Nick Denton appeared at Ad Age’s Media Evolved conference on Tuesday in what appears to be an effort to prove he hasn’t changed when it comes to how much he disdains the “fanatical but ill-informed commenters” who populate his media empire.
Mr. Denton told the audience that there are plans in the works for a product launch that would aim to enhance the commenting environment in the hopes of attracting smarter readers who are currently wary of entering the conversation.
Everyone knows Gawker Media is THE place you look to for cutting-edge technology solutions. I can’t wait to see what Denton’s Hungarian maestros come up with. I’m predicting… a new commenting system that automatically divulages your social security numbers to Estonian hackers if you post something that Denton finds boring.
“I would like an AT&T engineer who has an explanation for why AT&T’s data coverage is weak in New York and San Francisco to feel comfortable in our comment environment,” he said, also naming NBC’s Brian Williams as a Gawker devotee who’s a model for the kind of commenter he’d like to attract.
Now we’re back in familiar Denton territory: his bizarre longing for media industry validation. Back in the old days he openly fantasized about Graydon Carter and Anna Wintour reading Gawker first thing every morning.
The issue isn’t limited to the fanatics and shouters. And Mr. Denton noted that the current problem isn’t actually internet “trolls,” since there are moderating capabilities in place to run them off the sites when they violate the terms of service.
“The problem is the boring people online — they’re incredibly difficult to get rid of, because they’re often really nice,” he said. “But they simply haven’t contributed anything to the discussion.”
Hey I’m with you, Nick. There is nothing worse than being boring. But why do you even care about “the discussion”? Are you saying that the commenter community actually matters?
Mr. Denton also referenced Gawker’s controversial redesign earlier this year…. He noted that the decision to move forward with the redesign was essentially a decision to pay less attention to Gawker’s minority contingent of fanatics and build a site that would appeal to more casual readers who might be stumbling onto the sites for the first time.
Isn’t this completely at odds with his stated desire to get rid of the boring people? You know who posts the most insipid, brain-numbing bullshit? Drive-by poopers who have been lured in by Gawker’s coverage of Sarah Palin or whatever. And I still find it hilarious that he thinks us “fanatics” were the ones holding Gawker back. If you want to make your sites better, why would we have a problem with that?
The problem wasn’t that we opposed change because we only wanted to preserve the status quo. It was that Denton wanted to make the sites objectively worse for all readers — both the regulars and the randos — in an ill-fated bid to suck up to advertisers and convince the media world of his supposedly game-changing genius.
I’ve always gone out of my way to avoid carrying a grudge against Denton. I point out that we didn’t create Crasstalk to “steal” commenters from Gawker or whatever. We launched the site before the redesign and I always have said that we owe our very existence to the community that first formed around Gawker back in the day.
But Nick, stop trying to come up with new pseudo-intellectual explanations for your decision to throw out everything that the commenter base had built up. In the end, it came down to what the ad agencies and marketing executives told you they wanted. In the world of performance metrics, the “unique” is what matters, not the less-tangible qualities that come from having an engaged, smart base of regular commenters.
And that’s fine! As noted philosophers the Wu-Tang Clan once said, cash rules everything around me. But don’t pretend you really care about engineering away all the “boring commenters.” Embrace your inner rapacious capitalist. We expect no less.
