriously a lawsuit funded by Peter Thiel. As the lawsuit progressed, Nick Denton, Gawker’s founder and publisher, couldn’t or wouldn’t realize struck at the very heart of his publication.
But the issue for me is that Gawker is sorely needed right now in this era of Trumplandia. I have romanticized Gawker’s golden age a great deal, but I still would like to think that if golden age Gawker would alive in this surreal age that we live in that the pee-pee tape would probably be on FOX News by this point.
The old Gawker really had a lot of spunk. You got the sense that you were hanging out with a really smart old friend who had seen all, done all and always had a smartass answer to the even the most jaded of events.
And, yet, over the years Gawker lost its way. It didn’t seem to have the spunk that it had when it first came out. It became less a really cool friend with something to say and more of an angry person drunk of success and arrogance.
The only thing is, Gawker was a one-stop-shop for the kind of content I was interesting reading. I can honestly say that since Gawker’s untimely demise, I don’t read any Websites except for Twitter and Facebook. What’s worse, it’s unlikely that any site will take Gawker’s place. The age of blogs is long dead and it’s highly unlikely you could start a new Gawker-like blog. The web universe is simply too large now and the money isn’t there anymore.
So, we’re just going to have to deal with the toxic waste of Twitter I guess. But for those of us who remember Gawker, we will have fond memories if nothing else.
I was a huge fan of Gawker for much of its existence and was greatly sadden to see it die an untimely death. Though, I must note, it died in large part because of its own self-importance and arrogance. Had it been a little bit more humble when it was needed, it would probably still be in existence today. And in its later years the site had strangly lost its way. It was adrift and had been stripped of its charm to become just nasty for the sake of being nasty.
So, right now, two things are true. The guy who killed Gawker — Peter Thiel — is interested in buying its corpse so he can do God-only-knows what with it. Meanwhile, vile piece of shit Steve Bannon is out of a job. It seems like a perfect fit: Thiel buys the Gawker domain name and puts Bannon in charge of it. I would wince if this were to happen, but it would make a lot of sense.
It probably won’t happen. I hope it doesn’t happen. But who knows. Only time will tell.
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