When was the last time Gawker media did anything nice for you? People tend to talk to gossip news media companies on the internet like they might have lost their virginity to them. They very well may have—an empty surf session around Jezebel while lying on the mattress or in the parking lot reading tweets from Gawker —but it's a one-way relationship. Your sister's face has never appeared on a Gawker website - unless she had her private iCloud nude images hacked - but Valleywag and Buzzfeed and motherfucking The Verge show up in the same streams as your loved ones. This is the business model of the internet news media companies. Someone has to attract all the clicks that allows the plummeting banner cash to generate income. They will not only lead with what bleeds but also run with anything salacious, inaccurate, fear-mongering, scandalous and so on with the motto 'run it now, correct it later for more clicks'. They put Fox news to shame, finding drama in the bottom layers of the internet to create trumped up headlines with, scouring Reddit for animated gifs and gossip. We at Adland are still of the opinion that Buzzfeed and friends are poisoning the well, dragging all the journalistic standards down with them. The latest disaster is both the funniest and the saddest. Those in the know could sit back and eat popcorn while watching it unfold, as Jace Connors / parkourdude91 did to Gawker, what Gawker did to Coke. He trolled them. He trolled them so hard. Sam Biddle at Gawker wrote about Parkourdude91 in The Psychopaths of GamerGate Are All That's Left, and They're Terrifying, stating that "the very obviously disturbed man says he was on his way to confront Wu", as he had watched the same skit we all have seen, where Jace actually crashed his car and flipped open his cellphone to ad lib a rant next to the wreck while in character. Jezebel soon reported on the same video: "A Man Is Making Bizarre, Terrifying YouTube Videos About Brianna Wu". Brianna Wu took the skit so seriously she had a judge grant her a restraining order to protect her from a fictitious person. Ficticious? Yes it gets better, you see, Jace Connor is a hoax, his real name is Jan Rankowski. Anyone hanging around chans already knew this was a notorious comedian and the hilarity lies in the idea that someone could be this nuts. You could feed him junk on live shows and he'd run with it, acting the perfect mentally stunted individual. Buzzfeed finally caught on, and published an interview with Jace Connors in "GamerGate’s Archvillain Is Really A Trolling Sketch Comedian", explaining that Jace had been kidding about everything and everyone - but he now wanted to stop because "he himself is afraid for his safety".
In an exclusive interview, Rankowski told BuzzFeed News that he intended to satirize “the over-the-top, super-hyper-macho armed GamerGater” but that harassment in recent days, as doxxing forums and GamerGate image boards have started to suspect he is behind the Connors character, has left him terrified. “They realized I was making fun of them with those videos,” Rankowski said. “I started it as a joke, but it’s become far too real and I wish I could take it all back.”
