Anna Merlan's posts - Turkish uPOST
It's Important and Slightly Alarming That Elle Macpherson Is Dating Anti-Vaccine Ex-Doc Andrew Wakefield
On Monday, the Daily Mail blared in one of its signature oddly capitalized headlines that model-actress Elle Macpherson was spotted kissing a “mystery man” over some root vegetables at a Miami farmers market. By Tuesday, in news that caused some of us to make an undignified gibbering noise of shock, Mystery Man was…
Here Are Some Nuclear Takes from Bryan Goldberg, the Self-Satisfied Shitlord Who Now Owns Gawker.com
On Thursday morning, the world learned that Bryan Goldberg has won the bidding for Gawker.com, the now-defunct sister site of our sister sites, which was sold as part of the bankruptcy process around Gawker Media, their now-defunct parent company. (It’s been an eventful couple of years.) Goldberg, who won the bidding…
Farewell to Brendan O'Connor, Whom We Could Not Troll No Matter How Hard We Tried
Friends: it’s been a real shit week. Our house-on-fire of a parent company, Univision, tried to lay off a huge chunk of Gizmodo Media, part of their latest, totally coherent business strategy. Through months of negotiation, our union turned those attempted layoffs into generous buyout offers. Still, everything sucks,…
Columnist Rod Dreher Unpublishes Bonkers Column Linking Anthony Bourdain's Death to Asia Argento's 'Ties to the Occult'
Rod Dreher is a conservative Christian columnist and a hot take-writer in a unique and very strange class of his own. His latest attempt was a column about Anthony Bourdain’s death (oh no), which tried to tie sin, suicide, transgender identity and witchcraft together (oh nooo), all stuffed into a piece of writing so…
The Reporter Who Exposed New York Times Star Glenn Thrush's Sexual Misconduct Says She Was the Victim of a Smear Campaign
Last November, Vox published a story by politics editor Laura McGann about New York Times politics reporter Glenn Thrush and what she called his “history of bad judgment” around young women journalists. The story detailed four women’s assertions that Thrush came onto or harassed them, usually in situations involving…
Kat Von D Comes Out as Anti-Vaccine, Which Is Really a Fucking Bummer
In a real drag bit of news for fans of top-shelf eyeliner and science, tattoo artist and makeup genius Kat Von D revealed that she’s against vaccines in an Instagram post Thursday night. Von D, who recently announced her pregnancy with new husband Leafar Seyer of the band Prayers, wrote about feeling judged for the…
The Adult Goth's Guide to Doing Your Makeup While Camping
It’s finally spring on the East Coast, and Jesus Christ, have we earned it. After a horrifying winter in which everyone’s toenails fell off and all our facial skin was wind-battered into ruin, it’s finally time to be outdoors. I hope to spend every free second either at the beach with a book about medical oddities or…
The Hollywood Reporter Gives Jeffrey Tambor and His Sexual Harassment Allegations a Sympathetic, Soft-Focus Profile
It’s been three months since Jeffrey Tambor was officially fired from the set of Transparent, following accusations by two staffers that he sexually harassed them. In a curious yet increasingly familiar move for the publication, with men accused of #MeToo-style misconduct, the Hollywood Reporter has given Tambor a…
Earlier today, Jezebel published a look at the people behind Lil Tay, a 9-year-old girl and controversial Instagram personality, whose fame is the result of participating in some extremely adult beefs. Shortly after the story was published, Alex Goller Gelbard, who works with Tay in some kind of management capacity,…
I Drove Myself Nuts Trying to Unravel the Mystery of Seemingly Unparented 9-Year-Old Instagram Shit-Talker Lil Tay
Social media stardom is a brutal Darwinistic competition, a craven and utterly shameless battle for space on our screens and in our brains carried out by a phalanx of influencers, thinkfluencers, beauty vloggers, charlatans, health quacks, spiritual phonies, and unhinged vegans. Recently, Lil Tay entered into this…
The CIA Says Mike Pompeo Didn't Fight in the Gulf War
In the frenzied game of musical chairs that is the Trump administration, CIA Director Mike Pompeo is set to become the next Secretary of State. It’s an ideal time, then, to clarify details of his biography, including a rather major one: did Pompeo, as numerous profiles have stated, fight in the Gulf War? We asked the…
Finally, the Sympathetic Article No One Asked for About How Louis C.K. Can Make His Comeback
The Hollywood Reporter has tipped a tepid toe into the still-raging waters of the #MeToo moment and decided that right now would be a great time for a friendly, entirely sympathetic piece exploring the ways Louis C.K. can make his comeback. The piece comes five months after C.K. finally admitted, following years of…
Manifest Destiny-Lite With Souvenirs: Why Assholes in Turquoise Are Flooding the Southwest
For most people in the rest of the United States, New Mexico is a sort of blank spot—an overlooked, ragged square wedged next to Texas, its loud, swaggering cousin. It’s the fifth biggest state land-mass-wise, at a little under 122,000 square miles, and one of the emptiest, with 2 million people spread out over the…
Gun Fatalism Is Reasonable in a Terrifying Country
On Monday, January 22, 2018, 15-year-old Gabe Parker was, the best anyone could tell, doing fine. The following day, he overslept, had some cereal, and then asked his mother to drive him to Marshall County High School, in Benton, Kentucky, where he was a sophomore and a trombone player in the school band. He walked…
Sunday in Parkland
PARKLAND, FLORIDA — It should not come as a shock that the gun store is in a strip mall, next to a kids’ hair salon and a wellness spa. We buy guns from all kinds of places in this country: strip malls and big box stores and parking lots and Facebook. Nor should it be any particular surprise that the strip mall is in…
Why Is Gloria Steinem Defending Vice?
Over the past few months, Vice has been subject of a series of damning claims, with current and former women employees saying the company’s workplace culture has frequently been toxic for them, and accusing specific executives—including president Andrew Creighton, chief digital officer Mike Germano, and Jason Mojica,…
Faded Troll Milo Yiannopoulos Seen on InfoWars Shilling Questionable Supplements, Me Seen Laughing
It’s been a big week for extended cautionary tale and person running out of media outlets Milo Yiannopoulos. On Tuesday, the one-time head troll of Breitbart dropped a lawsuit against his former book publisher, seemingly minutes after vowing to represent himself and win big. Shortly thereafter, he was seen…
The Tattoo Industry Is Having Its Own Wrenching, Revelatory #MeToo Moment
Katie was 19 when she went to get her first tattoo, from an artist whose work she’d seen on other people’s bodies and admired. In her memory, nothing “super weird” happened that day, though she remembers the artist being flirtatious. The next two times, when she returned to have a new, larger piece done, she says…
Bumble Doesn't Want Alt-Lite Clown Jack Posobiec, Or Even Someone Impersonating Him, Using Their App
The feminist dating app Bumble has deleted an account that looks an awful lot like it belonged to Jack Posobiec, an enthusiastic pro-Trumper and a figure in the so-called “alt-lite” movement (alt-righters who claim not to be antisemitic or Neo-Nazi). Posobiec is best known for spreading Pizzagate conspiracy theories, …
Satanic Temple Threatens to Sue Twitter for Religious Discrimination After They Were Threatened With Arson
Here’s the latest development in a fight that started weirdly and only got weirder as time went on: the Satanic Temple is threatening to sue Twitter over an imbroglio that began with former child-actor Corey Feldman ranting about “Satanic nutbags” and retweeting a call to burn down their headquarters, and ended,…