Gawker
"I’m going to try to never write about you,” I whispered to the boy whose shoulder my head was on two nights ago. Oops. Emily Gould has made a writing career of her personal life and built a personal life around her writing career, exposing her relationships on a personal site and on Gawker when she was a writer on this site. Now, in a cover story for this coming weekend's New York Times Magazine, she does an accounting. "What I gained—and lost—by revealing my intimate life on the web," goes the cover line—over a sultry photograph of the author sprawled across a bed, a laptop power cord suggestively looping towards her tattooed arm.
This article might have been a reflection of the cost of compulsive indiscretion; I suspect, however, that it will merely broadcast the humiliation of Josh Stein, Leon Neyfakh and other former boyfriends to a larger audience and at greater length. Don't feel too sorry for Stein, however. He already wrote his own piece on "the dangers of blogger love" in Page Six Magazine. Gould and Stein—the web equivalent of the vicious couple of Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?—have created a small-scale publishing industry out of mutual abuse. The cover story in the Times Magazine is its biggest hit yet.
Comments
Wow.
Blahg.
This is going to be so fun to watch.
god... generation x and the need to overshare
Wow - Dance's New Big Russian Export? I gotta get that!
Right, because the only reputations that matter are those of the men around her?
She's just like Julia Allison!
Jesus christ, Emily.
So hey - whoever's name winds up next to a few quotes from this is going to have an awful lot of pageviews. Are your guys stabbing each other in the face to post this or what?
am i gonna get banned if i point out that's not really the greatest photo of her i've ever seen? wtf @ t mag over all of this.
Umm... huh.
Well, let's all go ahead and line up on whichever side of the snippy picket shitfence we want on this.
Every one of our mouths can hold an occasional foot. I still love you, Emily.
test
I feel personally invested in this emotional trainwreck. When does it go on-line?
Jimmy Kimmel could not be reached for comment?
@SirDidymus: Seriously! That "friendship" seems to have really paid off.
Also, anyone else find the vast majority of New York Times mag cover stories fantastically boring?
If only those tartrazine walls could talk.
Oh. Right.
This is not untoward.
@SirDidymus:
Well, yes. And maybe just as uninteresting, once you get an excruciatingly prolonged look inside.
@KarenUhOh: Me too. [insert sigh]
srsly who does she look like in this photo (it is the only reason i clicked on this!). it's...someone! someone famous! but who?
@dado: Too insulated by piles of money is my guess.
"...and I'm yelling
and I'm screaming
and I don't know
what I'm saying ..."
@allyzay: Emma Roberts? But, you know, all punk-like.
@allyzay: Keith Gessen.
I have to say, keeping your bed in a corner of the room is totally inhospitable, relationship-wise. Both parties need to have space to roll out of bed in the middle of the night or apocalyptic wakefulness happens.
@KarenUhOh:
I ain't taking a side, but I do want to say this: I'm pissed that writers now have to add to their skills the ability to flounce around on beds and stare seductively into cameras (this goes for both the girls and the boys).
signed,
husky bald man
Dignified.
Oh, here's the other cover line, which is blurry on the scan here: "Maybe it makes me feel safe to think that if I tell you all my secrets you won't have any ammo against me that I haven't given you."
@allyzay: Chloe Sevigny, with a muddy- looking 'do.
Blogtacular. Emily looks great!
@Pope John Peeps II: And the yellow has got to go. Hasn't she heard of Charlotte Perkins Gilman?
@Nick Denton:
It shouldn't.
Is she supposed to be attractive by some criteria or other?
@allyzay: Rory Culkin
@KarenUhOh: I think it's pretty awesome for her. I mean, I would totally love to be splayed out all hotness-like on the cover of the NY Times mag. It would make my degree seem worthwhile, even if I were on the cover because I totally killed somebody. Which would probably be the only reason they would ever put me on their cover.
Good for you, Emily!
This is...no. Sorry. No.
@heartbreakturnip: you missed that article on Jezebel with the creepiest dating guy in NY who made Moe put on his underwear and tried to paw her on his bed.
These are the days I thank God I'm not a journalist in the big city.
It makes a lot more sense when you realize that the New York Times is renaming their publication Whoops Magazine this week.
@Pope John Peeps II:
Maybe she'll have a place big enough to support such things once she's done cashing in all her privacy and selling out everyone that has ever come in contact with her.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
@KarenUhOh: why is there a fence? is there a new controversy here? I don't see it, personally. people blog, we all know about it. it seems like this is news to people who still use dial-up or live in fly-WAY-over states but to the rest of us, it's just one of our own getting more fame and glory.
I still miss Emily's crackerjack Drizzt Do'Urden coverage.
In the few interactions I've had with Leon he seemed very nice and not at all deserving of having dirty laundry aired for the Internet audience's amusement.
@Nick Denton: Who's the "you" in that sentence? Everyone?
@allyzay: Like Sarah Polley in that movie where she has brown hair and is a late'90s hipster..."Go"?
There's a lot to be said for keeping a little mystery about yourself. (And for being able to discuss something other than your own, faskinating self) Seems to be an increasingly rare quality these days.
@EpponneeRae: Ha! Though honestly, it's probably an intentional homage.
@BeRightBack: Since she's the one who's doing the broadcasting it seems that her reputation doesn't matter to her.
What is it with the idea that if you tell someone all the terrible things about you it suddenly neutralizes their ability to be used against you? I'm being earnest here. Look at my face.
@allyzay: Chloë Sevigny.
Any comparisons with JA are obviously ludicrous.
Yeah, let the envy ooze right on out there, people.
And Nick. What's the deal with none too subtle jihad against Emily? Her leaving or the n+1 piece on Gawker? She only has the nicest things to say about you.
And I'd just add that, if there's any hanging to be done here, perhaps it'd be more dignified to just let the subject handle that herself.
@fiveinchtaint: Or Kieran?
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