As if the New York Times didn’t deem a 12-page memoir-slash-essay in Sunday’s magazine enough space for Emily Gould’s pressing confessions and innermost feelings (see my colleague Megan’s take on the piece here), they’ve indulged in an online victory lap: a Q&A in which the former Gawker.com blogger “responds to readers’ questions and comments on blogging about your private life.” It’s everything you’re imagining and more.
“Let me take this opportunity to try to figure out exactly what it is about me and what I’ve written here that’s inspiring such virulent hatred,” Gould begins, resuming her role as victimized blogger-gone-credible-journalist. “Haters may be jealous, but it’s becoming less and less clear to me what, exactly, it is that they’re envious of.” Oh, haters.
A highlight (predictable though it is) of the Q&A is when Gould, in another valiant attempt to show HOW MUCH SHE’S CHANGED (SERIOUSLY!!) indulges the reader in what Old Emily might have said about New Emily’s piece:
Aw, poor doddering New York Times, trying to clue us into the niceties of this nutty “Web blogging” trend. What a pathetic attempt to boost online readership. And, like, soooo long!
Look at that picture. And she clearly can’t write — hello, that “my life was cozy and safe”? Is she in a freshman-year personal-essay class? — so obviously she is only in The Times because she’s marginally attractive. Or maybe she’s sleeping with someone influential there.
And you know, on some level I would have felt jealous, so I probably would have called me an attention whore or a narcissist, because that’s what you call people who are getting the kind of attention you feel you deserve but are, unfairly, not getting.
To recap: Gould herself is a hater, or was a hater, and would have been a hater of her new non-hater self, a self who hates oversharing and hates it so much that she wrote a 12-page essay (plus some long-winded Q&A responses) about this newfound disregard for oversharing– complete with details from her steamy post-Fire Island romance — to prove the point.
Got it!
Elizabeth Tuttle is an intern at CJR.