Agnes Varnum has an interesting post at Re:Sources about blogs and bias. There’s this old chestnut about bloggers, that because our voices are distinct and our biases are supposedly transparent, our audiences can trust us more than a mainstream outlet. But Agnes notes that internet outlets are susceptible to some of the same bias issues as corporate media. Specifically, the editorial at larger sites is often beholden to the interests of their advertisers, and the all-attention-is-good-attention competitive business model can lead to a tabloid mindset, wherein “some days, they might have to just bend the truth to make it juicier.”

Implying that the impartiality of the Gawker blogs should be taken as less than a given, Agnes drops a reference to a review of Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs by Emily Gould (who, coincidentally, abruptly announced her resignation from Gawker last Friday).

Gould had sort of praised the film based on its trailer (”Don’t you hate it when something that purports to speak to your generation actually, you know, speaks to you?”) but then reversed position the next day. The review was not as personal as Amy Taubin’s anti-Swanberg screed in Film Comment, but it was probably more damaging–I think it’s safe to say that, for better or worse, Gawker is the more influential agenda setter for the demographic IFC had hoped to lure on opening weekend. But ultimately, it was the initial optimism that came as a surprise. The next-day reversal felt like a top-down mandated reinforcement of the Gawker house style.

In the farcically long kiss goodbye that served as Gould’s notice to her public, she implied that it was that increasingly traffic-hungry house style that sent her packing. Or, perhaps more accurately, that being “the public face” of said style was no longer her cup of tea. This led, over the weekend, to an almost web-wide bashing of Gawker’s mission, wherein snark mandates have morphed into negative dialectics on a scale that might have given Adorno pause. The takeaway: if even Emily Gould can no longer handle shilling the house vitriol, The Gawker Era must be officially drawing to a close.

“Gawker’s premise is “people are bad”,” wrote hipster entreprenuer Jakob Lodwick (who coincidentally, loudly left the video sharing startup he co-founded on the same day). “Any achievement is framed as an accident; a distraction from the achiever’s underlying depravity.” In what could easily be seen as foreshadowing/propaganda for Lodwick’s yet-to-be-announced new venture, he sums up: “A publication that celebrates excellence instead of negating it could be a big hit in the near future.”

Maybe, but I have trouble with the assumption that Gawker’s audience is too stupid to see the house style as the gimmick it is, and/or are so desperate for cultural pointers that they take all contained within at face value. I prefer Jason Calacanis‘ read, which is less concerned with the effect than its psychological cause:

The model of love [Gawker publisher Nick Denton] knows best is to throw hate and scorn out in the world and try to win back the people you alienate. When Nick attacks you it’s flirting… he’s blowing you little kiss from across the room, or giving you a sultry glance while on his way to powder his nose.

Nick has turned his life of scorn into a publishing model. Smacking people down is the quickest way to get them to call you–and Nick is staring at his phone right now waiting for a call.

Regardless of what’s going on behind the scenes, it seems beyond question at this point that Gawker has had an influence on cultural criticism. I’m too naturally cynical to push the idea that we’re heading into a full-on snark backlash, but with the apocalypse apparently awhile off (even Richard Kelly thinks we’ve got eight months to go), maybe there’ll be time yet for a resurgence of sincerity before the final comedown.