The pot & Kinja bit certainly was. Kinja, the modular commenting system was basically a way to get more free writing from people, as was the entire trajectory of the Gawker empire. Pay very little, and based on hits, while raking in the click-ad-cash. This is what fuelled the sociopathic "reporting". Greed.

Holy shit "Gamergate" is number 3 on the list... And the background on that, oy.

More problematically, it would turn out, I was also, unconsciously, messing with the only group even less able to grapple with irony or context: brands. What I’d missed about Gamergate was that they were gamers — they had spent years developing a tolerance for highly repetitive tasks. Like, say, contacting major advertisers.

I like how he conveniently left out the fact that several of those brands listed on their site as partners that we pointed out here, were not in fact partnered with them at all. Adobe for example were not, they asked Gawker to remove their logo and were attacked on Twitter for that. Mercedes was also not partnered with them.

Another side-effect of Twitter is that people won't click through to see it's an op-ed anymore, so now we apparently have to put it in the title.... Attempts are made to discuss this with me on twitter, ironically.

I've made it a rule to not get into discussions on Twitter about articles written here, where there is a perfectly functioning open comment section.