Oh, hi.

Room-elephant acknowledged.

339 comments to Oh, hi.

  • That was an amazing article, really. I can completely relate to every point, and it was so open and honest.

  • 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.

  • a few months ago, i was in a conference with a very smart man on a paper that was becoming more about me than i wanted it to be. i said, what do i do? it’s not like i want to exploit my own experience, but i don’t know how else to explain.

    and he said, what kind of writing it’s exploitative of our own experience? if we’re not doing that, what are we saying? what can we even claim to know if we’re just wasting our breath pretending to be objective while we ignore the stuff we’ve actually been through and can speak about?

    and i mean, i’m only twenty, but i think i totally get what you’re doing. even if you’re not doing it on purpose. and you — can help make blogging make sense to the masses beyond being a niche hobby, with your bravery and honesty and willingness to think about your own obsessions and compulsions. that’s the thinking that might make the internet an equalizer, a REAL one, instead of an upper class whine-bot.

    i’m sorry people are mean. big ups to all your HATAHZ. but, hey. when i worried, today, that my life is going to be a complete waste, that my interests are trivial and that i’ll never be an anything, i started to think about how you took what you cared about seriously. and whether they like it or not, now everybody else takes it to heart, too. i felt all corny and stuff, and my ambition revived, and the future didn’t look for a second as disappointing as it usually does. so cheers, dear.

  • 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!

  • satori

    I’ve been following (and enjoying) your writing for a long time now, but I’ve never commented about it anywhere. I doubt you’ll ever wind up reading this, but I hope you do, and I hope it makes you feel a little bit better about all the hatred that seems to be swirling around.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about the tempest in a teapot that your NYT Magazine piece seems to have caused. (Congratulations on your cover story, btw!) I can’t help comparing it to another literary feud that occurred well over a century ago.

    Mark Twain had a lot of things to say about Jane Austen:

    “Whenever I take up “Pride and Prejudice” or “Sense and Sensibility,” I feel like a barkeeper entering the Kingdom of Heaven. I mean, I feel as he would probably feel, would almost certainly feel. I am quite sure I know what his sensations would be — and his private comments. He would be certain to curl his lip, as those ultra-good Presbyterians went filing self-complacently along….”

    “To me his prose is unreadable–like Jane Austin’s [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane’s. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death…”

    “I haven’t any right to criticise books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

    etc etc

    I always get a huge kick out of reading Twain’s vitriol toward Austen – mostly because he continuously betrays himself. He hates her work…every time he reads it! She drives him batshit – EVERY TIME HE READS HER WORK! She has to be the worst writer he’s ever encountered – all 4,981,034 times he’s read and re-read her novels!

    You’re not Jane Austen, and the commenters on Gawker and in the (ugh, I hate this word) blogosphere are certainly not Mark Twain, but the dynamic is identical. Also keep in mind that Jane Austen was long dead before Twain ever dug into her writing. You have the unique pleasure of being alive to face (and smirk in the general direction of) your critics.

    Keep on writing. They’ll continue to hate you – EVERY TIME THEY READ (and re-read…and re-re-read) YOUR WORK.

    PS: if the internet existed when Twain was around, he’d never have written a single thing for publication. He’d have been far too busy eviscerating other actual writers’ work as a Gawker commenter. That’s the pitfall of being a constant critic: you wind up throwing so much of your life force into hating other people’s work that you find yourself incapable of writing anything of your own.

  • [...] Emily Gould (of Gawker fame) has a cover story appearing in this Sunday’s New York Times magazine. [...]

  • 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!!

  • Steve

    Forgive the cliche: This is meta. I can relate to you on so many levels. For a time, I worked at a blog. A big one. At said blog I made sure my posts were just self-deprecating enough to not make me a bulls-eye for commentators but self-analytic enough to inspire a laugh. I took a few risks, said some things about some people I probably never would have said to their face, and I don’t regret it for a second. I learned an effing shit load about myself. It was like getting an instant critique from the entire blogosphere on my work. I loved it. The attention for my writing was really great for me, and it helped my writing a lot. I learned how to be honest without alienating people.

    Ultimately, though, I left. Now, I have my own personal blog, and I get a lot less comments. It feels weird because I used to be having this conversation with thousands of people, and now I’m having it with just a few people.

    Honestly, I still think self-disclosure can be a great thing. But I agree with the comments- you need to be in a journalistic role where you’re talking honestly about things that matter to you. Gossip obviously doesn’t matter to you as much as you thought, or you’d still be at Gawker. Lord knows there’s a bajillion internet folks who would want that job. But you don’t. The fact that you wrote this story proves you enjoy bearing witness (even if it’s witnessing your own demise on teh interwebs) and you’re willing to go to a place of truth a lot of people are afraid of. You knew when you wrote this people would call you out as a self-obsessed hack, but you did it anyway. It was a gutsy, thoughtful article and I respected it immensely.

    Your article will help people…even the people who hate it. The people who hate it hate it because it’s triggering something inside of them, some sort of vague connection to your pain, and their own struggles with being an internet addict that they have not dealt with.

    But you need to be doing what you’re passionate about, and taking down public figures (or at least the ones all the ny homos consider to be public figures) has got to be exhausting. Writing is about figuring out what’s interesting to you. You’re blog stint has run it’s course. I am saying this with utter compassion: for your own sake, you should move on. Not because of the haters, but because you know you need to move on. Because in your writing I sense an aching to move on.

    There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. You’re a young, intelligent writer who went to a place where some of the most creative writing is happening. Gawker, for all the shit people say, works because the writing is really really hilarious. Yes, it can be trite, that’s what gossip is: trite. Everyone who labels that as a good or a bad thing is revealing their own troubled relationship to the ambiguous nature of the new internet age.

    Please continue to write, but not about things too personal, and not mean things that make you feel bad about yourself later. I know that’s a total duh, but with the clusterfuck that is the information superhighway, everyone needs some reminding.

  • 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.

  • Being famous for being famous is a particular American illness that seems to lead to acute paranoia, then rabid invisibility. I used to work for Interview Magazine (when Andy was alive). Now the playing field, or the launching pad, is tied to Net tags and “going viral.” I wonder what exactly all this blogging leads to… I wrote a piece for the NYT Magazine a few years ago. I received as many e-mails about it as did as a Wall Street Journal writer did who has the same name (and his columns were about critiquing media, particularly the NYT). We’re now friends, sharing the occasional e mail.

    I have a few blogs – one for a printing business to promote our clients and their projects, one for Storefront Windows to promote whatever’s on display around the world, and another that is just a .Mac page for my art images and exhibitions – but I seriously doubt they contribute anything to the karmic balance of the planet. Oil continues to rise in price.

    My good friend Keithstein armed with a new computer starts each day scouring the Huffington Post. Three months ago he didn’t know what iTunes was, and now he’s posting his opinions, weighing in on the big questions of our time. I have 530-plus friends on Facebook; I know only about 30 of them in my real life. Does it matter if it doesn’t matter?

    Best,

    Matthew Rose/Paris, France

  • 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.

  • archer007

    Hi Emily. I just read your 10 page Times piece. Well done. I rarely read prose written well enough to sustain my interest for as long as you have. Throughout your entire article, you described things so vividly that it seemed that you were right next to me. Talent of that caliber is rare. No matter what they say about you, keep on writing. You’re good at what you do.

  • 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.)

  • Emily, I will finish your NYT article, since I only had time this morning to read 3 pages. I relate to what you said about a blog being a place, like a house, where one’s thoughts are shared and recorded etc. I hope you have time to visit my various blogs—poetic and political. I do not have very many persons commenting on my blogs, so my writing is a sort of “thing in itself”, but I’m always hoping that more will read what I’m writing.

    Thanks
    M.L. Squier a.k.a. Mad Plato

  • firsttimereader

    (via kottke) very zeitgeist.

  • Jason

    I admit it. What drew me to the piece was Emily’s picture. I found her attractive. Her pose, her tatoo, the meloncholy expression on her face, all of it was inviting.

    Once I began reading the piece I was delighted to have found a nice tasty morsel of real, honest female thinking. It’s been years since a young, nubile, promiscuous woman (who’s obvious craving is affirmation of her every thought emily-ites) shared he exploits to vividly.

    Of course, as soon as she mentioned she had a cat I knew she would f-everything up.

    I enjoyed the piece quite a bit, to the extent that I think I need to read more female blogs. Of course, finding a writer as good as Emily who’s imagery and comic stumbles seemed so effortlessly transferred to the page might be a challenge.

    One thought about the piece though is that its ironic that Emily woud go for the major “blog post” in the nytimes at this stage. Now she’s more famous than ever. When do we get to see “Emily, The Movie”?

  • 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.

  • Just got over the Times piece. I had never heard of you before… so my question is this:

    If a tree falls in an empty forest with no one around does it make a noise?

    xo

  • 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.

  • Barbara O

    Nicely done. Could relate to much – sickly sweet candy line especially. Funny those who criticize are publishing themselves in much the same way they accuse you of doing…who’s calling who narcissistic?

  • 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.

  • anne

    Jim,

    I’m confused by the fact that people keep saying this article is “well written.” It’s just not.

    -Anne

  • 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.

  • Catherine

    Well, Kottke likes you: http://www.kottke.org/remainder/08/05/15720.html

    Great read. A cathartic write, I hope.

  • 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 ;)

  • al

    Why is the default reaction to Emily’s piece empathy and psychoanalysis? That seems wholly unproductive and I don’t understand the impetus at all. Emily, you had a nice, quiet blog. Now it is gone. Sucks.

    -Al
    Brooklyn

  • 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….

  • amp

    Terribly written article. Terrible interview on CNN. You’re in idiot.

  • 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.

  • I loved your article on NYT.com, to the point that I had to introduce it to my Korean blog visitors. Thank you for a great article, and good luck.

  • 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.

  • Veronica

    How is masturbating for the whole world to see, anyway?

  • 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.

  • Saul

    I completely agree with many posts I’ve seen — this is the longest news article I’ve ever read in one sitting.

    Pretentious haters be damned, clearly many many people wholly appreciate your publicly vetted introspection.

  • Pam

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

  • Let the haters hate, Emily. Everyone who spews invective at you is just jealous. They wish it were their names up on the gray lady, not yours. And “narcissism” so what if you’re a narcissist? Every artist is a narcissist — they narcissism is what lets them produce their work!

  • 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.

  • I thought it was a very interesting and honest article. I also caught you on NPR today. The comments on NYT are a reminder of the gaping generational gap regarding the internet in general and blogging in particular. Good luck in the future.

  • 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.”

  • Most of the haters are jealous beyond words, so the hell with ‘em.
    Mark

  • I loved your article. I’ve been thinking about the addictive components of virtual reality and your personal story was the perfect medium in which to indulge these thoughts. After I read your article of course I had that neurotic tendency to look up your blog, your friend’s blog, etc. I forced myself to get out of virtual land and go for a run. I even made myself not take my iPod, as a test of my endurance with silence and true strong-mind perseverance. I ran full throttle without stopping and at one of my better times, so thank you! Ironically, I wrote a blog in my head during my entire run, a shoot off from your blog. I suppose I’m still working my first step.

  • 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.

  • jesse

    Your article was a compelling read. I’m not as obsessed with Gawker as I was a couple years ago, but it was so jarring to realize you were the same Emily from Gawker, flipping us off from the rooftop in your bikini. Your voice there was so incredibly harsh, such an attitude. The Emily in the NYT was so very different. It’s hard to tell whether you are camouflaging a self that is more catty than you want to be, or the cattiness was hiding a nicer self. I think you narrated the story well, though.

  • 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.

  • Hi Emily. I’ve never heard of you before but I loved your NYT article. (I read Jezebel daily because I have a really boring job but I try to avoid all things Gawker as the whole thing just seems too mean-spirited.) I’ve been blogging publically since 1999, but I’ve never gotten famous or anything (luckily). I’ve always struggled with whether or not I should be so open online. I pretty much don’t hold anything back. Your article has me reconsidering again whether I shouldn’t take down my 9 years of oversharing before it really comes back to bite me someday..

  • 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.

  • Your NYT piece was very well written. I do have one critique, though… it needed more photos. Nudes specifically. You appeared naked in precisely 0 of the photos in the article. It’s much easier to imagine you naked if you truly ARE naked, in jpg form. Your writing is spot on, I very much enjoyed the article, just increase the nudity. I hope you take this critique into consideration in further articles and blog posts.

    -Derrick

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