Uncategorized

MEDIA CRITICISM: Thiel Cured You Of Gawker, Now Meet Your Next Digital Cancer

No featured image available

Remember when billionaire gangster Peter Thiel bankrupted Nick Denton’s cancer hive Gawker? It was the internet equivalent of Caesar’s domination of Cleopatra at Actium, except only one poisonous gossip would be talked about for centuries to come and it’s not Denton.

Also unlike the legendary naval clash, Gawker’s death throes weren’t followed by a digital Pax Romana during which limp-wristed losers stopped harassing everyone for a few centuries. No, fellow left-wing rag Mic.com gleefully took up the mantle of Most Annoying Cheerleader for the fall of Western civilization.

Mic.com has a long history of erudite remarks like “since its founding, Islam has not only promoted but benefited from women’s rights,” framing a trans model’s assertion that whites are “the most violent and oppressive force of nature” as “anti-racist,” suggesting that dystopian video games foretell a pro-Nazi Silicon Valley, and the derisive “some journalists think their job is simply to push ‘facts’ out into the world.” Perhaps I should have mentioned that last one first; it explains the rest.

George Washington did not brave a blizzard crossing the Delaware just so a psychologically abused ten-year-old drag queen could lecture me on talking about Trump during Christmas. Honestly, “journalism” like this makes me wish the net neutrality repeal were as apocalyptic as leftists make it out to be just so I can watch based memester Ajit Pai throttle the bandwidth out of these fruitcakes.

Never let Mic.com tell you how to feel, except by way of its nauseous, seasick green aesthetics, a color which anti-American HuffPost copied a month later in its site redesign, ironically picking the National typeface to boot. Hey, at least HuffPost is upfront with its hypocritical diversity routine, boasting about hiring less whites while segregating minorities into verticals entitled “Black Voices,” “Queer Voices,” etc.

Mic is a bit more nebulous with its own sections, but everything still has a SocJus frame. “SLAY” doesn’t aggregate the most wicked vintage katanas for when the 2nd Amendment is repealed, but instead contains “news, views and ammunition (don’t get excited, the rhetorical type) for strong women.” You can dismantle the patriarchy even as it coincides with the gay and female-dominated fashion industry on “Strut” by listening to and believing correct opinions like how “the cult of thinness has literally been killing us.”

Oh and if that weren’t enough cultural Marxism for you, there’s a separate vertical “The Movement” that’ll bring you the latest from, you guessed it, “the front lines of social justice.” And what disoriented front lines those must be, with commanders constantly switching the order of Muslim, woman, and transgender units according to the latest victim hierarchy from Division.

Even the volume button operates by affirmative action; at least, I hope it’s my white maleness that’s impeding me from turning down this monotone feminist concern trolling about “problematic” Instagram accounts and not pathetically abysmal site functionality even a middle school tech tools kiddie could outdo.

But despite force-feeding falsehoods and wrenching along leftist narratives to their most cringe-worthy end, Mic really is a rollercoaster ride of a site. And by that, I mean its traffic has taken quite the nosedive. It’s a rather mute joyride, though; like The Guardian, The Verge, and other left-wing sites who’d rather plug their ears and scream than get called out on their hogwash, Mic has shut down its comment section. Sounds like “Mic” needs a disclaimer “only for people we like” appended to its name. Clown world.

There’s open speculation that Mic’s pivot to video, accompanied by nearly 50 departures, isn’t working, and employees couldn’t even bring a plus-one to the holiday party relocated from a pricey Manhattan venue to the site’s own offices, much to the relief of would-be plus-ones. The publication is truly joining the ranks of the defunct Gawker, Buzzfeed, which missed its 2015 revenue projection by a third and slashed its 2016 estimate by half, and Mashable, which apparently sold for a fifth of its 2016 valuation.

It’s only a matter of time before prudish pontification, a feelings-before-facts mindset, and what is almost certain to be affirmative action hiring lend an all-new meaning to the phrase “mic drop.”

Follow Rob Shimshock on Twitter

Connect with Rob Shimshock on Facebook

Send tips to [email protected].