Gawker

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Gawker They've been gawking at geek culture for too long. Type of site: Gossip blog Language: English Created by: Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers Owner: Gawker Media (formerly) Bustle Digital Group Date of launch: 2003 Status: Inactive

Gawker was an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers and based in New York City focusing on celebrities and the media industry. The blog promoted itself as "the source for daily Manhattan media news and gossip". According to third-party web analytics provider SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded in 2003, Gawker was the flagship blog for Denton's Gawker Media. Gawker Media also managed other blogs such as Jezebel, io9, Deadspin and Kotaku.

Why It's not Gawking

1. A huge amount of clickbait articles.
2. While being sued, the Gawker editors were conducting inappropriate behavior while being taped, such as mocking a victim of sexual assault by saying "blah blah blah" and to not make a big deal out of it.
3. They faced several lawsuits which led to their demise after the "Hulkmania" scandal were they published a sex tape of Hulk Hogan's.
4. They have stolen and posted several nude pictures of female celebrities on the internet. While also running a feminist website such as Jezebel.
5. Their sites use a lot of foul language and contain misinformation as well!
6. Highly hypocritical articles. Examples are sheltering money in tax havens and publishing bogus gossip and lies while still criticizing people and companies who do the same things..
7. Two words: Sam Biddle. At least he apologized for some of it, but it still doesn't excuse what he did.
8. They are known to have far-left biases in their articles. Which is another factor to their demise; it was said that Operation Disrespectful Nod alone costed them more than a million dollars.
9. Inaccurate or biased portrayals of persons of interest in their articles.
10. Another major cause to their downfall was the violation of several privacy and copyright owners, gained through illegal means.
11. They advocated for bestiality and promoted toxic behavior such as bullying.
12. Supported the violent riots in Ferguson, stating that it was good for the economy.
13. Has made an article that was quite approving of pedophilia.
14. They have violated several FTC rules.
15. They were involved in several unethical or illegal activities:
    1. Reposting the Tom Cruise Scientology video with no regard for the law.
    2. Posting screencaps of the Palin email leaks, again, with no regard for the law.
    3. Posting naked videos taken through a peephole of journalist Erin Andrews.
    4. Posted video of actor Eric Dane and his wife, naked with a woman who is a former Miss Teen USA and beauty queen.
    5. When Wikileaks went down, Gawker blamed the wrong host for it, getting them a bunch of angry calls about a site they didn't own.
    6. Leaked some shirtless pics of a congressman that he sent to someone on Craigslist.
    7. Bribing mods on reddit and getting all Gawker links banned a second time.
    8. Doxing Violentacrez.
    9. Sending a reporter to an electronics trade show to yell, interrupt them and play with the screen with his remote control.
    10. Got banned from all Apple events after buying the (then) unreleased iPhone 4 from some guy who found it in a bar.
    11. Various writers giving money to or getting money from people they report on.
    12. When Max Temkin, creator of "Cards Against Humanity", was accused of rape, Kotaku was quick to point out that he should not be denying the allegations even if they are false.
    13. Saying Brad Wardell is guilty of rape before he even went to court (turns out he wasn't).
    14. Calling God of War creator David Jaffe a borderline rapist because of an off-hand comment he made.
    15. Buying votes for the Baseball Hall of Fame election in 2013.
    16. Reported the death of the girlfriend of linebacker Manti Te'o, which was apparently a hoax. Gawker found no evidence that the girlfriend had ever existed, much less died.
    17. Published an article that Cory Gardner, the Republican who ran for senate in Colorado, had faked his high school football career. Cory Gardner tweeted photographic evidence of himself in his football uniform.
    18. Offering money for leaked photos.
    19. Casually doxxing people.
    20. Kicking out the black editor of Jezebel to replace her with a white one.
    21. Getting a porn site run by Gawker blacklisted in Australia.
    22. Starting crap with other news sources.
    23. Twice misreported the identity of the author of the Fake Steve Jobs blog.
    24. Falsely reported that a drunk employee caused a major power outage by relying on the gossip of an unidentified source. They often have this problem.
    25. Getting banned from "Hacker News" for being filled with, well what do you expect?
    26. Outing gay people.
    27. Writing a story based on a testimony of a guy who slept with right-wing candidate, Christine O'Donnell, and talking about how she has a hairy pussy.
    28. Having their writers being called shit by Pulitzer-Prize winning authors.
    29. Outing an accountant for no reason, and page views.

Trivia

They tried to raise a kickstarter to buy back the domain but failed to reach their goal: only $89,844 of the total $500,000 required were received.

See also

• "Goodbye and Good Riddance: Sociopathy of Gawker and Gawker-Like Media Finally Exposed" on Observer
• "Gawker Editor’s Testimony Stuns Courtroom in Hulk Hogan Trial" on The New York Times
• Gawker on GamerGate Wiki

References

1. http://thisisvideogames.com/gamergatewiki/index.php/Projects:Operation_Disrespectful_Nod
2. https://archive.today/EQc1R
3. http://www.breitbart.com/social-justice/2016/04/16/left-wing-new-media-bubble-bursting-buzzfeed-gawker-salon-in-trouble/

Comments

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