Gawker Stoker: A Bad Case of Wisteria
The Google Maps/Wists enabled Gawker Stalker feature that recently launched on Gawker.com has caused quite a stir among the spoon-fed set. Fans are going ga-ga while mainstream celeb reporters and PR flacks are freaking over fears about security issues. Dammit, if satellite images of the Kashmir weren't bad enough, we now have Kate Hudson eating a muffin in midtown to worry about!
Of course... if that really was Kate Hudson. (cue thunderclaps and high-pitched guitar wankery) See, it's not. I sent in this fabricated sighting.
And this one.
And this one.
(Oddly, I did not send in this Kate Hudson follow-up, but it just goes to show you that anyone can take a guess with these celebrity sightings and it'd probably be right. Or wrong. It doesn't matter either way.)
So what's my point? Is it to demonstrate that Gawker doesn't fact check (something they've never claimed to do anyway) and these sightings are meaningless? Well yes, I like fucking with Jess/Jesse/Nick/Lock but that's exactly my point. Consumer-generated garbage in, poorly-designed garbage out.
(It's hard to pinpoint, but somewhere between the launch of the "testosterone trio" and the re-design of Sploid, Gawker Media's design sensibility got clogged with all manner of ill-fitting shit and currently stands ankle deep in a tub of St Mark's gutter water.)
There's nothing to get in a tizzy over when the "Stalker" premise is thinner than Lizzie Grubman's winged pads. "The public gets what the public wants," or so said Paul Weller. The celebrity fear factor on this concept should be zero as it's just another brain-dead tool to give the appearance of immediacy, however false it may be.
You can't trust much these days (especially me), except for the public's gullibility and that's something Gawker Media honcho Nick Denton is taking all the way to the bank. The North Fork branch on Lafayette St to be exact, where I spotted him yesterday around 3pm, right around the corner from where he lives at 81 Spring Street.
Of course... if that really was Kate Hudson. (cue thunderclaps and high-pitched guitar wankery) See, it's not. I sent in this fabricated sighting.
And this one.
And this one.
(Oddly, I did not send in this Kate Hudson follow-up, but it just goes to show you that anyone can take a guess with these celebrity sightings and it'd probably be right. Or wrong. It doesn't matter either way.)
So what's my point? Is it to demonstrate that Gawker doesn't fact check (something they've never claimed to do anyway) and these sightings are meaningless? Well yes, I like fucking with Jess/Jesse/Nick/Lock but that's exactly my point. Consumer-generated garbage in, poorly-designed garbage out.
(It's hard to pinpoint, but somewhere between the launch of the "testosterone trio" and the re-design of Sploid, Gawker Media's design sensibility got clogged with all manner of ill-fitting shit and currently stands ankle deep in a tub of St Mark's gutter water.)
There's nothing to get in a tizzy over when the "Stalker" premise is thinner than Lizzie Grubman's winged pads. "The public gets what the public wants," or so said Paul Weller. The celebrity fear factor on this concept should be zero as it's just another brain-dead tool to give the appearance of immediacy, however false it may be.
You can't trust much these days (especially me), except for the public's gullibility and that's something Gawker Media honcho Nick Denton is taking all the way to the bank. The North Fork branch on Lafayette St to be exact, where I spotted him yesterday around 3pm, right around the corner from where he lives at 81 Spring Street.
