Oh, hi.

Room-elephant acknowledged.

339 comments to Oh, hi.

  • Emily, I just read your piece in the NYT mag. Well written and insightful. I hope you take your learnings and really use them to do what you love while being a better human being. You have a gift for writing…not a novel compliment for you…but you can use that for more than fame. Be the type of powerful woman that does not need to reduce others in order to excel. Use your literary power wisely and remember to stop when it’s no longer fun. I wish you a wonderful life. Geri

  • 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.

  • Jaques

    Wow. You people — not just you, Emily, but everyone who reads and writes stuff like Gawker — need to get lives. War, hunger, disease, poverty . . . right on down to the old lady upstairs who needs someone to run an errand for her occasionally. Pick a cause, any cause, and DO SOMETHING USEFUL FOR ONCE IN YOUR SELF-ABSORBED LIVES! Particularly you, Emily, as you have a modicum of intelligence and ability.

    Naturally, this article led me to the Jimmy Kimmel clip. Yeah, you got steamrollered, but consider: in that pathetic ambush, the guy in the bully pulpit was someone who apparenly (judging by a quick Google search) DOES have a problem with public inebriation, and the legal expert was a self-promoter who will say ANYTHING if you pay his hourly rate. I was rolling my eyes, too — at Kimmel and Geragos. They both oughta put a sock in it. But, TV is not for novices, and you walked wide-eyed and unprepared into a snakepit on your very first try.

  • 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

  • your article in the nyt magazine was actually the first time i read 10 pages non-stop on the web. take this as a compliment.

    however, it made me think about why i started blogging. mostly for two reasons:
    first, the web is anonymous if you want it to be. you don’t have to expose your identity, but can be honest about everything else. i can take of the masks i have to disguise myself with in real life, because people don’t want to be bothered by complex characters. they see you, they label you. simple as that.
    sharing my innermost thoughts and feelings is an outlet i need to make space for new input and to work some things through for myself. i couldn’t share it with real persons, i would be too ashamed or too embarrassed… so i share it with an anonymous public… strange, huh?

    that brings me to my second reason: i just hope to discover, that i am not the only one contemplating about certain subjects in a certain way. with my blog i can try to connect to others. and if it doesn’t work, i can always pretend that it is because the blog is one amongst million and no-one reads it…

    anyway, i really liked your article, appreciated your honesty, even though i don’t really like oversharing… or do i and prove being a hypocrite after all?

    all the best

    purekayoz

  • 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….

  • Your writing is excellent in the New York Times article. Writing is your gift. You should focus on letting your entire past story go – just hit the delete button on anything that came before this moment, you might not be able to delete your past from google, but you can delete it from your mind – and just focus from now on on being a great writer, which you are.

    This is the new beginning.

    You should be very happy and grateful that you have such a gift and talent, and just forget about all that other nonsense. It’s behind you now.

  • 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.

  • Jack McKee

    would that I could learn from your experience…

  • 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)

  • Hon – just came in from pushing my lawnmower around the back yard and thinking about the NYT piece that I read this morning. I hope this doesn’t seem cruel, but:
    - the fact that you can earn a living without getting out of bed except to go to the bathroom and answer the door to accept deliveries of takeout food *should* seem enormous. You’re clearly making it work – (see picture on cover of NYT Sunday Magazine).

    - there are lots worse things that can happen besides overexposure. Even worse than underexposure.

    Leave the hive – the workers’ll find something else to eat.

  • 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

  • Tara

    i’d just like to say that while there are always two sides to every story, you were published in the times while he only got the post. i think that means you win.

  • 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.

  • k.

    Hi,

    We are total opposites in many ways — I simply could not bear to have a public or internet or both life — but I just wanted to say, for what’s worth:

    Fuck the haters.

    That’s all.

  • 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.

  • Ozzie Maland

    Congrats on the NYT Mag piece — may your oversharing addiction never cease. I’m something of a fellow addict, I guess — here’s a posting I made yesterday at David Boles’ blog:

    By tinwhistler on May 23, 2008 8:42 PM

    Susan Sontag once said (I was in the same room) that philosophers become solipsists, persons who are very much like the star of the movie _The Truman Show_ but who are aware that they have such a role (as the protagonist did in the closing scenes). Jean-Paul Sartre once said that his greatest wish was to masturbate the universe. My experience leads me to seriously imagine myself as the star of a real-life _Truman Show_, with my masturbations having been shared with everyone like that French twin’s scene in _The Dreamers_ (a Bertolucci film) — how ridiculous can it get? Jim Kerrey’s character in the Truman movie opted, at the end, to exit his role, raising the suicide issue that Albert Camus nominated as the foremost question of the 20th century. I’ve been hospitalized twice in my 71 years for suicidal displays — rather ridiculous stuff, no? But I think a permanent peace has set in, in which living as an example of moderation in a world with chaos and extreme stuff (read Iraq etc) is maybe letting a light shine that can be of use to someone. Part of being an example is giving up the search for suicidal exits — ala Sartre’s play, _No Exit_, while at the same time anticipating with curiosity the inevitable mortality exit ahead (dig that reincarnation, man).

    Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland (aka “Tinwhistler”) ~~~ San Diego

  • 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.

  • Hey Emily. Read your article and it was very interesting. I’m doing the same thing you were (or still are somewhat) doing.

    I’m going to continue my blog in hopes my experience will be some what different.

    Good job with the article.

  • 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!

  • KC

    hey emily,
    just found out about you from the times. your tats are really sweet.

    it’s refreshing to hear your view on going dutch. i agree that women should TRY to pay for their dinner. i dated a girl that NEVER offered to pay and made me feel like a sap if i asked her for money towards the bill. on top of that, she never helped with any of the “womanly chores” and the intimacy was NOT like a piece of bacon… i again had to do all of the heavy lifting! it made me crazy, but that’s just me. some guys love doing everything for their girl. whatever… to each his own.

    hey, i met a guy from the midwest who said that guys spoiling their girls is a northeastern phenomenon. he said it doesn’t go down like that in other parts of the country. i’d like to see a study on that.

  • 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/

  • alan

    I find the NYT piece interesting but not the blog. What is objectionable, and unforgivable, is the betrayal of others. EG has no right to expose others as she does on her blog. She doesn’t seem to understand this. What is most disturbing is how few of the commenters seem to realize this and how many give unalloyed praise. Where is their moral sense and respect for the rights of others? As a clinical psychologist I could speculate about the reasons for this but will refrain.
    Emily seems to use as an excuse that she is a blogger. And somehow that makes it OK?
    Well, how about I rob because I’m a robber? I kill because I’m a killer? I can’t help myself.
    Alan

  • 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.

  • Allison

    Emily,

    I rarely read an entire 10 page article in the NYTimes magazine, but today I felt compelled to finish yours. You have such a talent for writing, and in all honesty I am jealous of your experience. I don’t even know you and I almost can’t believe I’m posting a comment on your blog, but just know that there are people out there who will learn from experiences like yours, and in a weird way, are inspired by them. At the very least, I was inspired to join the internet conversation today. So, thanks! I really enjoyed your story.

  • 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

  • therese

    damn girl- josh did you a HUGE favor. what a TEENY TINY TOXIC BITCH he is…
    stay away! stay awaaaaaaaay!!!

    i did like the article and wish you well. i hope you read the beautiful david williams comment carefully and repeatedly. and if i may reiterate the basis of several other comments- it’s time to live some real life so you have more to discuss than discussion about discussing (the mirror facing the mirror: BRILL!).
    travel outside your comfort zone. spend time with people you can learn from (and not just more about yourself).

    FLY emily! don’t just be one on the wall.
    and one final cliche- you reap what you sow- tenfold. sow thoughtfully.

    best to you,
    therese

  • 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.

  • Jerry

    Nice NYT piece. Well written and thoughtful. Now take a deep breath, exhale, and start on a novel whose lead character is NOT a blogger.

  • 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.

  • I was struck by your name, emily gould. my aunt was named emily gould–my mother’s sister. My mother’s aunt was named emily gould. the gould’s go way, way back–maine and england. My aunt graduated from Purdue U., then became a nurse, and then a masters in public health, 60 years ago. My mother’s aunt graduated from college,music and french, this was well back in the 1800’s. They were all strong women. My mother wanted to be a writer and was a librarian. She did put the gould family history together. The writing gene continued to me. Diamonds of Death, a story of guts, gore, sex and surgery, set in Chicago, during the 1950’s was recently published by Five Star publications. I enjoyed seeing your article. perhaps you should research the other emily goulds. There has to be a story there. peace, John Raffensperger, MD, Chicago

  • 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

  • Mark

    I read the NYT article. I am amazed at what a piece of shit you are. Own it you fucking cunt. You blasted other people and now that karma has bit you in the ass you tend to retract that which you spewed. I hope you learned your lesson because I can’t waste my time hating you. Just know that what you give you will recieve. Karma honey, for you it will be a BITCH!

  • 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

    Bill Cooke said: “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.”

    He’d like to see it because it will make him feel like a Big Man. Sounds like the same sort of person that if you had decided at the last minute to NOT write the piece, he’d criticize you for backing out. Or, if you had done nothing but apologize, he would have said the public deserved an explanation.

    I have little doubt he has a basement full of pre-teen Cuban refugees chained up in his basement. If you don’t give him what he wants, they’ll never understand why he keeps calling them “Emily” while Doing His Thing.

  • cjfl

    (Keep on keepin’ on.)

  • if no one had reacted at all
    to anything you had written

    only then
    would your work have been
    regretable

  • 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!

  • Adara

    hi Emily! I just read your article in the NYT. disclaimer: I’ve never read Gawker. but this is how I feel.
    everyone’s an idgit; nobody understands anybody else; people are quick to casually drop massively heavy “sentences” on whomever they deem “deserves” it; people are quick to use one person’s summarised experience to pigeonhole not only that person’s existence but an entire generation (see several self-righteous posts above). people fail to remember that *everyone* does douchey things, inadvertently or not.
    I’d make a bet that you’re experiencing such heavy abuse because you live in NYC. maybe you ought to get out of there if you’d like to find more acceptance. I don’t think what happened to you would’ve happened in Seattle, for example.

  • That was an excellent article!

    Don’t listen to the haters.

  • Chanakya

    Beautifully written NYT article. I loved it, and it got me to come here and well post. It is great how you admit your flaws and accept them, and are so open with them, that is a sign of a strong person.

  • 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

  • ghubyt

    hard to believe those that would take the time to post adhominem vitriole against you,,,i mean if i found nothing of value in your writing i would just dismiss and forget, release from attention,, i only react as i can see do most others sane, to somethings obviously interesting and impressive in your writings,, anyone who did not find anything positive in it, yet still feel compelled not to criticize, which is certainly constructive legitimate, but to condemn as worthless, these people need to go look in the mirror and consider there own minds,, your writing and person certainly evoked many and has proved a very positive value/worth

  • 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.

  • Jamie

    Very good piece in the NY Times Magazine. I actually read the entire piece which has been unlike many NY Times articles.
    (The Times could use some serious changes)
    Keep on going!

  • Nice NYT. Nice blog.

  • Michael

    I enjoyed your NYT article (which I read on paper via newspaper delivery). Very well written and very revealing about issues in the modern age. I hope you fare well and admire your honesty and forthright delivery. All the best. Michael

  • 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.

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