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Closures like this are a Rorschach test-- many people are going to think it supports their view because the lack of opposing evidence is more visible than the l

Closures like this are a Rorschach test-- many people are going to think it supports their view because the lack of opposing evidence is more visible than the lack of objective supporting evidence. As far as I can tell, Gawker media's strategic shortcomings damaged all of their subsidiaries, and Jezebel's style, content strategy, and cachet was more of a fad than a broad cultural shift. I'm open to actual supported evidence that this is anything more significant than that, but so far I've seen a bunch of people assuming that it's evidence of something larger and more significant than the evidence supports.

yterdy 3y ago
It's part of a broader cultural purge across media outlets that has seen the cancellation or destruction of works that appealed to marginalized people, including minorities, women, and queer folk. Belligerents include large companies like Warner Bros/Discovery (we are currently witness the destruction of American traditional TV animation), astroturfed parent groups (going after the teaching of both newly-discovered and long-known histories of American civil and human rights abuses), wealthy entrepreneurs (Musk's direction has has devastated Twitter on both a technical and community level), and the government itself (from That One SCOTUS decision to state bans on city decision-making). And I'm sorry for you if you're going to be onstinate enough to deny this. It means you won't have a plan for when someone goes after something you care about.
- jstarfish 3y ago
  > It's part of a broader cultural purge across media outlets that has seen the cancellation or destruction of works that appealed to marginalized people, including minorities, women, and queer folk. You're not wrong, but all of those groups were--up until recently--causes championed by those same belligerents. This is what happens when you bite the hand that feeds. It doesn't tend to work out for any marginalized group when their narrative shifts from "we're tired of being bullied" to "we want to be the bullies." That's Hamas logic, and the establishment will bite back. Take a page out of MLK's book and settle for mere equality.
  - rmilejczz 3y ago
    They murdered MLK for his beliefs, he didn’t “settle” for anything.
    - cbozeman 3y ago
      jstarfish's point is, "Know when to back the fuck down, or be invincible." And since none of us are Superman, you better know when to back down if you want to keep breathing. That isn't hyperbolic advice - you can apply it as low as a street fight to as high as a war between two superpowers. You may not like it. You may not agree with it. You may not want it to be true. But if there's one thing I've noticed here on Hacker News, which I would have thought so-called "smart" people could figure out, it's that Might Makes Right. We still live under the Law of the Jungle. We just think we don't because we've piled up load after load of bullshit on top of it to obfuscate that fact because we don't like what it says about it. Don't believe that? Stop paying your taxes. You'll eventually be fined. Keep on not paying them them. You'll eventually have government officials at your door. Resist them. You'll be forcibly taken. Resist by shooting dead every single one that tries to take you. You'll eventually be met with overwhelming resistance. And the reason for that is simple. The State must be the supreme authority which rules over all citizens and there can be no exceptions. It's no different than a mob boss or a pirate captain. None at all. Zero. Might. Makes. Right. The best we can hope for is a philosopher king - or in the context of Western civilization, an enlightened governing body that attempts to balance all things towards the flourishing of mankind. We're still a long ways away, but we're trying.
      - shadowgovt 3y ago
        > It's no different than a mob boss or a pirate captain This seems like a gross oversimplification in the years after a mob boss who was also the duly-elected Commander-in-Chief of the United States tried to take over the US government and have himself instated President against the will of the electorate and failed. Is the argument "well, he just didn't have enough might?" Because that seems very circular. This suggests the story is more complicated than "Might makes right" (I'd suggest that 'might makes right' may actually be a retroactive justification for disruption of status quos; 'they must have been strong enough to win because they won' may be correlation without causation, or perhaps 'strength' and 'victory' are synonymous, so 'might makes right' collapses into a useless tautology).
- chefandy 3y ago
  Behind every corporate media source making a stand is a pod of rich old white men pocketing the admission fee regular people pay to witness it. Any positive effect jezebel or any similar corporate media outlet had was a latent function of generating view-based profit which, for most of its life, supported the company that released the Hulk Hogan sex tape. Yay for challenging toxic gender dynamics? I would never argue that the capitalist powers that be aren't actively trying to stifle the voices of and resources for marginalized people, but you've given me no reason to assume the shuttering of jezebel was any more idealogically motivated than starting it was.
  - yterdy 3y ago
    [dead]
- ytoawwhra92 3y ago
  > It's part of a broader cultural purge across media outlets that has seen the cancellation or destruction of works that appealed to marginalized people, including minorities, women, and queer folk. It's more a continuation of an ongoing cultural purge of niche works that appeal to under-resourced/under-privileged groups. Which include the groups you identified, but there are others too. It's been happening for as long as I can remember. Things start to gain cultural traction only to be stomped back down again when they get enough momentum to attract the attention of opponents. Somehow, we (collectively) keep going.
  - yterdy 3y ago
    I buy this. I would just argue that there's been a "surge" in the campaign of late, as it were. It's also more public and panicked than in the past. When it happened in the mide-late Oughts, things just went away quietly. Now, there's an almost constant drumbeat of x was cancelled, y is looking for a job after being laid-off on Twitter, etc.
DoreenMichele 3y ago
I can't readily find it to cite but I recall once talking to someone on HN who was decrying discrimination or lack of inclusion or whatever in discussion of an article about some wealthy, influential founders and I think one was a woman and one was gay and one was a person of color or ethnic origin. I've also seen people talk about how successful people may be of different ethnicities but are "all well-paid Silicon Valley programmers" or whatever. A lot of people seem to feel those who have "made it" in some sense are all insiders with the right connections, the same culture and yadda -- and don't confuse them with the facts.
lamontcg 3y ago
"yay! feminism is defeated!"

yterdy 3y ago

It's part of a broader cultural purge across media outlets that has seen the cancellation or destruction of works that appealed to marginalized people, including minorities, women, and queer folk. Belligerents include large companies like Warner Bros/Discovery (we are currently witness the destruction of American traditional TV animation), astroturfed parent groups (going after the teaching of both newly-discovered and long-known histories of American civil and human rights abuses), wealthy entrepreneurs (Musk's direction has has devastated Twitter on both a technical and community level), and the government itself (from That One SCOTUS decision to state bans on city decision-making). And I'm sorry for you if you're going to be onstinate enough to deny this. It means you won't have a plan for when someone goes after something you care about.

jstarfish 3y ago
> It's part of a broader cultural purge across media outlets that has seen the cancellation or destruction of works that appealed to marginalized people, including minorities, women, and queer folk. You're not wrong, but all of those groups were--up until recently--causes championed by those same belligerents. This is what happens when you bite the hand that feeds. It doesn't tend to work out for any marginalized group when their narrative shifts from "we're tired of being bullied" to "we want to be the bullies." That's Hamas logic, and the establishment will bite back. Take a page out of MLK's book and settle for mere equality.
- rmilejczz 3y ago
  They murdered MLK for his beliefs, he didn’t “settle” for anything.
  - cbozeman 3y ago
    jstarfish's point is, "Know when to back the fuck down, or be invincible." And since none of us are Superman, you better know when to back down if you want to keep breathing. That isn't hyperbolic advice - you can apply it as low as a street fight to as high as a war between two superpowers. You may not like it. You may not agree with it. You may not want it to be true. But if there's one thing I've noticed here on Hacker News, which I would have thought so-called "smart" people could figure out, it's that Might Makes Right. We still live under the Law of the Jungle. We just think we don't because we've piled up load after load of bullshit on top of it to obfuscate that fact because we don't like what it says about it. Don't believe that? Stop paying your taxes. You'll eventually be fined. Keep on not paying them them. You'll eventually have government officials at your door. Resist them. You'll be forcibly taken. Resist by shooting dead every single one that tries to take you. You'll eventually be met with overwhelming resistance. And the reason for that is simple. The State must be the supreme authority which rules over all citizens and there can be no exceptions. It's no different than a mob boss or a pirate captain. None at all. Zero. Might. Makes. Right. The best we can hope for is a philosopher king - or in the context of Western civilization, an enlightened governing body that attempts to balance all things towards the flourishing of mankind. We're still a long ways away, but we're trying.
    - shadowgovt 3y ago
      > It's no different than a mob boss or a pirate captain This seems like a gross oversimplification in the years after a mob boss who was also the duly-elected Commander-in-Chief of the United States tried to take over the US government and have himself instated President against the will of the electorate and failed. Is the argument "well, he just didn't have enough might?" Because that seems very circular. This suggests the story is more complicated than "Might makes right" (I'd suggest that 'might makes right' may actually be a retroactive justification for disruption of status quos; 'they must have been strong enough to win because they won' may be correlation without causation, or perhaps 'strength' and 'victory' are synonymous, so 'might makes right' collapses into a useless tautology).
chefandy 3y ago
Behind every corporate media source making a stand is a pod of rich old white men pocketing the admission fee regular people pay to witness it. Any positive effect jezebel or any similar corporate media outlet had was a latent function of generating view-based profit which, for most of its life, supported the company that released the Hulk Hogan sex tape. Yay for challenging toxic gender dynamics? I would never argue that the capitalist powers that be aren't actively trying to stifle the voices of and resources for marginalized people, but you've given me no reason to assume the shuttering of jezebel was any more idealogically motivated than starting it was.
- yterdy 3y ago
  [dead]
ytoawwhra92 3y ago
> It's part of a broader cultural purge across media outlets that has seen the cancellation or destruction of works that appealed to marginalized people, including minorities, women, and queer folk. It's more a continuation of an ongoing cultural purge of niche works that appeal to under-resourced/under-privileged groups. Which include the groups you identified, but there are others too. It's been happening for as long as I can remember. Things start to gain cultural traction only to be stomped back down again when they get enough momentum to attract the attention of opponents. Somehow, we (collectively) keep going.
- yterdy 3y ago
  I buy this. I would just argue that there's been a "surge" in the campaign of late, as it were. It's also more public and panicked than in the past. When it happened in the mide-late Oughts, things just went away quietly. Now, there's an almost constant drumbeat of x was cancelled, y is looking for a job after being laid-off on Twitter, etc.

DoreenMichele 3y ago

I can't readily find it to cite but I recall once talking to someone on HN who was decrying discrimination or lack of inclusion or whatever in discussion of an article about some wealthy, influential founders and I think one was a woman and one was gay and one was a person of color or ethnic origin. I've also seen people talk about how successful people may be of different ethnicities but are "all well-paid Silicon Valley programmers" or whatever. A lot of people seem to feel those who have "made it" in some sense are all insiders with the right connections, the same culture and yadda -- and don't confuse them with the facts.

lamontcg 3y ago

"yay! feminism is defeated!"