Valleywag Delighted in the Ouster of Mozilla's CEO for Donating to a Political Campaign Why? Because they didn't like charitable donations made by the company's executives.
GAWKER GAMERGATE SERIAL
The New York City website was really super serial in its campaign to cause the destruction of the southern fast food chain, which would have led to tens of thousands of people losing their jobs (and deprived the rest of us of delicious chicken nuggets). Gawker Wanted to Bankrupt Chick Fil A Over Charitable Donations
Gross, right? Well, people sometimes forget that Gawker's Valleywag was the blog that got that lynch mob rolling. Remember #HasJustineLandedYet? It was a really hilarious story about a woman who made a bad joke about AIDS and was soon inundated with rape threats and death threats and told that she should catch AIDS and die. Valleywag Didn't Like Justine Sacco's Joke It's a genius move, in a way, one that allows Gawker to tell the companies it relies on for revenue that it's really and truly sorry while also doing nothing to alienate its core readership of angry progressive know-nothings.īut I can remember a time when Gawker Media was perfectly happy to take part in "fascist" campaigns to ruin the lives of those they disagreed with-or just, like, made a joke they didn't like. This is how you get to a place where Gawker Media is forced to talk out of both sides of its mouth, on the one hand callowly apologizing to readers (and, let's be honest, advertisers) for one of its writers launching a disgusting pro-bullying attack on a marginalized group while simultaneously apologizing for the apology and denouncing anti-Gawker campaigns as little better than "fascism" in order to maintain their street cred with their bros. "We're the good guys here! We only take on bad people! Those Other people. "Don't you understand?" they seem to be crying. Because stoopid Rethuglicans, you know? Most amusingly, they don't even seem to understand the contradiction. So they get really butthurt when someone else whips up an Internet rage mob against them. They think it's the worst thing in the whole world for Internet Tough Guys to make death and rape threats* and also that it's cool to joke about Bristol Palin actually being physically assaulted by a man. My mind's blown, man.Ĭrazy, right? They don't quite understand the world they've created. As Varad Mehta It's as though politicizing everything will come back and bite you in the ass. "Later that day we tried to clarify our position but clearly we were not explicit enough.As I've noted elsewhere, the most amusing aspect of the whole #GamerGate phenomenon (background here and here and here) has been the angry progressive media types confusedly looking around trying to figure out how we got to a point where they would be targeted for boycotts and the like for casual comments they have made. Unfortunately, that tweet was perceived to support Gamergaters and created a firestorm on Twitter," it said. "One of our employees innocently responded to one of these tweets saying we don't advertise on Gawker, that we asked them to remove our logo and that we don't condone bullying. In this latest post, Adobe explained the situation from its point of view. "Adobe wrote to one Gamergater on Twitter that it had asked Gawker to remove its logo from the advertising site because it did not support bullying." As a consequence, our advertisers were quickly inundated with the same kinds of emails that spooked Intel," explained Gawker's Max Read. "Last week, a Gawker writer tweeted 'bring back bullying.' He, and later I, made the tactical mistake of publicly treating Gamergate with the contempt and flippancy that it deserves. The statement comes after Adobe asked Gawker to remove a logo from its site following a joke about bullying made by one of its reporters. Every human being deserves respect, regardless of gender, orientation, appearance, personal hobbies or anything else that makes individuals who they are." "We reject all forms of bullying, including the harassment of women by individuals associated with Gamergate. "We are not and have never been aligned with Gamergate," it said in a public post. Following a brief confusion over some tweets by a Gawker reporter Adobe has chosen to clarify its position on Gamergate, coming out as definitively not aligned with the movement.