Goodbye Kinja.
Thank you for everything GTers!
Putting this comment of Violet’s ATL:
Cross posting over here again for any GT refugees (or anyone else) who might have missed that we are setting up our own GT specific community area at groupthink2.blogspot.com. It is still very much in progress so bear with us, but if you’d like to hang out cmon over!If you’d like to be added as an author, add your email here:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10XG1GOEs8g9HnB3jlpxhZ13ir3V89v5MPGSjxVDhmb4/edit#gid=0
We also love having you all hanging out here as well so feel free to check in with us any time.
PM me if you’d like to write your own posts here on DS as well. Also, all of you can feel free to cross-post anything you’d like to share with us.
Sorry everyone…I threw this up without having time to make an actual post.
Anyone of the editors can feel free to edit.
That’s a shame, I didn’t even know it was sick.
*wails* It’s gooooonnne… I thought it would be readable!
I kept hearing that it was going to read only but the announcement on my personal blog said it would be gone today. They should have made an official announcement on GT itself.
Yeah, I never visit my “personal” blog for anything. Only posted in it once years ago. I remember today was the day because someone posted a tweet from a Jalopnik writer, but details beyond that were scarce.
🙁
I don’t know why they lied about it being read-only for a time. Incompetence? Malice? Sad for the folks who might have put off bookmarking where everyone was going. Glad to know I can find y’all here. Thank you.
Not to defend Kinja but I don’t know that they ever said that it was going to read only. I’m not sure where that rumour got started but the announcement on my personal blog said it would be gone today. I did post the announcement on GT but I guess folks thought it was only for personal blogs. Kinja should have made an announcement on each sub blog and not just expected word of mouth to let everyone know.
Such an abrupt ending, too. Sigh.
They did the same with Oppo. Fucking Herbs.
Sorry to the folks who lost their communities. I had bowed out when Deadspin died because I really felt that this was inevitable, but I understand why some people stayed.
I was so mad to see that they just deleted everything all at once. So disappointed but not at all surprised.
I stayed up on GT, as many of you did, until well past midnight wondering why it wasn’t disappearing. When I woke up I was surprised to see your OT.
If you’d like to write posts here on DS let me know so we can switch your user role to author.
OH, thank you! I’d love to be able to create posts on DS!
Awesome!
You should now be able to do that. I haven’t updated the old How To post yet so if you have any questions, let me know via pm.
Here is the old post to help out:
I tried to figure it out, and I realized that I’ve been hanging out at GT for at least 10 years. I think 15. I’m not 100% sure when I made the crossover from Jez mainpage to GT via a Saturday night social but its been a long hot minute. I remember when I first joined Jez MoGlo had just become a writer and she was the one who gave me my star. Cross posting over here again for any GT refugees (or anyone else) who might have missed that we are setting up our own GT specific community area at groupthink2.blogspot.com. It is still very much in progress so bear with us, but if you’d like to hang out cmon over!If you’d like to be added as an author, add your email here:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10XG1GOEs8g9HnB3jlpxhZ13ir3V89v5MPGSjxVDhmb4/edit#gid=0
Do they think everyone is just going to start commenting on the main pages now? Not likely!
Most the time even if I want to comment on the main pages I can’t. I’m always having difficulties staying logged in on the mainpage but it was never an issue on GT.
Same here. I can’t understand what their goal is though. I know they claim changes in the law but if it were really such a big liability wouldn’t they stop posting comments all together? Wouldn’t comments on the main pages be subject to the same laws? They should have fixed their tech issues and linked sub-blogs to the main pages again. Are they trying to destroy what’s left of GMG?
I’d LOVE to know what law, specifically. They had put that banner up at the top stating “we are not responsible for user generated content” why wasn’t that enough?
It seems like bullshit to me.
…it smacks a little of tin-foil hat territory but I can’t shake the feeling that there was a degree of malice aforethought about the whole thing
…the way they went about killing off the sub-blogs (& the personal ones) at relatively short notice…while only offering a cursory “export” function that they didn’t make available until a few days beforehand…one that didn’t really even archive the full posts let alone the comments that went with them…after having said at the outset that they’d provide a means of “migrating” the content…that very much came across to me like a slap in the face to a lot of long-standing users of that platform
…& in a lot of ways it has seemed like they’ve been intentionally trying to drive users away from the sites since arguably before the latest round of assholes bought them…at any given juncture when they could have done something to build on the assets they had (both in terms of the mainpage sites & the commenting community the platform used to have) they seemed to consistently opt for the exact reverse & then double down on it
…I don’t think the rationale they claimed really holds water, let alone makes sense…it seems like just enough of a fig leaf to cover them from a legal liability point of view while making it quite clear that it was intended to sound like an absolute fuck you to their users
…I believe the technical term for that kind of thing is “chickenshit”?
Chickenshit indeed.
They’ve pretty clearly hated the subblogs and regular commenters for a long time. I think it has to do with how they make money – how ad revenue works. If I understand correctly, advertisers pay the most attention to unique clicks. It’s essentially a measure of virality – how big did the post go beyond the core audience. That makes regulars almost useless to their money making model. So why bother making us happy?
Except I never thought that made much sense. When they really started shitting on the community, the commenting sections were decimated. Compare comments on Jezebel a couple of years back to now – they only get a handful generally. Though that also had to do with a drastic drop in writing quality.
…I don’t think I was alone in turning up more for the regular commenters than for the actual posts more often than not…so to me the sub-blogs were generally a better read than the mainpages a lot of the time
…plus they lacked most of the ads & pretty much all the stuff that made the regular comment threads on the mainpages full of people in the grays being assholes…of which there always seemed to be a surplus
…which also seemed without good reason…but made a certain sort of sense if the tinfoil-hatted bit above were true since that sort of thing seemed to be encouraged…& the way they’d appear in droves on certain sorts of posts (not least the ones invoicing mass shooting incidents) seemed to imply a level of orchestration
Oh, 100%.I spent far more time on subblogs, but they weren’t making any money off us there. No ads (until recently).
The promoting assholes thing also made sense in a capitalist way. They generated tons of responses. Who cares about if people are happy or sad, as long as you get those clicks?
…I mean, sure…I get that it seems like it drives up certain metrics that I’m sure play well with certain sorts of people in the context of some sorts of meetings
…but it also seems like a staggering misread of the “pull-factors” drawing people to the sites, let alone people who would want to engage..& those people were a draw for the likes of me for literally years before I ever signed up for an account of my own
…plus, if you just read the damn comments left by some of “the other sort of commenters” there really wasn’t a case to be made for their having redeeming features
…just off the top of my head I could name a few of those…the ones that seemed to wage vendettas against certain users, for example…but the list was basically endless?
…I don’t see encouraging people to fill your site with that sort of thing pays out in your favor if you want to retain readership of derive ongoing revenue & you have more wits about you then the average goldfish
…whereas if you want to drive down the value of the sites/platform while choking your readership & ultimately running the whole thing I to the ground & taking a bath of your investment then I guess in fairness it would make perfect sense?
I didn’t know that about the clicks. On the surface it makes sense but then I think about traditional advertising like TV. They know they’re getting the same audience for certain shows and continue to buy millions of dollars in ad revenue.
Yeah, it was weird. I remember it being a thing under Denton – staff got paid more based on unique clicks, and I think that was the beginning of the end in terms of staff starting to hate the commentariat.
The writing quality is simply embarrassing now. It’s very, very bad. Maybe they’re going for the unique “hate” clicks? Have some self respect!
It’s so bad now. I randomly read a comment thread on Jezebel yesterday (what’s a shell-shocked GT/BT/TSB visitor to do when Kinja’s nuked the sub blogs? Why, fish for scraps on the MPs) in which someone guessed where Megan went to school. She replied back with something like “I still get alumni magazines featuring people younger than me who have TV shows” as though it were some great injustice. I understand the envy and schadenfreude of it all, but I seriously cannot even remotely support the notion that she’s somehow more deserving of a TV deal than these randos I know nothing about. I mean, I’ve unfortunately seen the Jezebel staff’s videos when they’ve autoplayed.
In all tinfoil-honesty, I REALLY wouldn’t be surprised to discover at some point down the road, that we discover Thiel was a silent partner *somewhere* in the Great Hill Partners infrastructure….
I mean, at the rate we’re going this year, the odds seem at least 50/50 here😉
…to be honest even if he doesn’t appear directly in the “audit trail” as it were…the line from thiel through the various acquisitions all the way to the shuttering of splinter, the gelding of deadspin & ultimately the summary execution of the sub-blogs seems pretty clear even if it’s only common interest joining the dots?
…there seems to be a staggering amount of money a certain subset of malignant assholes are prepared to burn in the cause of filling the online (& other media) landscape with bullshit that peddles a largely counter-factual reicht-wing schtick that panders to people who would rather lap it up than admit they’re reality-averse…or in many cases to think about anything much, ever..& it’s not getting to be less of a problem, for sure
…compared to the kochs/mercers/murdochs of the world thiel might be a little fish…but in terms of mutual interests they’re all just the one pile of shit at the end of the day?
I’m not saying it’s a GOOD strategy. Only that it makes sense from a shortsighted capitalist sort of way. Especially to anyone who isn’t planning on owning it long. Cultivating a good loyal following is a long term strategy vs viral posts that get shared on social media for rage clicks.
It’s not totally farfetched what you’re saying about it being more nefarious than that. It just depends on how much intelligence you think the various owners have had. Are they playing the long game or the short game? I honestly don’t know.
Especially since they (well, Jez at least) mass-banned a bunch of people and the kinja bugs always seemed worse on the main pages than on the subs.
Ha, we were doing them a favor by snarking on Clashtalk rather than in the comments to their own
articleshot takes.Anyone who missed out on Clashtalk truly missed out. Even if you didn’t necessarily agree with some of the comments, they were worthy of the read.
Brother Parish and Nina continuously dismantling a specific Deadspin writer ended up being my personal favourite CT discussions.
I miss Clashtalk so much. SO MUCH. And I was just a lurker!
I never even knew about it until it was gone!
Clashtalk was my main internet home for a few years and I miss it. I think I miss it more than I’ll miss groupthink, even though I was at groupthink much much longer.
We had a reputation for being assholes, and that was both true and not – we were incredibly critical of the writers, but the criticism was almost always substantive.
Is this thing on? I’m so lost.