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Oh, hi.Room-elephant acknowledged. 339 comments to Oh, hi. |
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Copyright © 2024 Emily Magazine - All Rights Reserved. Site design by What's That Cat |
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Yes. Good NYT piece.
Get out of insular NYC for a while; if I were your analyst I’d say that you need to break out of the mold, the rut, you’ve been in for several years.
I’d like to hear your travel voice — what you’d write from a little internet cafe in Ecuador after a month of solo travel in South America, or from Singapore or Auckland or wherever. See the world and take us (your readers) with you.
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
I liked your piece for the NYT. Do you have any advice/recommendations for someone that is interested in starting a blog but is not interested in all the attention/other negative consquences bloggers such as yourself have experienced as a result of their blogs? Is it even possible to have fun writing what you want while maintaining basic anonymity?
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?
Great NYT piece, and I don’t read Gawker. Or blogs! Anyway, it was extremely interesting and well-written. Hope you have a good day!
I guess my comment was not good enough for your audience…
too bad.
good NYT anyway.
Another 15 minutes for you!!
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.
Amendment:
A good day despite what the dicks are saying in the NYT comments section.
i liked it too! have a good day.
if i told you that i think the solution you are looking for is in your article would you believe me? look for it. right around a few pages in, when you start to talk about no else can make you happy besides yourself. admittingly, this is the first time i have ever commented on a blog page and that was the longest online story i have ever read so what do i know
. motivated but also curious to see if you slip for the wrong reasons. fire island, really? regardless, seems like a fun cycle with more ups than downs.
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.
Congrats on the Times piece. Well-written. The New School taught us…er, nothing at all! Seriously though, well done.
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.
“…left me feeling hollow and moody, as if I’d just absentmindedly polished off an entire bag of sickly sweet candy.”
I love that. Excellent article.
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
As a longtime fan I found your NYT article well written and interesting. You have a great “voice.” I’m looking forward to what you’ll do next. Have a nice day!
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.
Normally I don’t comment on these things. But apparently you actually read the comments. So:
this is just me, but I don’t think an online life should ever or could ever replace real life. it sounds like from the nyt article that happened to some extent.
my definition of friend is (much like family at its best): someone who wants the best for you by you. in other words, they don’t want you to be the person and do the things that they think are best, they want you to do that for yourself, while they get to be a positive part of your life.
also, since you’ve tried the heart of the city/every second scrutinized life, why not hang out in a cabin in the mountains for a month or two? perhaps a “unexciting” life is just what you need. I’m with J on that one.
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
)
I have not read a single blog. I wish I had been reading yours.
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!
i’ve never commented on a blog before, but i just felt compelled to tell you that i really feel so sorry for you. not for what others have done to you, but for what you’ve done (and are continuing to do with the nytimes article) to yourself. my heart ached as i read your article, as i feel you are so lost. you really need more therapy (and maybe an education in eastern religions) in order to realize that your self-worth does not come from the external world. for the sake of your own evolution, please spend more time experiencing life and less time seeking attention from strangers. bless.
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.
Ten pages long, wow. And I made it all the way to the end. Good story, you seem quite likable.
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.
Just finished your NYT article. It was really well done and its nice to see how you have grown. I don’t think I would be blogging anymore if I had gone through what you had but it takes all kinds to make the world go round. Good luck!
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
I liked it a lot, but wondered why the style was so different than your other–non Gawker–writings?
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!
“I was essentially talking to myself.”
Hmm.
Great and enlightning article to a new blogger like myself. Thanks for sharing.
You’re articulate and, in a weird way given the obvious upside to being featured in the NYT Magazine, brave for exposing and dissecting your life and motives so unsparingly. But I can’t help thinking three things. 1) Readers’ seemingly bottomless appetite for news from the romantic trenches notwithstanding, everyone’s love life, viewed from outside, is the same and therefore dull when unleavened by reflection, so what is the point of sharing it beyond self-validation? 2) You seem to regard it a given that expression, self-discovery and self-validation are among the chief goals of life. What about using your obvious talents to serve others? You are linguistically gifted. Why not teach immigrants English at night school? Tutor kids? Cover the community board meetings you refer to offhandedly, where decisions are made that affect people’s lives far more profoundly than a breakup? That is, do something besides contrive more ways to further your own career. 3) You’re right, thoughts are worth honing rather than spewing. I hope you see the obvious lesson of your experience: Attention-seeking isn’t merely draining. It makes you boring.
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!
I got so into your NYT piece I couldn’t finish my homemade breakfast at the table and had to bring my English muffin with bacon, egg and tomato into my bedroom and eat it there. I tell you, if you can drag me away from breakfast you’ve got something going on. It was really a terrific piece and I hope you press forward to the proper balance of all these ultimately reconcilable things happening in your life. Josh sounds like a real jerk, and I feel bad for Henry. But I don’t yet understand why you dismissed the advice about reader comments and didn’t just ignore them all. That would ahve extended your shelf life at least a year. I also would have been interesteed to know how much money you made, and what you had to do make it in terms of getting readership, which I understand is the new regime at Gawker. Godd luck in the real world, Emily, and don’t keep your secrets to yourself – they’ll never do you any good!
Knockout story.
Good writing, good story. I wrote my thoughts about the article in my blog — feel free to check them out: http://kidintheback.blogspot.com/2008/05/alls-fair-in-love-and-blogs.html
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.
Hi Emily,
I am that person that never leave comments. Thus, here I am choking on the words “never.” I say keep spitting words! Blog, book, journal just write! Your NYT article was eloquently raw and is evident that emotion is thicker than skin. Emotions is what drives the heart to the hand to express, so scribble your words and let it be known. It takes more guts to write and stand naked before the jury that is the reader.
I have lost a friend and pissed on others, because of my blog. To this day, I would never take back my words, because that wouldn’t be me. Cardinal Rule, in order to talk shit one must learn how to take it. It’s humbling to feel human sometimes. In those words, don’t stop writing!
Ciao!
Kitchen
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.
It’s weird isn’t it? How you write something and people feel like they know you enough to give you advice? That’s always been my problem with blogging — I still do it (through livejournal, facebook and occasionally myspace), but I quickly learned that what I’m writing isn’t necessary what people are reading when they see the words. They find their own stories and pasts in what’s written, and comment on those things (much as I’m doing here). That’s not necessarily a bad thing — I guess it shows your power as a writer. But yeah. Weird.
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.
It’s “addictive” because we’re social animals and this is a social medium.
It is refreshing to see the NYT posting an opinion issue that affects a larger number of us than I think, from the comments, many in the mainstream media usually acknowledge.
There seems to be a generational gap here.
The comments involving “when I was your age” (we had to sleep our way to the top?), “this is such a waste of time” (which is why I’m reading and commenting), “listen kid” (I am older which naturally follows that I think I am wiser), “when I was last in a war zone/worked with orphans/fed the needy my story was more important” (because you are the narcissist here right?), “I can’t believe the NYT published this” (because it got more hits than experienced editors get on world changing topics in a few hours), etc. etc. were hilarious. So many tech-ignorant newbies, so little time.
At any rate, chalk up one new blogger here. That is, if you are getting back into the game. You are, aren’t you?
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.
Let me add my voice to the chorus of those who enjoyed the article, and I almost never make it to the end of a NYT Magazzzzzine piece these days. Oh and completely off the subject but for future reference I recommend Berlin as the best city to collect your thoughts: it’s very cosmopolitan, but there are trees everywhere and you can always hear the birds singing.
I don’t know about you, but I suspect that David Williams comment above makes this all seem worthwhile.. Or maybe that’s me.
That NYT piece was clearly the article you were born to write.
So, did J.D. Salinger email you to ask you out yet? ;-P
I can’t believe the NYT printed this. I can’t blame you for writing it–it’s your life; of course it feels important–but with so much else going on in the world, why does this deserve the cover?
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