Gawken is here to fill the Gawker void, minus the getting sued

By Sean O'Neal | September 15, 2016 | 9:15pm

Aux Features Aux

It’s been a little under a month since Gawker.com shut down, felled by—according to your own biases—either the lawsuit of a professional wrestler and his vindictive billionaire benefactor, or its own attitude and often-slippery ethics. However you felt about it, Gawker’s gone, living on only in the memories of those whom it entertained/employed across its 13 years and the continuing legacy of Gawker Media, whose remaining sites are currently busy with their own, occasionally rocky transition into joining us here in the Univision family. Like Hulk Hogan’s dick, this too shall fade, leaving behind naught but emptiness. But in the very present meantime, we now have Gawken to fill that void.

Gawken—whose anonymous, privately registered creator takes pains to explain has “never even heard of Gawker”—nevertheless bears a passing resemblance, from its logo to its layout to its propensity for baiting headlines like “We Must Throw Away These Infernal Devices And Confront The Terror Of Day-To-Day Existence Head On.” However, it’s explicitly not Gawker, nor does its founder and editor Peter Theil have any relation to PayPal founder (and Gawker archenemy) Peter Thiel. This should be obvious from the fact that Peter Thiel is far too busy being an amazing, attractive man worthy of our undying respect—particularly if that whole immortality thing works out—and furthermore is so obviously a Solomon-like judge of who among us mewling grubs deserves to live, die, and not get the bejeezus sued out of them, he shouldn’t just be on Trump’s Supreme Court, he should just be the Supreme Court. In conclusion: Peter Thiel, wow.

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But in case it isn’t obvious, it’s also made clear by articles like these:

In addition to Peter Theil, Gawken currently features a stacked roster of contributors that includes Elon Musk’s Tesla, Tim Cook’s Toaster, the Gawken News Algorithm, and the Wi-Fi-enabled smart fridge in Peter Theil’s kitchen—with whom Theil is already sparring, in the grand tradition of Gawker’s insular, backbiting Kinja-fueled final days. On that note, Theil has also landed Robot Nick Denton, who is definitely not Gawker founder Nick Denton, even though he similarly bears a passing resemblance in his willingness to publish whatever his executive masters tell him.

With only a few days’ worth of content—most of it focused on Silicon Valley and other ways in which it’s “going to open your mind to the future”—so far Gawken most closely echoes its former offshoot Valleywag, with a lot of talk about start-ups and sponsored content for products like the Standing Couch. But even readers who don’t have any interest in the in-joking, insular, circle-jerk world of New Media might still be amused by its brand of satire, which also looks a bit like a certain other site that’s now tangentially related to Gawker Media.

Not Gawken, however, as that’s different. Nobody’s sued that one yet.