Arun Rajagopal

Hi Emily: Just read the Time’s magazine cover story. That was the best 10 pages I’ve ever read online. Till I read this article, which I picked up from my Twitter feed, I hadn’t even heard about you (my loss). Now I feel “richer” knowing you. Have a nice day!
Arun

Josily Goulstein

Not sure if this was a good example of moving closer to the plate. Maybe you should have waited until you had some perspective on it? Like, when you are 40?

fantasiero

I guess my comment was not good enough for your audience…

too bad.

good NYT anyway.

Thomas Eric Ruthford

Dear Emily,

Thank you for your excellent piece in New York Times Magazine. It has inspired me to turn off my computer early this evening and go to bed.

sam

i liked it too! have a good day.

Rob

Hell know why but something got me to read all ten pages on the web as well. And honestly, it’s a fabulously written article. I’ve had my own ‘privacy’ issues with my better half who has no interest in cyberspace. And heck, my blog has become pretty much non-existent. Such is life. But your journey was written with such honesty and thought, one can only imagine the success that lays ahead.

the almost right word

emily, i too read your nyt piece and felt it was the best ten pages i’ve read online in quite some time. you expressed so many things that i can identify with, and i really appreciate your openness and honesty. i quoted you on my blog, and will continue to read yours in the future (my so-called life drinking game is quite intriguing). keep writing. i look forward to reading. thank you again, for your honesty.

James C.

Hi - I just read your NYT 10-pager - really enjoyed it - Generally my ADD kicks in around page 3, so good job for keeping me focused that long.

Please continue to do what you do, the rest be damned. I think it’s nice that you didn’t respond to the scathing article about you, at least for now. In the back of your mind though, I think a retort should be brewing to be spewed at a later date. Screw Karma, there’s no such thing.

Dig those tats - I really look forward to being part of this blog.

Jim

jm

I agree with J. I just ditched NYC for Spain for three months (sadly returning in nine days) and it helped my well being immensely. And I didn’t even have a morsel of the attention on my personal problems that you have had.

Danie

I just read the NYT article as well, and it was a fab read!! Long time blogger and net user in general, so it was well appreciated :o)

barbara

Wow! Just read your NYT piece. You’re a terrific writer! But that’s only part of the story. Facility with language is worth jack feces unless there’s a bright bulb behind the mouth. You go, girl. And thanks for sharing all of this!

danny

eg, i hope you will navigate more friendlier places for a while. your nyt piece was refreshingly insightful and seemingly bone-felt honest. for what it is worth, i offer this: listen to a band called “elbow” from manchester. check out the song “weather to fly” off the “seldom seen kid” album. all the best to you and your new (more private) life.

Sally Tomato

Dahling, you’re a wonderful writer. Fuck blogs - you should be contributing to magazines on a regular basis, or maybe you’re working on a book? Loved the article.

Blaise

Just wanted to give you props on the article and to let you know I’m seeing if blogging will somehow be therapeutic…

.trappedinwv.blogspot.com

Cheers,
Blaise

MikeJack

Some of what some people here have said and some of what they haven’t said. All I can say is I want you to come with me to the Liz Phair concert on June 25th! But I know you won’t, beacuse you don’t really know me! And that’s okay!

courtney

Great and enlightning article to a new blogger like myself. Thanks for sharing.

Deanna

I just read your NYT article and I thought it was great. It held my attention for the whole artice. You’re a great writer - as someone in your age group (I’m 27) maybe you should publish a book on this time in your life. Anyway, good luck and keep it up!

Phil Villarreal

Knockout story.

Leesavee

Great story! I want to kick the commenters on the NYTimes website in the shins, though. They clearly don’t understand how the internet can be used to form community.

David Williams

I must tell you that I’m a 68-year-old man who has never read a blog before or posted a comment on one. But I just read your piece in the New York Times magazine, and it left me with such a storm of feelings I have been moved to seek you out.

First, the piece reminded me of much of the “new journalism” of the 1960’s. One of the principal sources of that kind of writing was Esquire magazine, which in those days was the most exciting and interesting magazine in the world, unlike the superficial and irrelevant waste of paper it has since become. The modus operandi of the editor, Harold Hayes, as he himself described it, was to contract the best writers in the country and let them write about anything they wanted. The result was a vibrant voice that no publication has achieved since. For years I’ve yearned for some contemporary equivalent — a source of insightful, perceptive writing illuminating the times we live in. Your NYT piece is precisely that. And I love it.

At nearly 69, I’ve felt tremendously deprived not to be able to enter the world your generation lives in via the observations and insights of one of its members. (That was what the “new journalism” and especially the Esquire of the 1960s and very early ’70s provided for my generation. Your piece, for instance, reminds me a little of James Baldwin’s account of his relationship with Norman Mailer, “The Black Boy Looks At The White Boy.” Much of the best of that Esquire can be found in the wonderful, voluminous collection the magazine put out at the end of the ’60s, Smiling Through The Apocalypse.) I’m so grateful to have discovered a writer who again unlocks my mind and opens my eyes and takes me into the world she inhabits. As a minor example, it was so satisfying to get to know a young woman with tattoos; I’ve wondered for years who these people are, what do tattoos, which in my generation labelled the resentful and disaffected, mean to this generation, what would an attractive young woman with tattoos be like? And as someone who loves the art of writing, your hyper-insightful, wonderfully written piece gives me hope that that art has not been smothered to death by the embrace of the academy.

And, to get personal (as befits a blog, I guess), you also broke my heart. Three years ago I left New York after living for 37 years on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, spending several summers on Fire Island, and your voice spoke to me of that world, that life, in a way that so beautifully evoked not only the City but its best inhabitants — the young, curious, eager persons I knew when I was young there. It probably is not irrelevant that your photo reminds me very much of the love of my life, a very smart, very talented, funny and rambunctious young woman, a resident of the Village, in those days still the place for those with literary and other artistic ambitions. To be reminded of all that was painful, and sad, but, still, to have those feelings in relation to the world you live in makes the world I lived in come alive again in my mind. Thanks for the memories.

josh

Just tried to read your NYT piece. Since you get off on you so much, may I suggest rolling up the Sunday Magazine and using it as a Dildo? Then it will actually serve some purpose, unlike your waste of space “article”. I’ve heard of Attention and Daddy issues, but wow…maybe you should look at the 500 plus comments left on the nyt site, 98% of which take the paper to task for publishing such inane prattling. At least they are talking about you, right? And that’s what counts, getting attention!!! It just made me feel really sorry for you, Em. Of all the ways to spend your life, contributing nothing to this planet is a sad choice. Wise up.

Lindsey

Reading the NYT piece, what I kept thinking was, “Well, Emily Gould must feel pretty validated now that the NYT gave her 10 pages to talk about this and how it affected her FEELINGS.” I also thought, “OK, so where is the expose she must be writing? At what phase is it in the publishing process?” Am I right? If I am, goody for you! I mean that. Believe it or not, I have no motives here but to say you’re a lucky gal.

I also kept thinking, now that I am editing a newspaper in a small town where the flak’s always flying, that I know exactly how you felt (the panic attack parts) and really, really wish I didn’t. Different than blogging, but not by much, trust me. The not wanting to leave my house thing? Yeah. I have that.

Hopefully, someday, I will get to air my experiences as you did, and in such a big old venue. Like a slap in the face to all the jerkbags. Sigh.

David

I don’t know about you, but I suspect that David Williams comment above makes this all seem worthwhile.. Or maybe that’s me.

SuperBien

So, did J.D. Salinger email you to ask you out yet? ;-P

Atherton Bartelby

Dear Emily,

What began for me very early this morning as my usual surfing the internet for supporting links, articles, etc., for a short piece in my own blog on blogging, media, and your New York Times Magazine Cover Story, has, over the past several hours, as I have read more and more (both from other blogs, and certainly from what seem to be the harshest of your critics, i.e., The Comments Sections), has turned into an all-day mission for me to write a much longer piece in defense of you and your story to put up in my own blog. (Not to mention an epic proportion of mounting rage, on your behalf.)

I have been blogging for over five years now, and have constantly wrestled with the ethical concerns regarding blogging publicly about boyfriends, relationships, and, most recently, even my own alcoholism. But there are two things that have always been true about why I have chosen to blog what I have blogged: 1) for personal record; and 2) for the reference of anyone else out there who just may be experiencing the same thing and is too afraid to seek out help beyond the anonymity that the internet provides. And it seems to me that your most vitriolic of critics are those who do not understand your reasons for blogging as you did, who do not understand that at Gawker you were doing what they paid you to do, and, perhaps most of all, who are simply parroting everyone else’s opinion of you.

I say brava to you for your willingness to put yourself out there with a courage that so few of us seem to have when it comes to blogging (and, it would seem, commenting).

Best,
Atherton Bartelby

Damsel in Digress

Just finished reading your NYT piece. It was rivoting. 10 online pages, woman, and I ignored everything else to get to the end. (Which is like, what, reading 1000 real-book pages with undivided focus?) I never knew my attention span had that in it.

For me, one of the most striking things about this whole blogging/Gawker/constant-instant-information-sharing clusterfuck (um, sorry, is swearing allowed?) is that no matter how “intangible” the internet may seem, it creates real ties. Real connections. Real feelings - both good and bad. It becomes so easy to start caring about these people that you would have never known about or “met” were it not through the Internet. (God. It sounds like I could be talking about anything from blogs to anonymous dating chatrooms.)

Your article was able to illustrate all the highs and lows of blogging - why some people choose to share so much with relative strangers. I admire the honesty you approached everything with. Kudos to being able to walk away from a lot of the bad. I’m glad to be able to put a real person with my memories of that LKT interview (um, massacre?) and countless Gawker post readings.

DeDiceManCometh

Um, yeah,…if you ever get around to reading this, Em,…the NYT article makes you sound like you’re “looking for life in all the wrong places” (to co-opt an old country music chestnut). You’ve taken a tiny reflexive turn, looking at the new frontier where the stable dialectic of public and private is morphing into something that we don’t have a vocabulary for yet, but it’s a *tiny* reflexive turn and not likely to give you great and lasting happiness.

You are now standing on a sheet of paper at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, thinking, “maybe, yeah, just maybe by standing on this sheet of paper I’m getting closer to the rim.” Keep parlaying your compromised privacy into high-profile pieces on compromised privacy and you’ll end up like John Malkovich down his own rabbit-hole: solipsistic solipsism. “Being Emily Gould.”

You really want to get out of the hole? Start reading up on studies on happiness. Also: Become selfless, anonymous, and do charity work where you really see a need. It’ll come along. Honest.

naibbian

Pretentious?

Although, I must say, I WAS informed about the impulses of blogging and the addictive/gratifying nature of it all. So I did read it.

But - What is it about “young, hip, New Yorkers” that think they’re the center of the universe? Is it because you went to some expensive school you didn’t pay for? Is it because you get to hang out in one of the most expensive cities in the world and pay $15 for the same booze I get for $2?

There are 5 or 6 billion other people on this planet. Something like 75% of which are starving… and you are complaining like a 3rd grader because everyone knows you kissed so and so?? Please. My mother’s got cancer. What?

If being humiliated by your own accord is the worst thing that has ever happened to you… I got news… You will be humbled. (And that would prove my comment about you living a privileged/sheltered life.) I’m probably younger than you - and I have lived a life that reads like a fucking novel compared to some of this triviality. I’ve had friends die, lovers cheat, mistakes were made, people go to prison, babies are born, someone you love is raped, friends commit suicide… The kind of shit you don’t want everyone reading about. Things you definitely can’t just “Password Protect” or delete. Things you can’t forget.

I have never even heard of Gawker. So I went. What a waste of time and bandwidth. It kinda makes me sick that people are making money/careers out of crap like that. Gossip?? Go work for the Enquirer? At least that is funny sometimes.

Listen - the article wasn’t ALL bad. As I said before - it made me think. So thank you for that. I would even go as far as saying you’re a good writer. That’s probably what kept me reading. There was a sense of intimacy. So I think you learned some valuable lessons. Why do you feel the need to be constantly re-affirmed by other people? Why give a shit about what other people think? They’re all just as dumb and clueless as the rest of us.

Get out into the world. Live a life of abandon that is completely overwhelming and fascinating. Discover new things. You won’t have time to type it all up at the end of the day.

With love and respect. (And an ironic sense of satisfaction)

Mattical

I love David Williams (commenter) - all the proof you need that it was a great article.

Louise Y. Nielsen

Hi Emily
Very intelligent piece in NYT - really good writing!

Louise

Aaron

I dont know if your deleting all the negative comments or what, but why is this story the cover of NYTM? Theres a lot more amazing stories out there then blogger drama. Ten pages for this? I mean really

j

Emily, you are a FIMH (friend in my head). That is, if by some chance we were to know each other, I’m sure we’d become fast friends. I sort of fell in love with you in that article, slightly jealous of your friend Ruth (my best friend also escaped to New Zealand, seemingly never to return), but mostly just warm and tender thoughts (empathy perhaps?) brought on by your smart writing and the unwavering strength that is required to pen such a piece.

Now, I will go back to the article (didn’t finish reading it yet! you captivated me enough!) and imagine attending an Iyengar class with you, cooking up a curry stir fry and smoking a bowl and drinking blue moons on your roof after watching “secret lives of women.”

Thanks for this.

heather

This comment is for Ruth: I think you have been a really good friend to Emily, and you are quite talented yourself.

Jon-Michael

Fantastic piece. Nice personal touches to go along with very insightful info on the behind the scenes world of the blogosphere - yes that’s the first time I’ve been able to use that word. Good luck on your future endeavours and I’ll become a regular visitor to Emily Magazine now.

Emily

Thanks for acknowledging that durned elephant.

Thing about the internet is, it’s so easy to make a mistake or 15 when you’re young, and then you have to live with it forever, because the internet seems really ephemeral, except nothing you do there goes away.

My best friend alienated the heck out of her parents because of a blog she keeps about BDSM. (Am I freaking out a little bit because now there’s a record of my email being attached to that? Yes. And telling myself to Deal.)

From one Emily to another, good luck. Like many bloggers (like my awesome best friend, no less) you can certainly sort out a thought in print. Your heart’s in the right place, and shit gets weird sometimes.

Seriously. To the new project, public or private, whatever it is.

Chachacha

Emily, dear. Get over yourself. Love, the entire population of the Planet Earth.

Greg Conn

Soon you will go away and be forgotten.

Brett Clippingdale

We worked together, you and I, 7 years ago at an old steakhouse in Manhattan. Hah, well we worked when we weren’t doing our incessant chatting. You were new to the city then, and very young, but you were already extraordinary. I remember your verve, wit, and unconventional mind; you were independent and strong without ever being arrogant. In spite of your beauty, grace, and smarts, even then you were willing to be vulnerable, to learn all you could about life and this fantastic city, which must have still seemed so mythical to you.

And now, seven years later? Well done, Emily, living as authentic a life as possible in the artifice of New York and, what’s more, writing brilliantly about it. Anyone who thinks you’ve lost yourself doesn’t understand how committed you are to learning, and to living life deeply. Apparently you’ve grown and matured, but your essential qualities have not changed since last I saw you.

Oversharer, or just honest and without a mask? Well, keep it up. It’s people like you who make this Earth a better, more interesting place.

sosfreedom

Does moderation mean editing after monitoring…huh?

LW

Enjoyed your article. Couldn’t believe the 600-plus comments it generated on the NYT site in so little time. I’d never heard of you before. The NYT commenters are way too negative. I sense a generation gap issue here. At any rate, please keep writing.
-from a 40-year-old Seattleite

chris

self-absorbed & whiny, though you kept me reading 10 (internet) pages .. perhaps a morbid fascination that someone could put themselves so out there. i got embarassed reading it for you.

2nd what others are saying … you are a talented writer with great potential .. get outside of your own head and hip .. nyc world of woes.

best
c

AlyssaY

I never read anything more than a page in the NYTimes until I read yours!

Megan

I wrote a huge comment, and hit submit, and was informed that the NYT was no longer accepting comments. Screw that. So I came here and decided to paste the whole thing, because I even spell-checked, damn it.

Here goes:
I’ve read all 715 comments at the time of this posting, and I don’t think that I’ve seen a single question for Emily to answer next Tuesday. I do, however, see A LOT of jealousy coming from people who think that they’re Nabakov and that Emily is the hack (despite the fact that, um, SHE’S the published author who has worked her butt off to support herself with her writing, and they do… what exactly?). And the people telling her to cut down the length are pretty amusing: the NYT told her exactly how many words to write, geniuses.

But I digress.

Anyway, I have an actual question about something you touch upon in your comment about sacrificial virgins. I’m only a year older than you, and I think that it’s ludicrous that a 24 year old was given such an influential job. And for better or worse, we all have to agree that Gawker was influential. This had to have been a calculated decision on the part of the site owners: get young, inexperienced girls who really don’t understand the repercussions of airing dirty laundry the way someone even a few years older would, to do the dirty work. They’ll burn out quickly, either see through the manipulation or have a nervous breakdown, but smart, ambitious 24-year-olds are a dime a dozen so another one can always be found. Do you have any feelings about this strategy? Do you think it was a system that set you up to fail? Do you feel used?

I guess I have a second question, which probably isn’t really appropriate to answer, but I’ve been musing about you all day. The college that we both went to (as I said, you were one year behind me and I only vaguely knew you but was well aware of your prolific emailing… for Student Affairs or something like that?) was very small, insular, and at a certain level, very forgiving of transgressions. Being so small and with very few connections to the outside world, it kind of had to be. These factors made it so that there was very little privacy: everyone knew everything about everyone else. The gossip machine wasn’t some ruthless Mean Girls thing, it was just what happens when you put a thousand-some teenagers on a hill in the middle of nowhere. “Stalking” was a term that was used very lightly, without the creepy connotations it has in the real world, and was a popular way to while the time away. New York is also, in a really weird and ironic kind of way, very small, insular, and forgiving. However, the gossip mill is ruthless, and stalking people is a bad, bad thing. Did you understand that there was going to be a culture shock? Were you prepared for it? You use “stalking” so lightly in the infamous Kimmel interview, and immediately correct yourself: it occurred to me that you were using it the way you would have chatting to friends in Pierce, and then had to remember that you were actually on national TV. You went from being a prolific campus emailer where most of your emails served the public good, to running a small blog that was primarily read by your friends and people who enjoyed hearing about your life, to editing a hugely popular and influential blog which people love to hate and where you made plenty of enemies. It’s quite a leap, and it happened very quickly, and I don’t blame you for acting as if you were still in college, considering what a formative experience college is for many people. If you don’t answer this here, I at least look forward to reading your essay about it in the alumni bulletin

As the only person who has actually asked a question in this entire thread, I look forward to answers.

Ray

I loved the NY Times Magazine article. I had never read any of your blogs before or been on Gawker so for me it was a great discovery. Well done.

Chris

Great piece in the NYT, Emily. Keep up the great work!

jack parsons

I think I’m going to regret this…

Two years ago, I reached some kind of critical mass after years of writing. Strangers were coming to my door. Other strangers were calling me. I had an entry on Wikipedia, and finally, enough people cared about me to deface it on a semi-regular basis.

You know what? I hated it. I asked for it — subtly begged for it — for years. There is nothing more jarring than to suddenly find yourself loved or hated by people who don’t know who you are.

Do you know what I did? Vanished.

Do you know what Emily did? Wrote about wanting to vanish. Publicized her deep desire to vanish and the lack of meaningful contact she has with damn near anybody. Throughout the whole thing, the whole article, that’s the common thread: wanting to be invisible and wanting something more out of life than shallow text messages and twitters.

And so it goes. I expect that in two years, we’ll have an article in Newsday’s weekend supplement about the article in the NYT weekend supplement.

Jeff

Emily,

In this day in age, with our shortened attention spans and constant clicking/highlighting/scrolling around various websites/RSS feeds/social networks/blah blah blah, it takes something special to glue me to a 10 pages without stopping. Your piece was incredible and I wish you nothing but success in the future.

melanie penn

You are so talented!!

mila

I wish I hadn’t wasted the last 30 minutes of my life reading that article you wrote. Actually, I didn’t read it–I’d read parts, sigh, get annoyed, skip ahead. Then I decided to come here and tell you about it, since you and yours will probably get off on my negative comment. All I can say is, you deserve everything you’ve ever gotten.

Chris

I’m glad that I’ve never heard of you until now. Your narcissism seems boundless.

Steve Johnson

I’ve only started to follow blogs, so I didn’t know anything at all about you before I read your piece. It was beautiful. Thank you for that.

Peter Hobbs

Beautifully written piece in the NY Times. Thank you. Response from all the haters is hilarious. You somehow enable all those insecure folks to feel superior for a moment– a public service? But you’re doing what artists do– describing your world, and letting us occupy your shoes for a while. Nice shoes!

sharon l.

Dear Emily,

I just finished reading your brutally honest article in the NYT. The truth is, I have never read any of your articles before- this is the first - but I was instantly drawn to your fluency, vivid story telling and your honesty. I think you are a great writer, and please, don’t ever stop, no matter what other people say. The truth is, many people write degrading comments of others because they themselves grapple with low self esteem and insult others to feel some self worth.

Although you might have done some things that you wished you have not done, or wondered aloud if you hurt other people in your quest to write honestly about how you feel, I don’t think you have to worry as long as you are only writing the truth. Why care about what other people think? They should not be afraid of what is true. The fact that they feel angry or unjustified for your actions only show their guilty conscience.

Also, Josh is a big jerk and you are so much better off without him.

And finally, I wanted to add that I hope you cheer up and learn to take life easier. Don’t get so affect by what others say of you!
Stay happy and true to yourself!!

Mo 729

Being gifted as a writer can be “addictive” in itself. Remember the first experiences you’ve had writing well. Re-reading what you’ve written, and experiencing a kind of satisfaction is the source of the rush, and makes writers, well, writers. Hitting send, commit or print, and anticipating some response from an audience is a further rush, though, perhaps, different in kind. Writing is a lonely enterprise despite the later social trajectories of written works. Internet publishing has a way of “hot-wiring” the second life pieces of writing can possess. The lonely initial addiction and hard earned satisfaction is no longer an extended and sometimes excruciating part of the process. When commentators have suggested that you write about more important things or not only about yourself, they express just a partial truth. It is not so much a problem of subject matter; far too many powerful authors engage in unwavering self-examination in their works for this to be a decisive issue. Instead, it seems that you are being called upon to engage or re-engage with your writing in a way in which you are not merged so immediately with audience. The irony is that there really is not escape from the loneliness that accompanies serious writing. You are up to it.

jm

I’m so confused why people keep bringing up the fact that there are “more important things going on in the world” then the details of Emily’s personal life. Yes, of course that is true. But is it so horrible that the Times said, hey, you know what? Let’s provide our readers with a break from all this harsh reality that we print on a DAILY basis and provide a little escapism–well written escapism at that–and we’ll put it in the MAGAZINE. For Pete’s sake, you people act like her article landed on the front page of the paper, prominently placed above the fold over an article about the earthquake devastation in China.

If that’s what you’d rather be reading then go read it–it’s certainly available and the Times reporters have been doing a great job covering it. Otherwise, don’t fault Emily for taking the Times up on such an amazing opportunity. If the editors had come to you and asked for a similar personal essay would you have turned them down? Methinks not.

jetztinberlin

I never comment here but felt driven to after the amazing amount of vitriol in NYT comments. YIKES. As you articulated quite nicely, the whole culture of blogs, sharing, oversharing, public selves etc is a modern cultural phenomenon. For example… NYT printed your article. Thus, while you acknowledge you’re participating in it and explore that (I thought that was the point of the article?!), the entirely of the phenomenon is, ummm, not your personal fault.

Some of the NYT commenters seem a little confused about that.

(FWIW, I only read NYT comments when I want to really upset myself about the general apparent retardedness of our civilization, because they’re always 98% stunningly hideous. They lived up to it again this time.)

firsttimereader

(via kottke) very zeitgeist.

Steve

Emily, you’re getting a lot of grief because “Exposed” was (of necessity, I’d think) written first-person, and was entirely about your experience. People in the NYT comments unleashed snarling screeds about narcissism, equated that with your youth, etc. Mostly those comments sounded like sour grapes, to me. I’ve felt similarly exposed and been the agent of that exposure, in a small way, and I’m 40. For me, that shoots down the issue of your age. My popular blogging has pretty much all been about other things. My personal sites where I just blather never have more than a few hundred visits a day. But even though I don’t expose much of my inner life to anyone, I still understood your overall point about the blogging life.

You don’t have to be twenty-something, and you don’t have to make yourself the subject of the writing to feel that sense of loss and that gross sense of being naked in front of strangers from time to time.

What you and many other talented writers who focus on blogging are doing is actually pretty damned brave (or stupid — jury’s still out on that). In the past, a writer with any kind of audience quickly learned to erect walls between themselves and their readers. I wrote to a couple of authors as a teen and only received form letters. Only Beat legend Allen Ginsberg actually responded with a hand-written message. It took the advent of easily-accessible e-mail to make contact with any authors at all, and by then, I had a reasonably popular weblog to excuse my getting in touch with them. Now, Internet-based writers like us are exposing ourselves daily to random strangers ready to tell us we suck hardcore after the first paragraph. To keep doing it at all after that is, in some small way, an act of courage. Personally, I find there are days I just don’t always have the gumption.

I say keep doing what you’re doing at GalleyCat and elsewhere — blogging about ‘other stuff’ — and dear God, write a book. I’m sure you have one in you. To me, your article in the mag is actually you putting a kind of endcap on one phase of a writing career. I’ll be interested to see what comes in the next phase.

Jennifer (Et Tu?)

Emily,

I just read your fascinating piece in the NYT. Now, as your combox psychotherapist, I will patronizingly explain the world to you and give you a bunch of advice that will not only solve all your problems but usher in an era of blogging harmony and world peace, since I totally have my shit together.

Kidding.

You’re a great writer, your story is touching, and keep up the good work.

Jay Nathan

just stupid curiosity… were you at the 3rd ave 14th st. subway stop last night. Cause I thought I saw you and that would’ve been a weird coincidence.

Kara

I’ve been reading Emily Magazine from time to time since you left Gawker, and everything you write feels so familiar to me. Maybe it’s just our similar demographic profiles, and maybe it’s because I’ve kept an online journal (mostly locked) since I was 16 and I’m constantly trying to justify what I do and why I do it. I think a lot of why I love your writing, though, is because it’s so lucid and thoughtful. And I’ve quoted you twice: once in my journal, and once on the phone to my mother.

I don’t know what to say about the Times piece other than “yeah.” And I agree with the Gawker commenter who said it is both about Emily and not about Emily. It seemed to be about me, too.

Eva

I had never heard of you before I read the Times piece yesterday. Great article, amazing writing — I think you speak for a whole generation. Your honesty and integrity make it OK. We’re all living the same dilemmas, going through the same questioning — only difference is, you’re doing it out in the public arena and are allowing the whole world to comment. How 2008. I thank you for it

Czupka

Holy cats! Quite a lot of reaction, hey? As a blahblahblah I blahblah blah balh BLAH! Nice troublesome piece, lots of transference going on with the readers, enjoy the wave, sleep with fewer, better people. And, probably, abandon this particular blog. Why is it not possible to read your stuff and not want to give you advice? Got to go, wine to be drunk, French people yelling on the street….

David Schneider

I just read your story at the NY Times online edition. I had no idea who you were before i read the story, and i have to say i am quite impressed. Very well written, insightful and introspective. I enjoyed all of it. I don’t have the love of blogging like you do but i have tried to tell a litle bit of my story and how the destruction of New Orleans affected me, my family and my entire life, causing to to move to Colorado Springs. I have found it to be a moment in history few people outside of New Orleans really understand and i wish i could educate them all.

Anyway, i did enjoy the story and good luck in the furure.

sc

This is the first time I’ve ever commented on a blog.

As a Gawker reader and fan of Emily, I followed her over here when she left Gawker. I look forward to her posts for two reasons:

1) She makes me laugh and/or think while I’m stuck at work. No small feat.
2) I relate to her. I see myself in her. She reminds me of me 5 years ago.

Also, I really don’t understand all the hate here and on the NYTimes commenter site. I can understand not being entertained by her, or not being a fan of her writing, but the vitriol really astounds me.

Iheartfashion

Really enjoyed your NYTimes piece. It’s such a difficult balance to achieve, between revealing personal stuff and protecting your privacy when blogging. Thanks for the well-thought-out article.

Pam

How can I not respond? Emily, I loved your piece in the NYTimes magazine. Good luck!

Manda

How sad that young people can honour the love they once shared and preserve one another’s dignity. We live in a time when people feel their worth must be validated on a minute-by-minute basis, addicted to a steady stream of attention, attention, attention. With these kinds of core values, nothing is sacred. So one day, watch for Emily whoring out her babies as yet another means to an elusive end.

First Time Reader

I think your NYT piece should’ve incorporated a link to Josh’s NY Post story. Throw it all out there, because I think you can be an interesting columnist at NYT but this first submission isn’t that, it’s just a look back at a period of self-obsession, capped off in a self-obsessed fashion. Good therapy, in a way, but it’s only interesting reading for us if we’re gossip devotees or if we’re getting a glimpse at the full battery of consequences in the world of post-Internet privacy. Hopefully, as a writer, you’re leaving the gossip-obsessed behind; as an expert on new privacy, you have much to offer. But, in order for that to work, Old Emily is going to have to bare all. Throw it all out there.

Loved your Larry King clip, though. I can understand both sides, but Kimmel deserves what he gets. Nobody put a gun to his head and said: “become famous; at all costs, become famous.”

Ima Mazed

Just a reminder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-avakrRUaU

Jennifer

I quite enjoyed reading the New York Times article and found myself Googling Emily Magazine.

I’ve kept a blog for years and at one point, a coworker found it. I never mentioned anyone I work with by name, but saying “my boss” made it pretty obvious to someone I worked with just who I was speaking about. I then spent the next 4 hours going through every post to friends-lock my journal in entirety. And it went further than just locking up shop: I stopped doing memes, those fun little polls about yourself, because I didn’t quite understand how I felt about putting myself out there so much. I stopped responding to people because now I was paranoid.

For awhile, I even stopped blogging at all unless it was about the weather, a tv show I did or didn’t like, or hey, American Idol! How boring. Is this how I want my life written?? American Idol cannot represent me. And yes, that is how a blog feels to me. It’s a place to prove I exist, even when all I have is the internet and American Idol for conversation because reading a real book with words and a plot line cannot hold my attention for very long.

I’ve returned to blogging now, but I don’t ‘friend’ anyone I don’t know, and everything is locked. Sometimes I try to write something clever and witty, but people ignore those posts. They don’t want to read anything heartfelt, it seems. ‘Friends Only Lock’ seems like the wrong title for it. Shouldn’t a friend care to read the heartfelt stuff?

My poor coworker who even went so far as to join LiveJournal in order to enter my little world remains ‘unfriended’ and shall remain so entire his journal is purged by the powers that be for lack of use.

…Facebook is another thing altogether.

FWM

I really hate blogs. My current girlfriends blogs caused some issues early on in our realtionship. I couldn’t (and still don’t) understand being so public with personal feelings. They still make me angry when I think about them. She password-protected them, so now I can’t read them, but I don’t really know who has access to them. I think what did it was comments left by her ex. Didn’t sit well with me at all.
Anyway, interesteding article in the times. Heard you on NPR.

Abbie

I just want to chime in that your article was well-written and engaging and that I hope you find another subject to write about. I think it would be interesting fo you and for us.

e r k i r i k e r i k c e r

strobe light capture

photogenic relay

partial birth

unclear

back turned to the audience

writing impossible / schreiben nicht

protect
schutzen
proteger
proteja

protected from yourself. projected from yourself. protected by yourself.

one day during college after a national tragedy (bored and without sufficient pain fuel, stressed about school work maybe) i created an internet entity flipping the bird at everyone, cynical gesture, black humor, immature but mostly an attempt at lighting my own ass on fire. steve albini on kurt kobain: “he really loves to light his ass on fire.”

emily: i think you might also be the type who loves to light their ass on fire.

Tony

I liked it a lot. I’m a writer, I don’t know you. I’d like to see it pre-edit and post edit, just to understand what the changes were.
I should say I also like Tay Zodnay’s “Internet Dream”

Susie

Heard your interview on NPR. After reading your blog and your NYTmag article, it reminded me of a beef I had with NYTmag a couple years ago. I was writing somewhat regulary but stopped. One of my last entires was about an article they did on Aspen… http://stretcheveryday.blogspot.com/2005/12/other-other-side-of-mountain.html. Keep up what you’re doing, you can only be respected for staying true to yourself!

Susie

I heard you on NPR today. I visited your blog and read about your NYTmag article. It reminded me of a beef I had with NYTmag a couple years ago. I was writing somewhat regularly on my own blog but haven’t in quite some time. One of my last entries was about an Aspen article in NYTmag…http://stretcheveryday.blogspot.com/2005/12/other-other-side-of-mountain.html. Thought you might enjoy it. Keep up what your doing. You can only be respected if you stay true to yourself. Cheers!

Maggie's Mind

Such a great essay. Really. I heard you on NPR, then went and read the article, and I’m glad I did. I struggle on my blog at times with how much is too much, but it becomes so cozy sometimes that it’s easy to forget how public it really is. I’m more of a chicken than you, playing it safer, but your experiences have taught you more as a result, and that’s not a bad thing.

Cindy

I thought the article was great, and rather expected everyone else would too. However, altho I don’t blog, and am 20 years older than you, I have also been a longtime forum addict with a compulsive tendency to tell more about my personal life than is probably wise or emotionally healthy, so that all seems quite normal to me.

What amazed me was the level of anger in many of the comments. I tried to analyze what it was that people found so threatening here… there does seem to be a bit of ‘anyone could do that - *I* could do that’, like early reactions to modern art. (I loved the guy who said he was a successful middle aged businessman who had MANY opportunities to sleep with women your age, snicker)

But as I got thinking about it more, it occurred to me that I am actually very frequently astounded by the level of anger and venom in online commentary sections of all sorts. So maybe it’s not just this article and this topic. I was looking out the window at work yesterday, at people walking around on the street below, thinking… they don’t LOOK angry… are they going to go home and post nasty, furious commentary on someone else’s accomplishment? And if so, is that something the internet brings out in them, or would it come out other ways anyhow?

Maybe there are a lot of people who just use the internet to let off a little spleen, and are looking for places to vent.

In the meantime, don’t take the harsh commentary too hard. It’s more of a sociological event than a personal attack, as none of these people actually know you. I think you and the nytimes have done a good and maybe important thing, by introducing people to a world that is sure to become more ubiquitous over time, in spite of the initial kneejerk hostility.

David

Loved, loved your NYT article. That’s all I can say.

bill

Have you thought of a hobby? Something that doesn’t require you to sit in front of a computer 18 hours a day. I think that might be just the ticket….seriously.

Monroe

I suspect the people who enjoyed your NY Times piece also think Charles Bukowski is a great writer. Sadly, you probably think this is a compliment.

Laura

I haven’t listened to the NPR interview or the Larry King interview, but I’m amazed at the vitriol people can come up with after hearing them. Have they ever been interviewed? Probably not, or they might have some clue that people not trained to perform in front of a camera or microphone can have a pretty hard time expressing themselves accurately to who they truly are or how they really feel. Obviously you are trained to express yourself through writing, not public speaking. It’s sad that people would judge you on that even after they feel empathy for you through your writing. But then I guess the bigger lesson from all this is simply that people are ignorant judgemental assholes.

lawrence Steigrad

i liked your NYT piece, I am not proficient on computers and have never gone to Garwker. You write very well, a pleasant honest writing style. Please write a book.
I would say keep going and writing with your gut.
Good luck.
LFS

Pietra

For anyone learning to not overshare, it certainly curbs it if your entries are “Woke up, got dressed, went to work,” every single damn day, like this young lady…
http://addledwriter.blogspot.com/2003_03_01_archive.html

Leena

I really like your piece. My favorite blog is http://www.100daysinbed.blogspot.com. She talks fearlessly about her crazy family, friends and life as a writer but does it anonymously which probably saves her from being spewed vitrol at.

I think you’re really courageous, though.

tao

i like the article

i liked the tone

tao

re: hannah “My intention here is not to tear Emily down, but to translate the anger and frustration currently being vented over at the New York Times. First of all, being a good writer does not count for much when the subject is yourself. The standards are much higher and readers expect you to teach them something about humanity and themselves.”

i am a reader and i don’t expect or want to be taught and i enjoy reading non-rhetorical autobiographical things

amanda

I was only inspired to comment here after listening to your NPR interview. It made me sad - that you, a 26 year old woman, has become the target of such overblown rage. The most important presidential election of our times is about to take place, people are dying of starvation in much of the world, and mothers have lost their children in horrific natural disasters, yet people seem more worked about your alleged narcissism.

This insane attack on you is too much for one person to deal with, and proof that the internet is not a community but a dark, dark hole.

I hope you are able to remove yourself from all of this. It will definitely pass.

Nina

You should just write a book and get rich. You are an excellent writer and to someone like me that had no idea all this existed it could be written in a book that I would pay for. Good luck with your future.

marvin

If nobody reads your blog, do you exist?

Abha

Fantastic piece on the NY Times. As a fellow prolific blogger I could completely relate to your story, it gave me goosebumps. I think for you now, the only way is up — in whatever you do. Good luck!

Bam Bam

Interesting article in the NYT, actually read all 10 pages of it. A word of advice, unlike in the real world it’s easier to reinvent yourself on the net. Just remember whoever knows you will always know you, and whoever reads about you will only assume to know you.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

By: Kahlil Gibran

DT

Perhaps the reason for the vitriol regarding the TV and radio interviews is that it reveals a side of Emily not immediately evident in her writing, one that ratchets up the vacuousness quotient to alarming levels.

Flannista

“All violations of essential privacy are brutalizing.”

– Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Modes and Morals (1920)

Jess

I’ve read the article… and watched the larry king interview… and both made me cringe. I have nothing against blogging or your ambitions as a writer (to each his own), but it scares me how you think intruding into another’s life - via your blog or in the ways you discussed in the interview - is okay. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-avakrRUaU

mark

Writing, reading, people in motion. Great article - Thank you

Made me think of suggesting…

Pattern Recognition, W. Gibson

Rob

Beautifully written, thoughtful, and sometimes painful article. Thank you for writing it.

Shan!

Great article in the NYT. So many points I could associate with, I’ve been blogging for about 10 years, before it was even blogging and I’ve had it interfere with more than a few relationships!

Daz from London

What a wonderful piece in the NYT! I’d never heard of you before, and found myself both engaged and intrigued whilst reading about your life experiences over the last few years. You seem to have understood at an early age two of the most important qualities in life.

To learn from ones mistakes, and to have the courage to change.

Good luck. You have an enormous talent for communication and I will be looking out for your work in the future.

Jennifer McDevitt

Emily - I can’t say I am surprised by anything that happened to you or your life in embracing the internet. People can easily hide behind a fake address and say things they would never dream of saying in public or to another person.
Unfortunately, I do believe GAWKER is the worst of all offenders by glorifying horrendous gossip that in no way contributes anything to society or its betterment. Journalism always rides on the edge of being honored or condemned, but sites such as GAWKER and JOSSIP just have no redeeming value. People who write and post on those sites are not journalists; they are voyeurs in the worst sense.
You were on the receiving end by your own mind and conscience as well as the comments of others - correct or just vicious. That is what the Internet creates and you must accept what happens when you post for all to see. I think you found out how posting can have such an affect on lives as witnessed with your appearance on LKL with Jimmy Kimmel. Sometimes bloggers put themselves at the level of journalists with none of the integrity and boundaries they must follow. When you have no standards, when you don’t know where the boundary is, you are left to your own conscience to determine what is acceptable. When you have a masthead behind you that is respected, unlike many of these blog sites, you might have a different moral compass.
I pity you and that is the worst form of sympathy. You put yourself out there, took the ride and now are living the consequences. Not fun to have notoriety is it?

Norm

Emily: At the risk of gratifying an already weak and mishapen ego, I’ll tell you what this sixty year old thinks about what you’ve written in the NYT’s piece today. First, though, an observation: I grew up in the 50’s & 60’s, very narcissitic times to be sure, but nothing like we’re experiencing now. With the advent of the cell phone, iPods, and the internet, we need not entertain anyone or anything that doesn’t mirror one’s own sense of self. Freud maintained that if we don’t unravel our own neurosis, the fabric of the next generation will be that much weaker, and continue unraveling.
There has been nothing that I read in our piece, nor in the comments on the piece, that really has much weight, in fact, it just seems that they’ve spent a great deal of time and space, trying to bolster your self-esteem, hence weakness. For someone to compare you to someone like Fellini would be funny, if not for the fact that they were really trying to be serious.
The one thing which struck me when I read your piece was your comment(s) about your mom. If what I suspect is true, your mom’s own narcissism left very little space for your own development in more or less healthy and uncumbered fashion. Hence, there is a hole in the center of you that has only been filled in those transient, magnesium strip lastings of “the moment.” Whether it’s the thrill of a new budding love, or the thrill of the taboo of “cheating” on an old love, it creates for a very short time a sense of presence, of filling the void. Just like the getting of your tattoos: this not “her” is a way of conjuring “her”; this “pain” a reward; a rebelliousness that just cements you to a lack of presence. Just as I’m sure you wondered why your blogs and accomplishments sustained you for such a short period of time; and your constant blogging necessary to your very survival, was a kind of deep seated unrootedness that became more twisted and complicated because it was left unresolved.
There is much more to add, but this is not the venue to do that. I do hope that this article that was published today gives you the impetus to investigate your demons further. If I could have figured out a way to have responded to your piece I would have preferred that, rather than use this unfiltered and shallow, for the most part, medium. Something as intricate as personality, character, and emotions really deserve more nuance and privacy.
Best of luck,
Norm

Dave B.

I liked your article in the NYT and honestly was not aware of you. I must say I was fascinated by you posting about your sex life for all to see. Kind of strikes a chord in that exhibitionist side of me. So Emily, visit San Francisco much? Would love to be your latest blog entry….

Persephone

Evolution in progress I’d say, just your head (and everyone else’s0) hasn’t caught up yet, we live increasingly ‘open’ lives…that’s the objective isn’t it.

Kerry Cohen

Emily,
Thanks for the NYT article. As a recent victim of Gawker, I’ve been hoping someone would expose the inane blogging trend. Your article is immensely important - to answer others as to why the NYT would publish this - because it dissects the very disturbing, everyone-is-entitled-to-an-unedited-opinion atmosphere of our current culture. Mean is cool. Empty straw man arguments reign. And no one anywhere seems to be in control of the projecting, attention-hungry drivel. I find the trend disgusting and terrifying - is this where American culture is going? Thanks for writing so well about something that needed to be addressed.
–Kerry Cohen (yet another “attention whore,” according to the empty posts on Gawker for writing about my sexual past in my memoir Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity)

bill

Hi again Emily

I just noticed that there’s another article in the magazine today. One that doesn’t have a fraction of the buzz surrounding it that your piece has and which in my opinion should have been the cover story.

I wonder if you read it?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/magazine/25injuries-t.html

I see that you are going to be discussing reaction to your piece Tuesday on NYTimes.com

I hope that at least one of your responses will be YOUR reaction to the piece about the wounded sergeant.

I’d like to see some acknowledgement from you that you are aware that there are other people in the world who have problems infinitely more serious and dire than the ones you imagine you have.

Regards

Bill
Miami

Sal

Brave doings, sweetheart.

One of the cool things about getting older (I’m 45, single mom, LOVING my life) is making decisions that count. When I was about to turn 40 and realized that much in my life was incomplete (or worse), I decided to give myself a present for my ‘big’ birthday — I was going to be honest. It’s been hard, but it’s liberated me from fear and anxiety.

Honest doesn’t mean being snarky, unfeeling, or selfish, as some practice it. Sometimes that truth of the situation is that others’ needs or feelings come before yours… You’re on the way to getting it. Keep learning.

Welcome to the world of joy, growth and pain, and it all comes together in personal unfettered aliveness — knowing that you are in the right place, even if that place is in transition.

Brava.

Paff

Thanks for making my boring office Sunday a feast. I somehow ended up reading your article (all 10 pages) and feel enriched by it. I am really looking forward to reading your novel :-). Nevermind the ones who try to teach you stuff. They know nothing. Cyberlife is as real as anything. Your learning curve is living proof. Drop me an email if you ever head for London, England.

tjapple

good lord…some people…i always say there are players and there are player-haters….your story is subtitled “what i gained–and lost–by revealing my intimate life on the web”…here in the midwest, i do not read the sunday times regularly but fate had it that i bought one this morning and was thrilled to see a cover story on blogging. there are 51 other weeks of the year to generate cover stories on everyone else’s pet topic…blogging is one of my favorite topics and i am glad you had the opportunity to share your ideas and experiences with me.

Lee Gilbert

“The soul- a sanctuary, not a forum….” Emily, in trying to find this quote, I came across the following passage which also reminded me of you:

In this reserved sanctuary — a new heaven and kingdom of God — solitude and silence must reign. God is alone with himself. The divine Persons do not affect this solitude, they constitute it. The Love who is their animating force encloses them against all that is not himself. The City of God is immense, but enclosed. God alone occupies it, and he is All in all. The soul that prays must reproduce this solitude: it must be filled by it to the exclusion of all else. The very colloquy which follows is a kind of silence.

Speech and silence are not opposed: they do not exclude one another. What is opposed to silence is not speech but words: that is, multiplicity. We confuse the silence of Being with the silence of “nothingness,” which knows neither how to speak nor how to be silent. All that it can do is to become agitated, and then it dissembles. And it does this by its superficial movements reflecting the nothingness within it. Lip service which has no deep thought to support it; physical posturings; facial expressions with no corresponding reality or that flatly deceive — such is the language of “nothingness”.

Dom Augustin Guillerand, O. Cart.
THE PRAYER OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD

Emily, there is nothing left to introspect! Or, as Jesus said to St. Catherine, “I am He who is. You are she who is not.” You seem to not quite know this yet!

fishintree

Hi I was touched by your article. The public/private paradigm is a mobius of sorts to where your entrails trails to the point that the notion of inside and outside is lost!
My problem is the opposite: I like writing poetry and have no traffic at all.
Here’s my link, tell me what u think! James
http://fishintreee.blogspot.com/

Blissfully Blogless

OK, I’m way older than you, a luddite, keep off the IM feature at work so I can actually work, etc., so I get that I don’t “get” it, but… it does seem strange to me that people spend so much time online these days, talking about, well, nothing!

We have so little time on earth, seems a shame to live so much of it in front of a screen. Why waste brain cells and creativity on all this?

So why am i here? Read the NYTimes piece and wanted to see what this site was about. My conclusion? Well, nothing! Back to a book or a walk or sculpting for me.

ghubyt

you are intelligent, insightful, most importantly- self reflective, physically beautiful, interesting, you make me want to know you intimately, touch you, share love, live, you are very attractive

Kathryn

You seem to be a product of your generation that verifies its existance through media presence: I post, therefore I am.

I roared out loud at the Jimmy Kimmel interview after reading about your own, truthfully said, embarassment. I, too, have a blog but the theme is tight, there is a privacy block on it, and I never write deeply about my personal relationships — obviously, different than yours but also more judicious and no less honest.

Janet Wilson

I read the “piece” in the NYT.

The NYT is clearly hurting for material.

How can anyone, even one so young, be so totally self-involved and need attention so much?

I really feel very bad for you.

GS

Emily- I loved your article. I’ve been reading your blog for a while, and I read all of your posts while you were with Gawker. I was actually working and assisted you before and after the now infamous LKL interview.

I like your writing but I just don’t understand what makes you entitled to all of this fame/ infamy. I would go through all you have and more if I could just be more than a “broadcast associate.” I graduated from a top journalism school, and can’t even land freelance gigs with semi-reputable local publications. It’s not because I lack talent.

Does this mean I need to spend more money and get an MFA? Did you read the NYT article on young professionals in New York? I love how they mention the guy who eats grapefruit for lunch because he can’t afford anything else. That’s pretty much me. I don’t understand what I need to do to make it. So, I guess I hate to love you and that’s why I’m asking for advice.

GS

Jeff

Hello Emily.
You’re a great writer (but c’mon; we’re all good writers these days)… Anyway, you are first-rate pretty too. The whole thing made my day.

cjfl

(Keep on keepin’ on.)

Michelle

Can’t wait to read your novel. Seriously. James Frey was crucified by the architects of the game he thought he was supposed to be playing. He sucked it up and wrote a novel, which turned out to be a much better book than the first. You have a natural, compelling voice. You’re smart. You’re observant. You’re hilarious. You’ve been through hell for a year and been deepened by it. Write that novel!

LeonWestbrook

That was an excellent article!

Don’t listen to the haters.

Gurn Blanstone

Shameless self-promotion–brilliant!

I love the nasty comments, particularly “Mark’s” a few posts back. This is what people flock to your post to see. It’s not the “we love you” posts that anyone cares about; it’s the “I hope you rot in hell you horrid bitch of a nasty freak loser wench” posts that make it fun.

And by the way, Emily: it is fun. So people call you names–BFD! These people are as addicted to reading your blog as you are writing it. They’re mostly kooks, mopes, shut-ins and fops anyway. And God knows NYT Magazine will never find them or their writing even remotely interesting enough to include in its pages. So, who really cares what the haters think. Drink-up the notoriety while it lasts.

Mark, keep commenting sport-o. You and the other nut-sacks are worth the price of admission. =^D

elin

What shocked me in the NYT piece was your utter lack of kindness, love, humor, perspective or wisdom. What made the story surreal was that it was followed, in hte printed mag, by a heart-rending piece about a war vet who is brain-damaged and whose family is dessperate to help him. Talk about putting YOUR “crisis” in perspective. Please, please, please - before you write a memoir about your life, please, please, please actually DO something worth recalling, at least to the thousands of people who don’t know you enough to care about your every teensy, eensy thought.

ad broad

Nice NYT. Nice blog.

Pietra

Um, for you people who think Emily betrayed those in her life…

Have you read her ex-boyfriend Josh’s cover Page Six Magazine piece that ran four months ago? He did it first, and what’s worse, the point of his story was supposedly that you shouldn’t air your laundry in public….well, he got a handsome lot of money out of that article and didn’t use fake names, like Emily did.

theglitterkid

Emily,
I just finished reading your NYT article and found it very interesting. I’ve never read anything on gawker but I was captivated by your story just the same. I hope you’re able to find a middle ground somewhere.

Melissa

Emily, I am sure I am older than your mother, but I remember being lost in my twenties. It can be a terrible time and you captured some of the skin-crawling awarenesses with brilliance and pain.

I don’t live anywhere near NYC and do not have your existence–career, tatoos, luminous eyes or gorgeous skin, but I remember having to come to terms with being ordinary. I eventually married an interesting and extraordinary man and discovered living small was nothing such.

I also discovered the way one feels about one’s children fills the hole–who knew? I discovered you fall in love with your children every day, in that heartstopping, go anywhere–do anything way usually reserved for the dangerous ones that you should run from.

I thought your article was amazingly written and gave me a sense of a world that I did not know about. I was a surprising choice from the NYTimes, but it felt very New York, and I read every word with interest.

I wasn’t sure where to comment about this–I looked through the article to see how to email and finally settled on this–and still may do a letter to the Times.

Raw, real and relevant–a cautionary tale for our overexposed, overwired undernutured children.

Dear Famous A$$hole

Dear Emily,

I shit you not: I was at Franny’s in Brooklyn on Saturday night and overheard four different conversations at four different tables (not counting my own, mind you) talking about you and your article in the NYT magazine this weekend. I would guess that there are probably between 12 -14 tables in the restaurant, so (counting us) that means about 1/3 of the people there were talking about you at some point in the evening. And truthfully, that number is way off, I’m sure, due to the fact that I am not the bionic woman and was not able to easily eavesdrop on all of the opinionated, know-it-all hipsters within my immediate proximity. So I’m going to bump my estimate up to 50%.

But this was just one little ole restaurant in Brooklyn. Add to that the 8 bazillion comments the story generated (waay before it was even published), the 9 trillion reactive articles about your article, the Twitter Tweets, and Gawker’s virtual liveblogging of the whole darn thing as it unfolded.

Holy. Mother. Of. Christ.

I would imagine that your email inbox must be over-fucking-flowing with “Emily Gould” google alerts by this point. E-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y is talking about you…like, a lot.

True confessions: before this weekend, the thing I remembered you most for, was posting the picture of yourself in the sparkly red bathing suit. Your “self-involved” posts and battles with nasty commentors do not ring a bell with me at all, but I distinctly remember that bathing suit shot. Mostly, I guess, because I think that voluntarily posting a picture of myself in a bathing suit is something I would only consider if someone removed a big chunk of my brain with a melon baller and then made me it eat with my bare hands. And that’s still a big maybe. So, posting that pic…and flipping us all off, made me kinda love you back then.

For the record, I read all 7,937 words of your article on Friday and thought it was a really astute, well written take on one person’s experience dealing with the bizarre world of blogebrity. I thought that you were fairly upfront about mistakes that you felt you made (and clearly: mistakes were made), showed some growth through the whole process, and all the while gave us all an inside look into a segment of the media we are all, obvs, insanely obsessed with. As such, I guess I’m a bit confused why everyone and their brother are:

1. Angry at the NYT over the fact that your article was 7,937 words AND got the cover.
2. S-e-r-i-o-u-s-l-y pissed at you for “going on and on” about yourself in article that was supposed to be all about…uhm… YOUR experience.
3. Ready to burn you in effigy over the fact that you overshared about your own romantic life on your Heartbreak Soup blog (ok, I do agree that this was not a good idea, but it seems like you agree now too and are kinda sorry it ever happened–at least the way it did, so WTF??).
4. So utterly fucking offended by the idea that bloggers tend to enjoy writing about themselves and being self referential…and that you clearly did too (NY Magazine: “we promise you: Some bloggers are able to write about things other than themselves”…uhm, ok? And?).

Mostly I guess I’m just utterly perplexed by all of the venomous hatred and anger this is stirring up in everyone…especially vis-a-vis the idea that you don’t deserve anyone’s attention (which is exactly what all of your haters are serving to create more of by talking about you, ad nauseum).

You may very well be “a piece of shit” “cunt” in real life (as Mark, May 25th 2008 so eloquently posits on your blog comments at 5:18pm above), but I think I probably need to spend way more time with you than 7,937 words in a NYT Magazine article in order to reasonably come to that conclusion. In the meantime, I’m sticking with my original assesment: bathing suit badass.

Happy Memorial Day,
me

Brian H

I’ve only been blogging for a year, and on a sort of specific subject not related to my personal life (re: classical music in Bangkok.) When I was in high school, around six years ago, LiveJournals, or “LJs”, were just becoming a big thing, and there was this weird phase when a few people all of a sudden were writing about their family, their depression, their eating disorders, their crushes, and linking to it in their IM profiles. In some cases, school officials got involved, in others it was more simple: friends were lost, you were gossiped about mercilessly. I could never understand why those people had chosen to “overshare” in such a public manner; I thought they must be either in serious need of help or just desperate for attention. But obviously this isn’t a fringe, emo-high schooler tendency anymore, as the proliferation of Facebok, MySpace, Blogger and the like have shown.

You’re NYT Mag. piece was a gripping read. There really isn’t any point in criticizing it for what it doesn’t say, but I do feel inclined to voice that for whatever reason, I was expecting more of an analysis (sociological/psychological) of why people create public personas via the internet, what “oversharing” can mean when the subject is less romantic and more dangerous (e.g. eating disorders, suicidal), and what this all says about society today. Once all of the hype over the Magazine dies down, I think a lot of people would be curious to hear what you have to say about blogging and society beyond your own experiences, because they certainly have prepared you to make such insights.

Looking forward to reading more of your stuff now that I know who “Emily Gould” is…good luck.

Marge

So Emily,
What do you think about blogging about a slice of one’s life, without revealing the blogger’s true identity and personal details of said blogger’s life?
What if there was blog where no one gets shredded, and dirty laundry wasn’t aired? Would it be interesting? Would there be any value?
I’d be interested to hear what you and others have to say.
Marge
http://www.yarmarge.com

lisa mertins

hi emily, the nyt story came at the exact perfect moment for me, a rather junior blogger of a certain age. thanks a million!

Jack

Emily, this is what happens to you when you venture out past your clique of yay-saying toadies who think every self-absorbed pearl you drop is genius. There is a wider world (yes, of grownups) that now sees you for what you are - a mean-spirited, vicious narcisist. The vitriol is earned, and you deserve it. You’re neither a good writer nor a smart social observer. You’re a sad little nothing, whose hour upon the stage is already waning, thank goodness.

KM

Hi Emily,

I read your article online a couple of days ago and just wanted to say that I think you’re doing just fine. I’ve made mistakes like those you describe, though admittedly not online. I can’t comment to the public embarrassment factor that you’ve gone through, but I could identify with a lot of the rest of it.

I have no platform from which to judge you, so I won’t. I felt that the tone of your article made it clear that you have learned a lot about yourself and about the oddly bipolar online community.

I just wanted to say that I was impressed by your article and am glad you’re keeping your head up and marching forward. Just keep on rolling, you’re doing fine.

Michael

Hi,

Wow; I’ve just spent the last five hours on you. I’d never heard of you before this morning when I finally got around to reading this weeks magazine. Yeah, I know, kind of slow but it is a holiday. I’m very curious to know what your take is on the firestorm that you seem to have opened up? Was this what you wanted or envisioned? Personally, I enjoyed your writing and locution. I think the canard about this being a work worthy of the NY Times is a non starter. Feeble glad-handing about the ‘issues’ of the day must, preforce, give way to discussions of the life that we are all living. blah blah blah

cheers, my dear!

Michael

Oh, and if you have a great recipe for roasted chicken, I love to have it!

erin

Wow. I’m astounded at the things people will say sometimes.

Also, I hope the irony of these people taking the time to read your article and then your blog and comment that they hate you and you’re a waste of time isn’t lost on you. Sit back and have a chuckle over that one…

Me? I think you’re lovely. Keep up the good work.

ow a paper cut

nice elephant

tom

i had to read your times article twice. not because it was so informative or so well-written but because i had a suspicion that you employed the first person pronoun to lead off every paragraph. this is not entirely true but the employment of the ‘i’ is rather consistent, n’est-ce-pas?

there is an ‘i’ in ‘blogging’ after all.

but does everything have to be so obvious? both in your newly disavowed will-to-blog and also in your prose? (did you take a course in ’sex and the city’ screenplay 101?) i’m not sure what the point of your article was but i’m sure that you’ve figured it out. or so you’ve written.

last week there was an intriguing article in the times magazine about john mccain’s conscience. weeks before that there was a challenging piece on the moral conundrum of living ‘green’… and now the moral and social conundrum of a blogger as written by the blogger herself. brilliant.

an elephant in the room? more like a coked-up monkey.

disavowal. hypocrisy. a denial. a denial.

Curtis

I read the NYTM article (it was wonderful by the way), and if it makes you feel any better, I’ve never heard of you :).

I’ve also discovered that the folks out there on the Internet can’t get to you if you turn the computer off. I just go outside and let them yell in their little bubble while I enjoy the day. I picture their lips moving while they angrily shout words I can’t hear… “What? What’s that? I can’t hear you! I’m outside walking around a beautiful lake!”

And the jokes on them becuase they’re all inside, angry (or should I say angry inside?) making some big comment I’ll never see (probably like you’ll not see this one for you).

but anyway, when the sun goes out in five billion years, no one is going to see what we put out on the world wide wasteland.

Cheers!

Curtis

USpace

Hey Emily,

I read your piece in the NYT’s Magazine and I totally loved it. I was riveted, especially with your descriptions of the compulsion of blogging, and the the urge to post. You’re an excellent writer, please keep writing and always go back to it, you’ll just get better and better! I love bacon too, and you’re totally right, bacon is just like “potato chips made of meat”. I couldn’t stop laughing over that one.

You’re cool and also a hotty, you’ll find someone better than Henry and Josh. Don’t let any of the idiotic comments from hateful and spiteful fools get you down either.

Rock on!
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
outlaw most bloggers

license all the rest
monitor their writing

.
Philosophy of Liberty Cartoon
.
Help Halt Terrorism Now!
.
USpace

.

Margalit Pearl

This message is for Emily Gould. I am unfamiliar with Blogs, and this is the only way I hope a message will get to you.

I read your article in the New York Times magazine Sunday, and it broke my heart! I am not from your generation, and I do not feel the need to ‘let it all hang out’ when it comes to my life. But I admire your braveness at being completely open to the world.

Good writing! Thank you for a wonderful article.

MP

Margalit

Ben Cactusrite

I just finished the article in the NYT. Yes you are a good writer. You sort of put yourself through the wringer. Your article is a travelogue of a rather extended mind trip. Isn’t that what all the great writers write about? Well that’s the kind of stuff I like to read about and that’s what I write about in a private journal I keep. That’s the difference between me and you. I keep that stuff private. I’d be mortified if the reasons my wife left me were posted on line for everyone to read. I tell my friends, “During marriage counseling she said all of these horrible things about me. Of course they are all true.” But I don’t get specific. That’s just me. Anyway, you are a very good writer and maybe it’s time to move on to another topic. Ever read any of Alice Munroe’s short stories? I’m a fan of short stories and I think Monroe’s are very well crafted. Also, one more thing, the photos of you in the New York Times are beautiful. I’m afraid I have yet another magazine I can’t throw in the recycling bin.

Jane

NYT Magazine - wow! What’s next?

travers

hey emily,

don’t let anyone get ya down–this was a terrific short-form memoir. you are an outstanding writer. as others have said, i’d love to see you take on assignments that go beyond your own life. you have the writing chops—take on small corners of the world as insightfully as you have yourself.

Katie

hey, i hope you’re taking this all okay. not going to divulge my opinion of you or the article, but i connected with it on a more minor level as a 20 y/o who’s gone through a lot of internet.

but basically…you’re a person, too, and i hope the criticism isn’t getting to you too much. obviously it’s struck a chord.

Jane

In between pulling weeds and spying on a mama robin perched upon her nest of four perfectly-formed pastel-blue eggs, I read your NY times essay and the (at last count) more than 1,150 comments it attracted over the weekend. Two things struck me about many NYT’s readers: 1) They are nasty and vile and quick to insult and lash out as long as they can do so anonymously; 2) They do not understand that “Exposed” is a first-person narrative, an essay, a story of What I Did and How I Learned From It.

I also noticed some tried to pit Your Generation against My Generation. While I am more Their Generation, they do not speak to or for me. Having worked at a public university for eight years while raising my own two teens, I think I can appreciate more than many how much those in their teens and ’20s can–and do–teach me.

You are a talented writer with a great voice. I look forward to reading much more of your stuff.

Marge

WON’T GET GOULD AGAIN
http://www.yarmarge.com

Arlee

I loved the NYT piece- I’m so glad you’re back up and I think you’ll be great really soon. Please keep on writting and give us some great stuff to read about.

Bella

Hi Emily,

I loved your article. I admit I was curious and also read Josh’s article in the Page Six Magazine. (Okay, so I am an insomniac okay?)

I think his comment here (the one early on from a dick named Josh, was that him?) was mean spirited, immature and unnecessary. I love how the two of you have invited the world into your break up. I mean that without sarcasm. Who does that? It allows outsiders to see two very viable sides of a conflict, and that is valuable for all of us since when we are deep into it we tend to only think of each other as “evil”.

Anyway, Emily, I think those weenies leaving hate mail on the NYT site take themselves too seriously. What’s with all the narcissism criticism? Hasn’t anyone every heard of a personal journey narrative before? How do you write such a thing without the word “I”?

I love how you write. You really draw us into your mind and your personal journey. I never “met” you before but am glad I did now.

Take care,

Bella

Tim

At first I didn’t like your confessional too much. It seemed self-absorbed and not very important. But I have to be honest with you - The New York Times Magazine’s longish “thought pieces” these days are written in a style that succeeds at being both hauty and vacuous at the same time. I never read those NYTM tomes all the way through, but I did read yours. And while we know we’re supposed to judge writers by the quality of their work and not the length of their comments (so to speak), the fact is that you struck a nerve, and it shows.

Writers have always tattled about personal details of their private lives and burned bridges in the process. It just a lot easier to get published now. And a lot easier to see that you’ve been written about.

Menno

Hi Emily,
Interesting article.
Your creativity in writing deserves ink on paper.
Travel some, meet new people, learn and exploit your talent and you’ll be ‘en route’.
Cheers

Jason Autar

You know it’s ironic we all think that technology some how helps us ease a burden in which we can be closer to people and share what really matters the most. It is very difficult to put an emphasis on what our being is, as this article illustrates what exactly is one’s being and how does one share that with the world? These are the mere complexities when we try to identify ourselves because the simplest things to define are the most difficult ones to explain. Can this be blamed on ourselves? Or is technology to be blamed, human beings have always had this infatuation with being and how technology affects us. Clearly illustrated in Emily’s article it goes to show how difficult being and technology are when they go hand in hand.

Dusty

Loved the NYT Mag piece. After reading it, I realized it wasn’t even WHAT you were writing about so much as the way you were writing it. Wow. i really love your voice. Can’t wait to read more of your stuff.

Richard

Great article Emily. I’d never heard of your blog before; my loss.

Adria Sha

I just read your NYT article via a BlogHer link & enjoyed it.

Boricua in Texas

I have to confess that, although I read it with interest, initially I dismissed your article as the self-absorbed ramblings of a twenty-something New Yorker. However, as a female from a prior generation who keeps a personal blog, I have been following the story with interest.

Just now, I was reading your answers to some of the comments on the NYTM article. I find they are intelligent, illuminating and help frame a reading of your article in a different light. Yes, what you wrote is intensely personal. No, it doesn’t speak for all twenty-somethings or for everybody who keeps a blog. But by virtue of its specificity it shines a light on the experience of a generation who is growing up in an era of exposure and immediacy.

Best Parent Ever

So, Emily. What happens next?

Pvt Public, 122nd Internet Company

Had heard of you and Gawker and that LKL-Kimmel tadoo but never really paid much attention to any of it… and now I’ve just read your NYTmag piece…

Wow. Thank you.

A couple of couple years ago I was all over the internet. And hated myself for it. Then I spent the next two years removing myself from the internet and Google. And now two years later I hate myself for having no trail on the internet.

I’m going to spend June thinking about my extreme privacy v. my extreme openness, read The Future of Reputation, and come up a balanced plan. Surely, there must be a way.

Thanks for the inspiration to live again digitally. And in the analog.

Nath Jones

Lovely. Particularly in that your article was recommended to me by someone, who I compulsively emailed for an extended period of time. I’m definitely an emailer, not a blogger. For whatever archaic reason, I still try to provide a target for dissemination.

Privacy, intimacy, is not valueless, but it does seem somehow diminished in our cultural clime. It is not “what we want.” Who knows why, but this seems the case.

Publicity, transparency, is valuable. So of course you did what you did.

You were “doing what was right.” If you were a corporation with a balance sheet, you would be praised for laying it all out. The only reason you were “wrong” is that somehow the emotions we share are still considered intangible.

But this is no longer true. We are constantly given symbol systems and modes of appraisal which are stamped with objectivity. By these standards emotions are (easily) quantified. Freud…Myers-Briggs…Dr. Phil…the High School Guidance Counselor brochure…the Facebook quiz. The tools are everywhere and easy to apply. We are standardized and cross-referenced by diagnosis. We know the exact outcomes of our interrelations before they ever begin.

Yet this cross over, this commitment to enact the same system of values that are lauded in business and free markets into our relationships is resisted. Why? What is honesty if it is not revelation? What is trust if it is not knowing there is no emotional equivalent to double entry booking?

We are our own actuaries. But how horrific that as we tabulate and figure and extrapolate the probabilities of our various forms of failure (dare we ever spend a moment exacting success), we somehow short-circuit our possibilities. We blithely live out the foregone conclusions that are probable. We do nothing. We are so glad to have to do nothing.

I take no sides. I don’t think exposure is right or wrong, good or bad. But I do take serious issue with having to take sides.

It is impossible to know what is best, right, wrong, good, bad, wanted, unwanted. We are not judges. But neither are we heedless.

You are a processor. No more, no less. Life comes in, writing comes out. There is no reason to attenuate the life or the writing to achieve some desirable end–be it in the life, or in the writing.

Gabe

Thought you might be interested in knowing that this article was the first thing I ever read by you or about you. I had heard your name before and that was it.

FWIW, your story is interesting and insightful. I reserve judgement about the morality of the whole thing.

Catherine

Incredible. Seriously courageous work–and life. Keep on staying true to that badass self.

Nate / Eucaleh

Speaking of English and elephants, a prefered phrase may be “a white elephant in the room” the rare white elephant postules the credence of a given maliformity

I have a concept for a book on creative English I mean to publish eventually on the strength of another book (as yet unpublished) _ _ _ I find intellectual modes in general fascinating

please visit http://motism.blogspot.com for intellectual subject headings. I deeply admire your spare and concise format. I’ve discovered only recently how much it conveys in blogs and e-mails, against all conciliation with the nature of the aphorism

Thank you for appearing in the New York Times magazine, it was the stimulus for this arrival

I also intend to connect more deeply with the blogosphere. Let me know by e-mail if there is a means to join your blog network as a standard blogspot blog [there is similar formatting here]

I’m likely to post elsewhere in this forum / statement area for the purposes of pontificating on an assumed opinionation _ _ _

feel free (you or anyone) to write if you have comments on my websites. I get hardly any formal and critical e-mails, would do wonders for my web conscience

Meaning well,

Eucaleh Terrapin, aspiring artist, inventor, philosopher, and poet
[highest accreditation an article in the Hartford Courant on blogs, owing to Phil Hall, popular reporter and columnist]

Chuck

I understand what you’re going through, Emily. It’s like, Why motherfuckers gotta ask me how I’m doing if I’m alright, you know? When I’m starving and struggling, there still ain’t gonna never be enough lovin! And that’s a hard thing to face, I guess.

But your story made me realize that I’m tired of ripping and running, dodging and ducking bullets…I know my time is coming, the walls are closing in…I wish I had a dad, but he left when I was ten. So, moms is all I had, and don’t get me wrong, she was there for me — until I ran away from the pad, and now she disowned me and she don’t claim me.

So yeah, I know how you feel. Growing up is hard.

Jenni W. Reynolds

Emily- I had never heard of you before reading this article. Thanks to a case of tendonitis in my wrist, I had some time to kill in the hand specialist’s office, and there you were on the cover of the only magazine that wasn’t featuring bullshit Martha Stewart-esque doilies. So, I picked it up and devoured it, intrigued. Indeed you’re a good writer, but I don’t believe that you believe what you say.

There’s always a need in those of us who are admitted attention whores to keep whorin’ it up- it’s like alcoholism- you might regret what you did the night before, but you WILL pick up the bottle again. And the ‘net is just one big free mini-bar.

Keep writing, stop lying- to yourself and your readers. The half-truths are entertaining, but you can do better than that.

Best Wishes.

jigsawdiva

That was a fantastic article in the New York Times magazine. Now I am one of those creepy readers who wants to be your friend. Your honesty and your way with words inspire me as a writer.

A. Haight

You are fantastic. I enjoyed the Times article. You just keep on doing what you’re doing and I’ll keep admiring you.

Melissa

My father gets the NYT and has a stack of magazines he has not gotten into and this was the oldest, on top of his stack, of course. I am home for Thanksgiving and reading actual paper and ink stories on my down time was a goal this week. I loved your article and agree that oversharing is a problem. Your early symptoms of oversharing was fascinating and a lot like mine in my life. So I read your story like a precautionary tale and will watch out for any future desires to share a little too much and find other avenues of self-exposure. I will also keep an eye on your blog, so far I am liking it! Thanks for sharing and I hope things are better now… 6 months later! Oh and here I am back online again…