Emily Gould, the former writer of Gawker, writes about her online experience:

But is that really what’s making people blog? After all, online, you’re not even competing for 10 grand and a Kia. I think most people who maintain blogs are doing it for some of the same reasons I do: they like the idea that there’s a place where a record of their existence is kept — a house with an always-open door where people who are looking for you can check on you, compare notes with you and tell you what they think of you. Sometimes that house is messy, sometimes horrifyingly so. In real life, we wouldn’t invite any passing stranger into these situations, but the remove of the Internet makes it seem O.K.

Gould writes about getting pummelled by Kimmel over the Gawker Stawker section of Gawker. I actually show this clip in my Media class. Students love it.

All the dirt here. Wow. I’m very tempted to nuke this blog.

UPDATE: The NYT had to shut down comments on this article. 727 people wrote in to question why this article was worthy of the magazine cover.