by veen

More traffic equaled more money, until it didn’t, and then what? So many websites were dependent on the occult machinations of Facebook and Google algorithms, which could change any day and reduce site visits by millions. Sites that began as lean and nimble operations became buoyed by insane amounts of venture capital and were scaled at an unmanageable pace—BuzzFeed at one point had an Australia bureau. And there was never any plan. There still isn’t. Frankly, this is a bad business, and anyone who gets into it is a fool, myself included. By the time I left Gawker, its parent company, BDG Media, was struggling to figure out how to get views from TikTok and encouraging editors to do more packages around Marvel movies. None of it makes sense, and it’s frankly amazing that the well-being of an entire industry rested—rests!—on a mountain of sand built by jokesters and reactionaries.