Gawker.com : Further Down the Spiral

The quality of writing at Gawker has been on the decline for a solid four years. With editors picked off one-by-one to head-up "legit" media outlets' online platforms (Time.com, RadarOnline.com) the talent pool at the New York media centric blog is as scummy as your Fire Island house's hot tub after Ascension weekend. The draw of the blog has devolved from breaking "insider" news to snark for snarkiness' sake and finally to stale rumors and reposts from partner blogs. The 2007 debut and explosive popularity of Jezebel was an alarm that something is broken at Gawker Media. Simply put, how did the franchise "girls' blog" so quickly outshine the flagship site?

When Brian Moylan joined Gawker a few months, his gay humor posts initially seemed like a bright spot on the blog: funny, New York-y subject matter the likes of which Gawker readers hadn't seen since "Phonecalls from the Past" and "Altercations". As with all things "Gawker", nothing good lasts. It's totes unforch that Moylan's pieces get worse with every gay listicle he bangs out. (Remember when Gawker railed against the proliferation of listicles online and in print?!). His newest, "A Handy Guide to All Gay Men", trips its way through tired clichés, out-of-touch omissions and one major error. It's as if someone in Kansas (or Guam) wrote the post based on what their gay cousin once told him about life in New York.

For starters, this list in not New York specific, as his post implies. Two-thirds of the TTT editorial board hail from opposite ends of the nation and we all knew what each of these "types of gay" were before owning our first foreign-made automobiles. The piece glosses over the major subgroups of gay culture specific to New York. Where are the Ivy-gays, the Otters, the WAMRs, the society walkers and industry big-wig closet cases? Where are the NY-relevant gays? As for hangouts, this list may as well have been written in 1999. Who is packing it in at The Phoenix, Eastern Bloc, The Boiler Room, Metropolitan, The Boom Boom Room, Club 57 and Sugarland every night? Finally, what the hell is a drag queen doing on a list of types of gay men? A unicorn is a unicorn not a horse with a horn; a drag queen is a drag queen not a gay guy with duct tape on his johnson. By Moylan's definition of "type of gay man", he should add "TV weatherman" to the list. (Think about it.)

One thing about Gawker, it is consistent. It consistently sucks more each year.