Donald Trump Roasts Joan Rivers, and Her Vagina - August 25, 2009

What's That About A Powerful Vagina? - September 23, 2009
Glenn Beck's Powerful Vagina - September 25th, 2009
UPDATE: That Top Shop Thing Is TOTALLY A Dentata Shirt - September 24th, 2009

Tags:

Vagina Shirts Are The New Black
Powerful Vaginas
Megan Fox Powerful Vaginas
Cervix Journalism
Nick Dentata

Yes, Rachel Sklar is doing this to attract attention from (A) people searching "glenn beck + vagina" on Google (B) people like me and (C) anybody who's ever been shocked by reading about a vagina in relation to something it has no bearing on (like Glenn Beck, who, for all we know, has never seen one). But I did LOLZ at "Cervix Journalism" as well as her investigation into vaginas with teeth ("vagina dentata"). Also, the figuring in of the word "dentata" into both of our respective employers names, because I'm 12. Then again, it's funny to think about shady Dan Abrams having a vagina with teeth (which would make him shadier!).

But I've got another theory: Maybe Rachel's trying to tell us something? The professional media gormandizer's love life was partly chronicled in a New York Observer profile of microfame expert Rex Sorgatz. Observe:

The rest of the room was dominated by attractive single women, including blogger Rachel Sklar, who had been Mr. Sorgatz's girlfriend up until a few days before. I cornered Mr. Sorgatz and put it to him straight: As a straight man, how can you justify hosting a Gossip Girl viewing party?

The 35-year-old, spikey-haired online consultant didn't flinch. "It's an awesome opportunity to invite girls over," he said.

If Rex Sorgatz can't make your vagina grow teeth, I don't know what can. This is what your vagina looks like with teeth:

To get an idea of how all this came to be, here's what the New Yorker's Andrew Essex wrote about the friendship between Pynchon and Lotion in the 1996 TOTT piece:

The writer and the rockers first met in Cincinnati... After the show, the older guy, who was wearing a Godzilla shirt and ill-fitting pants, swung by to offer his compliments. He introduced himself as Tom. Jim Ferguson was reading "Slow Learner", Pynchon's collection of short stories. He'd left his copy backstage in a New York rock club, where Pynchon had been invited to watch the show. Pynchon saw it and asked, "Who's reading my book?" "I said, 'No, that's my book,'" Jim recalls. "It didn't register until 1 got onstage... After that, Tom began showing up at Lotion performances all over the country. An unlikely friendship was born. A year later, the members of Lotion are still a bit stunned by their guardian angel.

Recently Essex contacted the magazine to say that he and the New Yorker's vaunted fact-checkers had been tricked by the band all those years ago.

When asked about the article last week, Lotion's lead singer, Tony Zajkowski, now a graphic designer at Wired, blurted out, "Oh, God, you got the big bullshit story!" Shortly afterward, the bassist Bill Ferguson, who now works on the Times Magazine copy desk, admitted that they had fed reporters at various outlets an account designed to be "as Pynchonesque as possible." The bandmates had repeated their story to a New Yorker fact checker, who did his best to confirm details. Pynchon, then as now, was unreachable, and when the story came out he raised no public objections.

The band says that Pynchon did attend some of their London shows and actually wrote some liner notes for an album after they met him through his accountant, who happened to be the mother of the band's drummer, but he was nothing even close to being a groupie who attended rock shows in Godzilla T-shirts and ill-fitting pants. They did the whole hilarious thing for shits and giggles, a hoax that stood for 13 years, and for that the former members of the Lotion deserve a tip of the proverbial cap.

A quick reminder of what a Status Galley is, via Leon Neyfakh at the New York Observer:

Basically the term refers to an advance reader's copy of a highly anticipated book that hasn't been published yet. If you have one it means you're special: either a proud member of the exclusive club known as the publishing industry, a distinguished literary critic, a friend of the author's, or in some cases even an intern at a cultural magazine.

Today's book is Twitter Wit, edited by founding Valleywag editor and former Gawker writer Nick Douglas.

Concept: It's a book of Tweets. Okay, actually, it's the first authorized collection of Tweets, to be unleashed on the literary community by HarperCollins on August 25, moved up from its September 8th release date. It claims to be an "Authorized Collection of the Funniest Tweets of All Time," right there on the cover, but not the first, because New York Times columnist David Pouge's book of Tweets, while not "official," comes out on Wednesday, August 12 (which probably explains HarperCollins moving up the release). Douglas' book has a foreword by Twitter cofounder Biz Stone, and a swell introduction by Douglas, in which he explains that Twitter is "practically destined for...the witty one-liner." Concept Grade: C-. It's a book of Tweets, many of which were curated through a dedicated website. But there is longer-than-140-character insight from Biz Stone and the guy who put all of these together. So: that counts for something.

Numbers: Douglas' book will retail for $12.99, while Pogue's book will sell for $12.95 (SNAP), but you can buy both from Amazon for, like, $20, ha. Douglas made the deal back in February for a rumored mid five-figures that I'd heard was at $64K. Douglas assured me over email that it was "a good deal less" than that. He continued:

What I did get was very generous of Harper, especially since Twitter wasn't as completely media-dominant as it is now. It's been a very lucky summer for them, for me, and for the contributors who wrote this book over the course of two years.

So they should've tossed Douglas more money for being on the Zeitgeist bandwagon, no? There are, at last count, 634 Tweets in the book, so you're paying about two cents a Tweet. Assuming Douglas' "good deal less" was at least more than half of the $64K number, like, say, the $50K number Ryan Tate heard. If that were the case, Douglas would've received $78.86 per Tweet. Not bad. Even at $40K, Douglas would've received $63.09 per Tweet. Plus the introduction, of course. Numbers Grade: C-. Despite being a relative bargain per Tweet, the economy still sucks! Also, they're Tweets, you can get these for free. But Douglas sure cashed in, legwork on the intro (which again: is good!) aside. [Special shout-out to Drew Grant of ASSME for helping contribute to the counting effort.]

Industry Hype: It's a book of Tweets. At best, it's a stocking stuffer, and at worst, it's a cash-wrap buy shortly before it's a Bargain Bin buy. Nothing rests on the success of this book. For one thing, it's cheap to make. For another, agents and publishers will keep acquiring Book Deal Books because people believe in the internet but aren't sure what they believe. Industry Hype: D+.

Movie Potential: God willing, none. Movie Potential Grade: F+, with a "+" because Hollywood will try to make anything. Seriously.

Status Symbol: It's floppy and orange and blue. It's a nice conversation starter if you know people whose Tweets are in it, but if your Tweet is in it and you pull it out at a party, you're a dick. But this isn't the new Chabon, you know? Also, it comes out really soon probably because it needs to compete with a book just like it. Status Symbol Grade: D-.

First Sentence: In the foreword from Biz Stone: "It's easy to assign less weight to a pun than a poem - after all, laughter lightens the load." Oprah-ready shit, you know? B, because, dentists everywhere will buy the book for their office on this alone, much like those "Hang In There" kitten posters.

First Tweet: "What's the deal with deaf people? Like, HELLO?" - aedison. Grade: C

Final Tweet: "To do list for the day: hate self, love self, hate self, love self. Lunch. Hate self." - Michael Ian Black. Grade: B+

Scandal: Well, the ridiculous shit about the other Twitter book aside, there's another player involved in all of this: Microfame expert, blogger, and New Media consultant Rex Sorgatz. The way Rex told it in an email, Nick Douglas stole the book idea from him after he pitched it on Nick:

Yes, it was originally my idea. Yes, I pitched him on it, to see if he'd be interested in co-writing it with me. Yes, we worked lightly on a proposal together. Yes, six months later he was scoping his own book deal behind my back. And yes, this pissed me off at first. I eventually forgave him for what seems like an obvious indiscretion though. Because to be honest, I was probably never going to pursue it hard enough myself. I mean, it's a fucking book about Twitter.

Needless to say, this is the best part of the book.

Scandal grade: A, especially since Douglas repaid Rex with not one, but two Tweets! One of which was about having lunch (page 134).

The S.U.C.K.R. (Sorta Unqualified Consciously Knifing-worthy Review): Only sorta unqualified (as opposed to "fully") because I'm by no means a book critic, but come on: it's a book of Tweets. Douglas' introduction and Biz Stone's foreword are interesting enough, but only seven out of 158 pages. The book's content and structure are both problematic: there's no organizational scheme, as Tweets aren't grouped into categories, or even indexed. And a significant portion of the book's Tweets feel culled from a very specific list of people, many of whom are New York Media/Tech Types or celebrities (or, Twitter Celebrities, I guess). Take a look at this list:

Self-Proclaimed Experts:
Jason Kottke
Anil Dash
Rex Sorgatz (Twice)

Political/Media Analyistas:
Rachel Sklar
Ana Marie Cox (Twice)

The Staff of Tumblr:
Jacob Bijani (Twice)
Christopher Price
Meaghan O'Connell

Valleywag Alumni:
Melissa Gira Grant
Jackson West

Gawker Staff, Past and Present:
Scott Kidder
Choire Sicha

TechGuys:
Kevin Rose (Digg founder, A Bunch Of Times)
Dennis Crowley (Foursquare)

Defamer Alumni:
Mark Lisanti
Molly McAleer

The New Yorker:
Sasha Frere-Jones
Susan Orlean

Celebrities
Ashton Kutcher
John Hodgman
Diablo Cody
Jimmy Fallon
Michael Ian Black (Stella)
David Wain (Stella)
Michael Showalter (Stella)
ScottAukerman (Mr. Show Writer)
Rainn Wilson (The Office)
Aziz Ansari (Human Giant)
Paul Scheer (Human Giant)
Jake and Amir (College Humor)
Bill Corbett (Mystery Sciene Theater guy)
Joel McHale (E!'s The Soup)
Paula Poundstone
Judah Friedlander (30 Rock)
Felicia Day (Joss Whedon go-to actress)
Andy Borowitz (Creator of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air)
Penn Jilette (Penn and Teller)

Three things about that list: (1) the first half are the same repetitive voices heard throughout the New York Media and Tech scene's inane echo chamber, (2) the second half are your average Celebrity-Follow list, and (3) you can get all of these Tweets for free, right there, right above this paragraph. Click! Try it! Now, it'd be unfair to say that this is the majority of the book, or an in-depth analysis, but don't you think Douglas dipped into an otherwise pedestrian list? Finally, the omission of post-modern philosopher, Shaquille YEAH HOW MY ASS TASTE O'Neal is unforgivable. S.U.C.K.R. Grade: D+.

Final Status Galley Grade: One one hand, this was a seriously labor-intensive undertaking. If I had to read this many Tweets, I'd give in to trepanation. On the other, you can get the material in the book for free, they're 140-character insights, many of which people would pay not to exist, it doesn't have an index, it was maybe someone else's idea, there's no Shaq, there's another book just like it, and, uh, it's a book of Tweets.

Gawker Status Galley Book Club grade: D.

Do you have a status galley you'd like to review, or send us to review? Shoot us an email here.

[Why not check out these stunning images using our handy-dandy new gallery?]

As many as three or four of these mist-braving guests will be sharing a house with a half-dozen others just like them, or maybe their parents, any weekend now. Haute smut photographer Nikola Tamindzic escorted me, my margarita, and my West Coast indifference to "summering" through Hruska's scene.

Rachelle Hruska curses the dark skies with her bright, bright future.

Media lady Rachel Sklar basking in the death of print and all the tight t-shirts it brings.

Lonnie, left, is a stylist. Ryan B, right, is a make-up artist. For this they are permitted matchy glasses and one pocket square.

Dennis Crowley, co-founder of mobile social app Foursquare, loved at least a few of Rachelle's jalapeno-laced margaritas.

Caroline McCarthy of CNET News left chilly and early and so blogged before all of us, thanking Rachelle for getting puffy fingers the size of mittens after slicing peppers all night.

Rachelle with ex-boy and Olympic rower Cameron Winklevoss. Now he's lending a hand around Guest of a Guest, doing "a little bit of everything," like help with the computers and investing and stuff!

A turn-away from Friday night's 90's vs 90's panel at the nearby New Museum conveniently had an excuse to repurpose his outfit.

He's not made of cardboard, but was kept on hand for posing.

Peter Feld weighed his options and also liquor.

One thing Winklevoss is not helping with: meat. Rachelle's current manfriend was on skewers for the day.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.To keep in theme, all guests were issued metallic dock shoes.

Reformed fameballer Rex Sorgatz kept the hellhounds of gossip at bay.

The end of a vampire weekend.

On this roof, there is no irony in anchors.

The internet, they drink just like us.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Andrew Cedotal, from Abrams Research, in twee.

The drinks were sugar-free and served in plastic: no artificial sweeteners and no hard edges to hurt our soft little mouths on.

As near as we can tell, an extension of the Winklevoss crew. At least as of the night before. Visors know no social class.

Hey it's a Journey mashup let's rock.

Rex Sorgatz cares about your internet.

A whiter shade of lime.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.The look in a nutshell: aspirational summer whites cloaked in winter's broke-ass misery.

Carls from HRO bailed on me. Feeling a little vulnerable. But we can still play Blogger Bingo! What accoutrements, affects, people and places did I miss? Did I totally break it down on the NY Blog-media crowd. Oh snap! Word! Fill me in, y'all!

graphic by: Jeff Meininger

Facebook is the target of new phishing scams, which attempt to trick users to logging into FBaction.net and FBstarter.com, thereby handing over their passwords. (If you got taken in, don't feel bad — so did notorious social media fameball Rex Sorgatz!) Here's a screenshot of the scam in action, via The Next Web:

But wait, isn't that exactly what Facebook is trying to do on sites like Digg and The Insider and Gawker? Its Facebook Connect program is designed to let people use their Facebook logins on other websites. And the only way Facebook will ever make money is by getting users to share every last moment of their life. If the Facebookers were really doing their jobs, their users wouldn't have any private information left for phishers to steal.

Here's what you DO need:

• An unquenchable desire for fame: Obviously. It is what drives all fameballs.
• Shamelessness: Your desire for fame must be greater than that voice in your head screaming, "Stop; you look like an idiot."
• A lack of redeeming talents: This isn't the Nobel Prize, okay? If you're a shameless fame whore but you also, say, cured cancer, one could argue that your talent is being properly appreciated. This will not do.
• An abundance of non-redeeming talents: These may include, but are not limited to: oversharing, self-regard, delusions of grandeur, superficial physical attractiveness, a ridiculous distinctive personal fashion trademark, the ability to talk about oneself without end, conspicuously false modesty, and sluttiness and/or man-whorishness.

• Growing a conscience: It can happen to the worst of them. Instant death.
• A desire for meta-fameballdom rather than actual fameballdom: This is the key mistake that people make when they come directly to us, begging for coverage. We're talking to you, lady who keeps sending us emails billing herself as "The next Julia Allison." You see, while we do grow and cultivate fameballs, it's absolutely essential that those fameballs are not seeking our approval; they must dream of stardom (even micro-stardom) in the outside world, not simply with a knowing wink on Gawker. A fameball's famelust must be their undoing, not their doing. If you're deserving, we'll find you.
• Being a one-trick pony: Lots of people do embarrassing fameball-like things from time to time. But do they have the staying power to keep plumbing ever-greater depths of self-abasement? Only the greatest do.

Watch as microcelebrity NBC contractor Rex Sorgatz attempts to explain Foursquare, a friend-finding interactive game launched by former Google employee Dennis Crowley at the South By Southwest event, an annual excuse for a nonstop party thinly disguised as a conference on all things Web. Carr may be perplexed, but he comes to the right conclusion: Foursquare is a toy for "kids on the Internets."

"Internets," plural! Carr's cool like that!

Sorgatz and Crowley are just two of the familiar microcelebrities who make cameo appearances in Carr's writeup of SXSW. There's Tumblr founder David Karp, bragging about being a slacker:

I didn't even come last year, but this year we dropped the whole team in, I guess as a way of saying that we mean business. We're mostly having fun, doing a few meetings and enjoying seeing old friends. It would probably be a better use of my time to be back home staying up till 4 in the morning and just crushing it to come up with one more application, but this is more fun.

Declaring how much fun one is having and how much work one is avoiding is a strange way of showing one means business, but that's Karp for you.

And look, two Valleywag alumni:

All this can become insular, and fast. On Monday Nick Douglas and Melissa Gira Grant, two veteran bloggers, hosted a session called the "Sex Lives of the Microfamous." The two were involved once, and broke up on Tumblr, or so the story goes.

Actually, I could have sworn those two crazy kids broke up on Valleywag, but what do I know? I'm not quite as old as Carr, but I'm old enough to view faddish kiddie startups like Tumblr and Foursquare with skepticism.

(Video by Richard Blakeley)

Sorgatz's comments to the Observer seemed to many an open bid to ratchet up his microcelebrity at the expense of accuracy and good taste. Some of the budding media mogul's critics will surely say his more recent comments are designed to keep the controversy.

Perhaps that's unfair: Sorgatz issued a clear and early apology to Rachel Sklar, the former Huffington Post writer who he dated for six months and then referred to in the Observer as "an exit strategy" to his tendency to date younger women.

I’m really sorry about how Rachel came across in that story. Most of you know her, so it doesn’t need to be said that she’s awesome. She’s taught me more about media and New York and maybe myself than anyone in my life. I appreciate her so much more than the story lets on, and I’m so sorry any of this happened like this.

There are also clear admissions in Sorgatz's most recent post on the matter. He admits he did not "technically" found the High Plains Reader, as he apparently told the Observer. "I tend to say I was there at the beginning because I actually was working with them from the start, waiting for my days at the student paper to end," he wrote.

Um, sure, but did you get $100,000 when the paper sold? Seems unlikely: there were four founders, two active at the paper when it sold for $150,000.

Sorgatz also confirms he had ownership of Web Guide, despite using the title of editor. Did he "start" the magazine, as the Observer reported? Not clear.

Sorgatz says he did in fact own a condo in Minneapolis, despite that one anonymous former (self-described) roomate who said otherwise.

One thing Sorgatz doesn't have to take any flack for: The erroneous assertion that he bought Wii game consoles for his nephews, when in fact he has only nieces. The Observer's Sencer Morgan has taken the fall for that error, telling us, "I regret that I mixed up nieces and nephews, it's always been an issue for me."

(Photo via Sorgatz's Flickr stream.)

After two Minnesota-based publications linked to the Observer profile, some persistent anonymous commenters came out of the woodwork to raise questions about the ambitious blogger's purported background — on the Minnesota website, under the original Observer piece and on our tips email account. Given Sorgatz buddy Lockhart Steele's statement to the Observer that the aspiring Web mogul is "prone to outsized statements," we thought some of the questions warranted further examination.

Did Sorgatz really co-found the High Plains Reader and make $100,000 off its sale?

According to to the Observer, Sorgatz started this alt-weekly "after college" with two friends and cashed out two years later.

Sorgatz, who has positioned himself as the expert on self-promotion, has not referred to himself as a founder of the publication previously — not on LinkedIn, not on Facebook and not in a comment to the MNSpeak discussion thread about the Observer piece. He is alternately "editor," "co-editor," and "editor/publisher."

In his MNSpeak comment, Sorgatz wrote that he started at the publication — as an editor — "maybe a month after it was launched."

Maybe that's why his online resumes list his involvement as starting in 1995 when the paper's Wikipedia entry says it was founded in 1994.

But that doesn't explain why Sorgatz is not listed among the High Plains Reader founders on Wikipedia. And it doesn't explain how he could have started theReader "after college" when this newspaper article indicates he was still a University of North Dakota student in 1997 and even his own resumes state he did not finish school until1996.

Was he a founder of Web Guide magazine? Does such a thing exist? Did he really make $750,000 off of it?

According to articles by the Associated Press and Computer Publishing & Advertising Report, as well as another company's press release, there was a Web Guide magazine in operation at the time Sorgatz has indicated he worked there. It has been described as being started by Dan Beaver, former magazine buyer for Barnes & Noble. It was sold at the time Sorgatz said he cashed out.

Again, Sorgatz does not appear to have been mentioned in the press (based on Nexis searches) in connection with the publication, as a founder or otherwise. On his own resumes, he is "editor," never "co-founder" or such.

It also seems odd that Google can't find any mentions of Web Guide or WebGuide on Sorgatz's oversharey, long-running website. Nor can the site's internal search engine. You'd think if Sorgatz got sorta rich off something like that, he would have mused on the experience at some point.

Did he really buy a condo in an old mansion in Minneapolis?

A comment repeated on both the Observer and MNSpeaks sites claims, "I lived at the Pillsbury house for a few months. We all rented - he did not own it." Sorgatz did not address this statement in his later comments in the same MNSpeaks thread.

The inconsistencies in the Observer article do not prove Sorgatz is a liar. The Observer's Spencer Morgan could have misquoted the press-friendly microcelebrity expert, and indeed Sorgatz has already written, in the MNSpeaks thread linked above, "Oh god, you want an error count? Too many!" It's unlikely, for example, that Sorgatz told Morgan he bought Nintendo Wii game consoles for his nephews when, in fact, he only has nieces.

But it's equally unlikely misquotation and misunderstanding can entirely explain why the Observer's story about Sorgatz is so at odds with the published record.

What's most probable is that the attention-loving fameball took his self-promotion a few steps beyond the boundaries of truth. In the same Observer piece, after all, Sorgatz had no trouble pushing the envelope on discretion, good taste or basic interpersonal decency.

One does not bullshit in a community of pervasive self-publishing — on Tumblrs and Twitter streams, in comments sections and Flickr accounts. Rex Sorgatz, of all people, should know that.

(Photo via Sorgatz's Flickr stream.)

As the attention-obsessed would-be-media-mogul surely intended, today's Observer's profile of him produced a frisson of controversy inside New York's Tumblrocracy before it even hit the street. Is he really dating CNET blogger Caroline McCarthy, as the article implied? Why would he be so callous as to describe his recent ex, former Huffington Post writer Rachel Sklar, as an "exit strategy" from the problem of dating younger women, or portray her as enthralled by the low-grade attention that comes with being part of a blogging power couple?

Sorgatz, who showered the Observer's Spencer Morgan with on-the-record tales of his exploits with young Tumblr girls, courted both the attention and the controversy. It's not clear why: Surely the online consultant and entrepreneur sees what is happening around him. Fellow fameball Julia Allison's reality show deal with Bravo fell through, and her Web venture Non Society is groping for relevance. The television networks are, at last, supersaturated with minor celebrities placed in "reality" scenarios and hardly in the position to bid on more. Either Sorgatz knows something everyone else doesn't about attention economics, or he just can't stop hoarding the stuff

Sorgatz certainly did his best to whip up some drama for Morgan. His Gossip Girl parties, which found their way into Morgan's lede, have been near-desolate on recent occasion. But the Monday shindig bulked up significantly after Sorgatz added this nugget to the invitation:

This time, it's not just an invite, but also a request....

Spencer Morgan of the New York Observer will also be here, because he is profiling me in his "Men of Manhattan" column. (I know, right?) So in addition to coming over and drinking my beer, you have to pretend you really like me.

Having secured something of a crowd, Sorgatz then provocatively mingled his recent ex Sklar with a new squeeze, "Kristen" from the Web show he produces, "I'm Just Sayin'." In fact, the two women ended up sitting next to one another.

Sklar is on the far right in the second-to-last row of people; we're told that is Kristen next to her. The body language is not subtle. (And, yes, that's our very own expressive Richard Blakeley sitting on the couch.)

As if this wasn't enough, Sklar also had to contend with the presence of McCarthy, who as Sklar's relationship with Sorgatz was ending appeared in more and more pictures with scarf-loving Sorgatz on their respective Tumblr and Flickr streams. The two also made prominent appearances together in blogging circles, at "blogger bar" The Magician on the Lower East Side and elsewhere. Rumors that McCarthy had replaced Sklar swirled among friends and put a strain on their relationship.

At the party, post-breakup, Sklar made the mistake of sharing her feelings of awkwardness toward McCarthy in real-time with Allison. Allison, apparently trying to elbow in on Sorgatz's tearmaking, did Sklar the courtesy of quickly summarizing Sklar's text messages in an email to McCarthy, also at the party and soon in receipt of Allison's message.

But Sklar needn't have been worried; McCarthy is said to be seeing Curbed.com publisher and former Gawker staffer Lockhart Steele. Her public flirtation with Sorgatz was believed by friends to serve mutually beneficial ends — McCarthy got to show her ex, Tumblr inventor David Karp, that she had moved on, while Sorgatz got to build on his image as a playboy while passive-aggressively extricating himself from his relationship with Sklar. In any case, McCarthy obliquely denied the Observer's implication she's with Sorgatz on, naturally, her Tumblr.

If the whole thing sounds like an slightly-more-grown-up episode of Gossip Girl, that's because it is, probably by design. The party drama and the McCarthy flirtation, like the Observer piece, is a case-study right out of micro-fame expert Sorgatz's own playbook.

Sklar, by Sorgatz's own admission the more grounded half of the couple, seems to have played an unwitting role in the manufactured drama. "We were a solid couple from day one, and [Sogartz's romp with Tumblettes and a secret blog] was clearly in the past, and so I rolled with it," she wrote to us after the Observer piece was published. "Also, the 'romp' was a 6-month relationship and not some trip through micro-celebrity."

Sklar certainly deserves better than to be called, by her ex in the Observer, "sort of a solution to the problem of a lifestyle that really primarily revolved around 23-year-old Tumblr girls."

Kristen, meanwhile, advances the Sorgatz plot while promoting one of his businesses. Want to find out about the outré playboy's latest conquest? Then watch her Web show!

If Sorgatz wants to be the next Jeff Zucker, this seems like a bizarre way to get there, however many eyeballs his lifestream ultimately attracts. If there's a point to Sorgatz's caddishness, no one has yet deduced it. But plenty of people are content to watch the bonfire in the meantime.

(Top image via Sorgatz on Flickr.)

However, they'll be happy to tell you their sexploits themselves: they'll be reading at the In the Flesh's True Sex Confessions series this Thursday at the now-nightclub but former "massage" parlor Happy Ending in Manhattan at 8, the same place where "Love guv" Spitzer partied with Slate earlier this week.

Also, "Neal Boulton's wife, Claire, will also be in the audience, and it's her birthday." Those two have an open marriage, as they happily told Page Six Magazine. (We saw Boulton's former makeout buddy, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, in an Upper West Side Starbucks this Sunday.)

Update from Neal: "you forgot to mention that claire will have her hot girlfriend with her, and I will have my 21 year old boy toy with me and we will all be nude. :-) "

We'll be there with bells on.

It's not really that riveting or particularly clever, but that's not the point: fake sex diaries are how you know you've made it as a micro-celeb (for a couple minutes.) Fake anything (Steve Jobs, Nick Denton) being created in your name is simply one of the Internet's strange customs.

[Fake Sex Diaries]

The blogger's latest project—for Condé Nast's Men's Style website—is a directory mainly of women who've achieved some modicum of fame or notoriety on the web. The verdict on Gawker alumna Emily Gould—"That she actually isn't much of a writer has, so far, mostly escaped attention"—is rather bold for Sorgatz, himself such a recent arrival to the Manhattan media world.

But Sorgatz is far too modest in leaving himself out of the micro-celebrity rankings. Since arriving less than a year ago in New York, the dorky Fimoculous founder has cut an unlikely swathe through the geek-loving women of the city. (Yes, that's the Huffington Post's Rachel Sklar in the photograph above.)

In a feature for New York magazine on this "new class" of celebrity—only really new in the paucity of fans, if the truth were told—Sorgatz outlined eight steps to microfame. One key move is to associate with other bloggers. "From anonymous blog comments to frothy bar conversations, confidantes are needed to tout your reputation at every opportunity... The posse—or as media theoreticians call it, the network—creates influence that grows exponentially with its size."

That's advice that Sorgatz himself lives by. His latest romance—with the delightful Sklar—is on display on the media writer's Facebook page, where she's posted photographs of a recent weekend at Lockhart Steele's blogger-only shared house in the Hamptons. How did the geeky Sorgatz become such a seducer? "I wish I knew!" says a jealous rival. "I've seen him in action and it amazes me. Maybe they are wowed by his charm, media sound bites and shiny shoes? He's a good talker. I'm sure he plays up his dual outsider/insider angle too." Of course, there's a simpler explanation: he's micro-famous.

But such public exposure has its price as Sorgatz, an authority on internet culture, should know all too well. Leonora Epstein, one of Sklar's predecessors, has written up an account of her hook-ups with a man called Phil—whose fondness for shiny objects, spiky hairdos and the color red suggests she's referring instead to Sorgatz. The liaison ended when Phil, about to leave for a week in the Hamptons without Leonora, left his packing list on the desk. "Tent. Video camera. Condoms." That embarrassing list is now her screen saver.

"The lines between empowerment and self-promotion, between sharing and oversharing, between community and cliques, can be blurry," wrote Sorgatz for New York, presciently. "Nano-celebrity is there for the taking, if you really want it." Yes, but only if you really want it.

Rachel Sklar: Rex at the sea thinking "Oh my God how am I going to last an entire weekend with this girl?" Me thinking "When are we going to eat again?"

The cheat sheet, via Sorgatz:

Personal faves include Krucoff stumbling across Emily's name, Julia musing about Google hits, Sklar standing in front of Balthazar, and Choire closing the house. But all of you! All of you have made America (and perhaps Russia) a better place!

Also, we are told that the book copy in this video, the FSU Middlebrow Remix of All The Sad Young Literary Men, has passed from Andrew Krucoff, who bought it from us at $890 (proceeds to the homeless), to the blogger 99, who bought it at $275 (discounted by the bundling of a date) from Krucoff (proceeds to a soup kitchen).

We are all witness to something very special! Don't you already feel more literarified and shit??

Rex says:

If that fucking Tumblr is oversharing, then so is writing a goddamn novel. It's just some random fucking quotes that I sorta thought summarized a certain kind of feeling, aesthetic, angst at this particular historical moment.

And:

I don't like this reactionary voice on the internet that wishes to turn everything into bland, impersonal, "boredwithit" blog junk. The internet was once a big experiment of people trying out new personal forms, but we've reached this new place in which the only allowed first person accounts are those that involve peoples' motherfucking babies, trips to cupcake shops, and OMG I HATE MY BOSS LET ME TELL YOU WHY.

Furthermore:

Seriously, why the fuck does David Sedaris, or Augusten Burroughs, or Klosterman, or any number of lesser memoirists who make less hyperbolic examples of confession culture — why exactly do they get to "overshare"? Where did they get their license?

But:

There really is a line that people have crossed that IS over-sharing, in the bad sense.

Where that line is drawn is left as an exercise to the reader.

"Overshare" is one of Gawker's favorite insults, applied to Emily Gould's NYT Mag piece, a memoir about J. D. Salinger, a photo of a cumshot on a sex blog, and a pickup line from Michael Musto.

Do all these stories deserve the same label? Are none of them merited? Are we just using "overshare" as a coy little criticism instead of thinking out a proper response? I posit no, some, and yes respectively!

Photo by Scott Beale