Gawker: julia allison, jakob lodwick

Correct out-of-touch New York style rag's Internet gossip!

Melissa Gira Grant — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:20:00 EDT

It's complicated. God, is it ever. The same October Details story that follows around New York's "Internet playboys" and their bicoastal hangers-on runs with this chart of who dated, funded, or hated in this overdocumented side of the Web scene. So sweet to know we're not the only ones keeping a scorecard, but one of its subjects, Caroline McCarthy, claims there's inaccuracies! Let's do Details and the kids recently fanning their fameballs from the coverage a favor and fix it up then. Ready? Let loose in the comments with your errata.

Five Annoying Online Publicity Stunts

Hamilton Nolan — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:55:02 EDT

Michael Ian Black, comedian and VH1's go-to analyst of pop culture, has started an online feud with testosterone and beer-fueled guy blogger Tucker Max. Black challenged Tucker to a fight, Tucker accepted, and now they are both talking trash in a way advantageous to the promotion of Black's new book. This would all be cuter if Black didn't just try to start another online feud with David Sedaris, to promote the same book. These online publicity stunts are incredibly difficult to pull off without being annoying; below, a jaded look back at five that sucked the big one:

1. MIB Vs. Tucker Max/ Sedaris: Yes, Michael Ian Black is a funny and tolerable guy. But variety is the spice of life, man. How about an online encouragement of somebody?
2. Jakob Lodwick Quits The Internet: This one is lame because it will not stick, we guarantee. For one, he runs an internet company. Yea.
3. Julia Allison Quits Blogging: *Scoff*. Also: other things.
4. Patrick Moberg And His Subway Dream Girl: A guy sees a cute girl on the subway, draws a picture of her, puts it on a website, and gets famous. The two finally meet! They go on national TV! Everybody writes about them! Then they end up not really liking each other that much, proving that love is a dirty sham and we live in a cold and heartless world. Thanks for nothing.
5. The Keith Gessen Middlebrow Remix Book: We muddy the clearcut sides of this tedious feud by having Gessen remove the objectionable references to Harvard in his objectionable book and replace them with references to Florida State. Btw, bidding on this for-charity item ends tomorrow so bid bid bid!

Julia Allison: HTML tutor to the nonstars

Melissa Gira Grant — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:20:00 EDT

It's been just a little over a year since Julia Allison touched down in Silicon Valley, strutting past the hand-stampers at an arts fundraiser and informing anyone who would listen that she was looking for a boyfriend to help her with her website. It hasn't exactly paid off. The so-soft-it-hurts launch of her new startup, Nonsociety.com, is a technical tour de farce. The rumored-to-death project wraps glamour shots of Allison and friends like comrade Meghan Asha Parikh, TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington's ex-girlfriend, around sideways-scrolling feeds ("lifestreams"!) of their Tumblr blogs. Meghan, a former hedge-fund analyst, shows off her tech creds here. She's the only one who seems to have a functioning "lifestream," even on launch day. Allison's and a handbag-designing ladyfriend's came up 404. We salvaged the launch video, in case the whole thing collapses:

Allison's quest for a geek boyfriend paid off in two regards. Nonsociety's design is strongly reminiscent of Iminlikewithyou, the casual-games site run by her current beau, Charles Forman, and the teaser video is hosted at Vimeo, the online-video site founded by Jakob Lodwick, Allison's ex. Too bad she didn't hook up with a boy more experienced at handling back ends.

How To Not Storm Off the Internet in a Huff

Pareene — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:31:19 EDT

Yesterday, a grown man threw a tantrum and stormed off the internet. Because we bullied him. It wasn't pretty. Are we proud? Well, it's a living. We spent today mulling over some wise advice we received. And, of course, it's true. We should be constructive! In the spirit of friendship, we'll explain how to survive the Internet without letting the bastards get you down. Heed our words, and you'll never have to shut down another blog. Or quit a message board, or ban yourself from a comments section. Never again will you hear the sirens of the waaaahmbulance.

Know the Sharing/Oversharing Divide. A bit of personal info—we have a kitty!—makes you a friend. Too much personal info—check out my facial!—makes you a target. This is not even a fine line. It is a very obvious line. It is the line that drove Julia Allison off the net before. Since her return, she, surprisingly, has not really crossed it!

Don't Write Like An Asshole. Kinda hard to quantify this one, right? Especially because some of us make our livings acting like pricks all day. But writing assholish things and writing like an asshole are different! Keith Gessen often Tumblrs like an asshole. Yes, you have a fine little magazine, but the I'll buy you a beer if you are half as impressive as me when you're my age thing is one of the douchiest things we've ever read, especially because dude is not actually Norman Mailer yet. Ditto for Lodwick's contention that his pretty websites "change the world." No, they don't! Maybe "asshole" just means "solipsist?" It does seem to, doesn't it. Which brings us to:

Manage Your Narcissism. Please. And:

Have a Sense of Humor Please.

STOP DIGGING. You're mocked or attacked. Respond with a cutting counter-attack, a reasonable and self-reflective defense, or DON'T RESPOND AT ALL. Or email the author and make friendly! This secret tactic usually works wonders. DON'T flail about helplessly in the comments section, where you'll be piled on. Don't post something hurt and whiny that reinforces whatever real or imagined fault you were attacked for. Bite back and enjoy the game or ignore it and move on with your life. Mr. Keith Gessen sort of did this, which is why we'll link to his cute puppy pictures.

Man Up. This advice is very sexist but also sadly useful.

Own Your Terrible Gimmick This is basically summed up as "fuck the haters." It means that when we (or anyone else!) do things like this to you, you do this.

Read This. Will Leitch is leaving the internet, but he imparted wisdom on his way to print.

Be Like Doree Everyone likes Doree. Everyone! Look at how she deflects criticism!

Don't Storm Off the Internet In a Huff. It's embarrassing. Also it makes the entire internet indistinguishable from LiveJournal, which is depressing.

We hope this helps all you Tumblrs and Tweeters out there! You whiny idiots!

Why are Jakob Lodwick and Charles Forman in Esquire?

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:20:00 EDT

We don't own a smoking jacket or get manicures, so were unaware that New York wantrepreneurs Charles Forman of Iminlikewithyou and fired Connected Ventures cofounder Jakob Lodwick appear in the latest issue of Esquire until Forman pointed it out to us this morning. "Good to see you yesterday," Forman managed to say before asking: "Are you going to put my Esquire thing on Valleywag?" Fine. But only because it gives us a chance to examine what, exactly fellow wantrepreneur Julia Allison sees in him. Yes, the pair are dating. (Though we hear she sometimes forgets his name when introducing him at parties.)

Jakob Lodwick is Sick of Your Infernal Minimum Wage

ian spiegelman — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 13:00:33 EDT

Why all the poverty in America? Vimeo-founding Julia Allison-ex and tedious fameball douche Jakob Lodwick thinks it's because all those poor, poor corporations are forced to pay a minimum wage that many prospective workers are simply not qualified for. In a rhetorical interview with himself (Oh, what a device!) Lodwick sure does make some convincing arguments.

Q: What about the homeless guy who can’t get hired for the $5/hour minimum wage job, but would be qualified for a $3 an hour job?

A: He will have no job, because no $3 jobs exist. He will dig through trash cans for empty bottles and pizza crusts.

Q: But that’s not fair. It is my belief that no one should have to dig through trash cans.

A: Then why do you advocate laws that make digging through trash cans inevitable? Why do you eliminate the role of the least skilled people in the economy? Why do you insist that the ladder have no bottom rung?

Q: Nobody’s talking about ladders. I’m talking about the basic human right of a well-paying job.

A: What about the right to earn a living that, while meager, is better than no living at all?

Q: Easy for you to say! You’ve made plenty of money — you’re just trying to squeeze every last penny out of the underpriviledged!

A: I’ve made plenty of money because I’m good at evaluating complex systems and understanding how they could be made more efficient. There is an inefficiency here that hurts everyone. It bothers me because it could so easily be reversed, because it causes so much misery, and because it makes the economy worse off for me! But nobody wants to learn basic economics, so they go on repeating the same reality-denying mistakes that have been made, putting forth an agenda that cannot work but sure does sound nice [...]

Q: Do you think the girls who attack you on their tumblrs have crushes on you?

A: No comment, you’re adding an unnecessary distraction to this post.

Q: Ok, one more question, what’s your take on this debacle?

A: GOOD NIGHT.
[JakobLodwick.com]

Julia Allison, The Movie

Ryan Tate — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 22:23:23 EDT

It's either a belated April Fool's joke or a stroke of genius: College Humor-ists Sam Reich and Ricky Van Veen have just completed a script called "Jakob and Julia," at least according to a post on Reich's Tumblr. If you look closely at the photo of the script (reproduced after the jump), you can see it is addressed to "__???____ Agency" at a Beverly Hills, California zip code. This implies a screenplay (as opposed to a Broadway musical) about, of course, the doomed relationship between Star editor-at-large Julia Allison and Vimeo co-founder Jakob Lodwick. This raises so many questions: Real or fake? Movie or TV pilot? And, most critically, which Hollywood stars should play Julia and Jakob? Post your answers in the comments. After the jump, videographer Loren Feldman's December 2007 dramatization of the Julia-Jakob relationship. UPDATE: Plus a short email from Ricky Van Veen. Sounds like a joke.

Jakob and Julia from Loren Feldman on Vimeo.

Did You Think There'd Be No JA Today?

ian spiegelman — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:05:39 EDT

Here is cute-to-some, hateful-to-others Star magazine editor-at-large Julia Allison singing along to Madonna in a sushi place. Watch it!

Mark Zuckerberg In The Presence

Nick Denton — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 16:16:26 EDT

Admit it: Julia Allison is irrepressible. The Star magazine talking head abandoned her personal blog because it was ruining her life; and broke up with her webtard boyfriend, Jakob Lodwick, because he slept with her "adopted" little sister and was crushed commercially by Youtube. But she's merely moved up the internet food chain. On photo sharing service Flickr, Allison shows her act is still fresh outside New York. Here, at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas, she pushes out her chest into friending distance of the alpha geek of the moment, Mark Zuckerberg. Coincidentally, the Facebook founder was recently named by Forbes as the world's youngest billionaire.

It's no use, Kevin — Julia knows you have to come down eventually

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:40:17 EST

A tipster sends us this shot of Digg founder Kevin Rose clambering up a palm tree during the Future of Web Apps conference. You know, the one in Miami, where quasi-professional geek paramour Julia Allison drank his milkshake. Allison is beautiful, and if bright lights are your thing, plausibly charming. So why would Kevin flee? Maybe like Allison's last beau, he doesn't want to shell out for a MacBook Air, either. Leaked emails on that whole mess, below.

Update: Allison says these emails were "taken out of context."

(Photo by Somewhat Frank)

"You're going to get burned"

Nick Denton — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:31:27 EST

As you know, Julia Allison, the Time Out dating columnist, is providing free advice at the Dunkin' Donuts Toast Tent in Herald Square. (Hurry!) For a young student-reporter she dispensed the following wisdom: "What goes around comes around! If you know, you're going to write down, say stuff about people, you... and you choose to write about your relationship publicly. You're going to get burned. I think it's in general a horrible idea. Aside from changing our Facebook status from single to attached, that is just about as far as you should go." (Click the thumb for the scratchy audio. Yes, the student-reporter was a Gawker spy.) The compulsive fameball forgot to mention that she knows the perils of self-publishing from personal experience. By blogging every turn of her relationship with College Humor's Jakob Lodwick, including a mention of his bipolar condition, Allison complains she's scared off her last three suitors. And it's Valentine's Day tomorrow. CLIP »

Manhattan Media Clusterfuck

Nick Denton — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:46:44 EST

Who needs Gossip Girl? Manhattan's real-life dramas are so much more intricate, petty, and intertwined. Publicity whore Julia used to date Jake, Barry's former toyboy, who was bipolar, which might explain why he dated jailbait Leven, who was friends with Britney's younger sister, who's pregnant. Leven now sees Hud, though he once shared a bed with perfume promoter Alan, who's married (to a man!); Hud looks increasingly like his former boss, Lloyd, who introduced him to Julia when the dating columnist and TV commentator moved to New York. Bad move: Julia published a photo of him in a red scarf, looking Lloyd-like, and now Hud's pissed: he yelled at her at the Beatrice, even though pretty-boy Fabian and Chloë were there. (Wasn't she in some movies?) Sooo embarrassing. But not as embarrassing as Julia totally stealing Chloë's red dress (not nearly as nice as the ones designed by Barry's beard, Diane) for Valentine's Day. Or when Emily, Julia's new best friend, hinted that Josh was a premature ejaculator; he certainly got revenge. CLICK FOR CHART »

'Little Sister' Steals Boyfriend, Then Limelight

Nick Denton — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:38:14 EST

First Leven Rambin, the 17-year-old actress from the daytime soap, All My Children, hooks up with Julia Allison's boyfriend, the magnetic but possibly bipolar Jakob Lodwick. And Allison, Star Magazine's designated talking head on subjects such as premature celebrity death, had regarded Leven as her "adopted little sister". What could be possibly be more cruel than that? Blonde Leven (right) was much photographed at last night's premiere party for doomed TV show, Lipstick Jungle. (One pap agency reckons she's the next in a line for stardom, and degradation, behind Britney, Paris and Lindsay.) Paparazzi? Call Julia Allison! The attention-seeking former dating columnist, seen here on the left, would have been there in a flash. Stealing her boyfriend? Forgiven. Now let's pout for the cameras in an incestuolesbian pose. Except, as several party-goers noticed, Allison was out of the frame. Seems her former protege's publicist kept them apart. Association with Allison, after the hookup triangle became public, is now bad for Leven's image.

Jakob Lodwick claims he'll behave like a normal human being. Right.

Mary Jane Irwin — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 20:00:42 EST

Wacky entrepreneur-turned-egoblogger Jakob Lodwick has vowed that from here onward, he'll reveal "less, not more" about his life online. A wise move that would prevent him from, say, deleting entire blog entries as soon as they're reported on. Buried deep within his Normative nonexplainer is his new philosophy of revealing "a morsel" rather than his whole "lunch" because he's learned some sort of lesson. The real reason? Without Julia Allison, he's just not that interesting.

Guy without a job seeks to humiliate his ex

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:20:11 EST

Fired Connected Ventures founder Jakob Lodwick thought it would take a whole 300 or so words to humiliate his ex-girlfriend, Star editor-at-large and Mossberg-esque technology evangelist Julia Allison. All this because Lodwick and Allison's relationship — friends prefer to characterize it as a postmodern art project — went awry. But Jake, there was no need to go over a 100 words.

I try not to blog about Julia. I can't help it. I want nothing to do with her, but she:
calls or emails me
ignores that I told her she is a "psychopathic narcissist" who is "evil"
recently hired my brother to do video work for her
writes about me on her site
misrepresents her closeness to my friends
visits my old office and my old coworkers
emailed one of my ex-girlfriends
started attacking Tumblr
I have insulted and degraded her to no avail. She has no value. But every day Julia-related shit pops into my life.

"She has no value," he writes, eh? You know what that means ladies! Fella is totally on the market! Paging Tasha Maltby.

Who made Tumblr's David Karp so famous?

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:40:06 EST

"My bf is like, so famous," David Karp's girlfriend Amy notes on her blog. And it's increasingly true. Yesterday found Karp featured in the New York Post's gossip rag, Page Six magazine. Just a few days before that, the New York Observer asked, "Would You Take a Tumblr With This Man?" You'll never guess who's taking credit for all the attention. Here's a hint: She's Julia Allison. Oops, ruined that game.

After the Observer ran its article on Karp and Tumblr, Allison wrote:

I would like to take credit for what is SURE to be a domino-effect of the dregs of Manhattan media all jumping on Tumblr's boat together, like little esoteric rats. Sigh. First Doree, now Alex. Who's next, Jeff Bercovici? Rachel Sklar? Emily Gould's new dog?!?!?! MY MOM???"

There's only one tiny little problem with Allison's claim. According to the reporter who wrote the Observer story, while both Julia Allison and Tumblr investor Jakob Lodwick linked to Karp's profile, Lodwick drove much more traffic. Which got me thinking. Maybe these two should date? Or even start a blog together?

What Jakob Wants

Richard Lawson — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 10:48:13 EST

As a commenter here once pointed out, Star magazine TV pundit Julia Allison has learned the hard way that there's always someone younger and hotter. Apparently, there's always someone more famous, too. Fameball ex-boyfriend and "celebrity" geek Jakob Lodwick has announced plans to befriend young Hollywood, starting with Scarlett Johansson. Better a stepping stone than not a stone at all, Jules.

Where'd you go over the holidays?

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 11:00:28 EST

Cabo, it's supposed to be the West Coast's Mexico. But here's photographic evidence that Silicon Alley entrepreneurs (and B.J. Novak from "The Office," back left) like to play in the Pacific, too.

We know you people prefer schadenfreude to jealousy. So while gazing at this photo of three out of four Connected Ventures founders (Ricky Van Veen, Josh Abramson and Jakob Lodwick plus entourage are present; Zach Klein spent the month in India), recall that despite his success Van Veen ~~rents~~ owns a tiny Manhattan apartment and that this trip cost the recently fired Lodwick his relationship with Julia Allison. He went with another woman. Follow the thumbnail to see the full image on Flickr. (Photo by mareen)

All My Girlfriends

Nick Denton — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 16:20:42 EST

When Julia Allison, the Star Magazine talking head, explained her breakup with Jakob Lodwick, she blamed the charismatic uber-geek's hookup with one of her "close friends". One assumed Julia usually describes friends as close, so that didn't narrow down the field. But the former dating columnist wasn't exaggerating. We'd read their public breakup, a smaller Manhattan version of the tabloid-selling dissolution of Bennifer, was messy; and their downtown world incestuous. We only knew the half of it. [Warning: anyone who clicks on this story waives any right to complain about excessive coverage of Julia Allison.]

Here's the key passage from Julia Allison's personal blog, in which she writes of her boyfriend's betrayal.

Instead of close friend, try "little sister." Leven Ramblin is a young actress on All My Children, the daytime soap opera, on which she plays an autistic teenager called Lily Benton Montgomery. It's a role once occupied by Mischa Barton.

Julia Allison, always quick to attach herself to a rising celebrity stock, took the young ingenue under her wing. In May last year, she even hosted a media coming-out party to mark Leven's 17th birthday. It was a fun party, until the doorman cottoned on that some of the party guests might be underage. The Gawker tag on that story: BARELY LEGAL.

Lodwick's fortunate that, in New York State, the age of consent is lower than the legal drinking age. But, still, an affair with someone Allison called her "adopted little sister" — that's just cruel. Even if she has several adopted little sisters.

The techie, one of the four first employees at the College Humor site, refused to comment. "I don't want to talk to you guys - anything I say will be used against me." Julia Allison was unusually discreet herself: "Please don't post anything on that. People will assume i told you, and i'm not okay with that. i really need it to end." The end.

(Photo by Katy Winn/Getty Images for IMG)

Nobody Cares

Maggie — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 11:35:36 EST

Jakob Lodwick to Julia Allison today: "You know you won't get anyone better." [Tumblr]