we hate your children, neal pollack, rufus griscom, struggling writers

Hipster Daddy Throwdown A Vortex Of Do Not Want

Alternadad and struggling writer Neal Pollack (pictured, right) has, of course, his own "alternative online parenting publication" called Offsprung, and the site in turn has a chat section called "the Playground," and Pollack figures no one else should be allowed to ever use the word "playground" in the name of a parental discussion board. But that's exactly what Nerve.com founder Rufus Griscom (pictured, left) has gone and done, with his "Babble Playground," attached to his existing hipster parenting site Babble. And so the hipster parent flamewar is on. Cue the requisite nauseating, passive-aggressive bickering over which site is authentic and which site is derivative and tacky. To make things more fun, lawyers are involved.

Roughly a year ago, Pollack started his "Playground" discussion forum. In the last couple of weeks, Griscom's Babble started a similar forum called "Babble Playground."

"We felt usurped, if not completely ripped of," Pollack wrote. Some of his commenters went and started a thread on the competing discussion forum about how their own Playground was totally better. Mature, right? Griscom deleted the thread, which he called "inaccurate and kinda tacky."

Then Griscom sent an email saying, basically, What, you exist? I'm sorry, I hadn't noticed your little chat board. ("We had no idea that you had social networking functionality on your site... I haven’t been there in some time.")

Then Pollack asked his legal counsel if Griscom could somehow be sued and made to starve in the street for daring to copy his brilliant "Playground" naming scheme, and they said Uh, definitely not.

So Pollack exercised the only attack vector left at his disposal, calling Griscom a yuppie and a square:

Babble is an expensive downtown urban loft rehab, where everything looks pretty, but it all feels so perfect, so smooth, so sterile, so target-marketed, so…fake. Offsprung, on the other hand, is like going over to the house of a good friend, a friend who has three kids and can’t afford to even dream about a nanny. The house is imperfect. It’s loud. There’s a weird yellow stain with hair clumps behind the toilet. But it’s home, and it’s comfortable, and it’s yours.

Then all the hipsters went back to ruining their children and the world forever, The End.

[Offsprung via NYM]

9:51 PM on Wed Apr 2 2008
By Ryan Tate
2,236 views
27 comments

Comments

Mike_Jahn at 10:06 PM on 04/02/08
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Connectedness Index: 200

One mention of the word "lawyer" and the two of them should move to Park Slope and join the PTA.
Theda_Bara at 10:18 PM on 04/02/08
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Connectedness Index: 190

Playground, indeed.
Saxon 212 at 10:19 PM on 04/02/08
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Do hipster parents worry about the clear plastic rain covers on strollers offgasing like the Park Slope cult do?
SeriesOfTubes at 11:02 PM on 04/02/08
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I confess that I like Offsprung better than Babble, and I actually agree with Pollack's assessment of his own site. Babble DOES feel manufactured, it's not terribly well-written, and if often seems to stoop to shock value. I know it's wrong to like Neal Pollack, but even an execrable hipster can be right sometimes. Right?
VoxPopuli at 11:26 PM on 04/02/08
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Bob Saget meets muddy David Arquette in a cage match. Great.
KFedsbalzac at 11:31 PM on 04/02/08
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You know though, Pollack was funny, and you all ate him. I mean come on - I'm Friends With A Lower Class Black Woman was funnier than anything we've seen here in years.
rosaluxembourgeoise at 11:34 PM on 04/02/08
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This is so on. Meet you in the playground at 3:30, yuppie.
SeriesOfTubes at 11:40 PM on 04/02/08
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You know, now that I think of it, Offsprung does kind of seem like the Gawker of parenting blogs.
queenmargereen at 11:42 PM on 04/02/08
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Rufus Griscom=sonofa Nina Griscom? How'd he get his foot in the door? Jes'sayin.
raincoaster at 11:59 PM on 04/02/08
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Offsprung is fresh and fun; Babble is condescending and prefab. It stinks of marketing plan.
MICKEYBLUEFRIES at 12:05 AM on 04/03/08
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What the hell is an Alternadad? Like a gay dad? Am I missing something here? Dads are meant to be gruff, listen to Jethro Tull and smoke unfiltered camels.
ObtuseIntolerant at 12:08 AM on 04/03/08
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@SeriesOfTubes: Right.

I have never read it, but, as a mom, he had me at "weird yellow stain with hair clumps behind the toilet". I'm in.
downlow at 12:09 AM on 04/03/08
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Keeping with my Texas pride theme of the day, might I suggest this site: [www.rebeldad.com]

I'm not a parent, a man, or a stay-at-home dad, but I do watch the Today show. I've never read this site, though, because (see above) why the hell would I?
T.H.H.E._Dog at 12:53 AM on 04/03/08
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The father on the right apparently has dealt with the phenomenon of Baby Poop Splat! Right on his chest? Iwwww!
EnviousJuno at 01:49 AM on 04/03/08
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You know, Gawker, you need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car -- hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming asshole be a father.
raincoaster at 02:15 AM on 04/03/08
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Butt-reaming and fatherhood?

yor doin it rong.
Hamud Ibn Hamud at 02:46 AM on 04/03/08
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As a child of the fearful, conservative immigrant-class, I do not like these fathers. They scare me.

They remind me of the parents of kids I went to school with.

These were "cool" parents who were things like architects or sociology professors, and they'd been on Fulbrights to places like India, and they all smoked a little grass and they always had books about things like over-population and Gestalt therapy sitting around the house.

Despite the apparent open-mindedness of these homes, they were rife with a million tiny protocols and sensitivities that I could never quite apprehend. Their ethos was every bit as tyrannical as that ruling any other sector of the striving middle class.

These were not warm homes. These were not homes in which prevailed a definite sense of unselfconscious ease at simply being.

So it doesn't surprise me that "cool dads" Pollack and Griscom are attacking each other for reasons having everything to do with what the striving middle-class nowadays construes as "good taste."
UnstableMabel at 06:44 AM on 04/03/08
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Now children, play nicely!
valarmorghulis at 08:15 AM on 04/03/08
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Good evening KMart shoppers, I would like to direct your attention to the parking lot where we are currently hosting a, HIPSTER Fiiiight!

/cartman
lawyergay at 08:59 AM on 04/03/08
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@Hamud: Well said. I encountered my first pasta maker in such a home when I was 9 years old. I was over there playing with my friend one day when his mother--an arty but artless type with a "studio" jammed with easels and looms--insisted on introducing me to their cleaning lady.
minx at 09:29 AM on 04/03/08
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those pictures are worth a thousand words
PickleTitsTurner at 10:37 AM on 04/03/08
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News to hipster-alterna-whatever the fuck you call yourself-parents: Youd four year olds don't give a shit about the Zombies, or the Pixies, or whatever else you foist upon them in a sad, narcisisstic attempt to slow the aging process and your growing irrelevance. They just want to pick their noses. Also, FYI: soon they will turn 13 and hate you.
Mediahohoho at 10:53 AM on 04/03/08
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And all the kids committed suicide.
GollyG at 11:27 AM on 04/03/08
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"a friend who has three kids and can't afford to even dream about a nanny" is a friend who does not own a computer and is too busy at, oh, I don't know, one of his JOBS? to have time for web sites about parenting. And, Neal, is not someone you have ever spent time with but have only imagined (badly) for the sake of an argument.
4Cats at 11:43 AM on 04/03/08
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Y'all know this is a plot to make the next generation of conservatives, right?
BalknChain at 12:35 PM on 04/03/08
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Has Gawker gone back in time a few hours? Missing posts..
Kona at 12:54 PM on 04/03/08
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The whole Brooklyn hipster parenting culture is a big part of the reason that as soon as I found out I was pregnant, I started making arrangements to move from Brooklyn to Jersey City.