The Gawker Guide To Conquering All Media
Excerpts from the Book
Media conquerors get away with shit. Whether it's Graydon Carter chain-smoking in his office or Scott Rudin flogging his assistants for hours on end, you haven't really made it until you can piss in the face of office etiquette. To that end, why not resurrect the fully stocked office bar? Crystal decanter, martini shaker, jumbo olives, silver stirrers... and you're ready for a quick nap. It's not just your midday drunkenness that will impress colleagues, but the fact that you can get away with it.
Some people choose after-work activities based on their passions and interests. These people will henceforth be referred to as "drain circlers." In the media world, you must constantly weigh the value of "showing up." You must evaluate stakes: What will the face time do for your career? How can you get the most while giving the least? How elite is the event and what's the boldface potential of other attendees?
Not owning a personal computer makes a ballsy announcement to the world: "The computer is something my assistant touches, while I handle the money."
If you're huge on MySpace it's because you adhere to the #1 Rule: You love yourself. You must love, love, LOVE yourself. If you don't, you're dead, facedown in a blood-filled networking pool of losers. Do you feel super-intense about yourself? That each new day shared between you, your mirror, your camera is a gift? If you only have 200,000, it's time to get active!
Making friends in the online world is as easy as typing a compliment and clicking send. Write an email that says: "Enjoyed your site today. Would love to grab a drink sometime." BAM. That's it. They'll almost certainly respond, in the hopes that you'll erase years of painful rejection by continuing to enlarge the scope of their newfound glory.
Don't involve Al Sharpton. Don't meet with him, don't guest on his radio show, don't face off with him on the evening news. His job is to throw fuel on the flames and there's nothing you can do to affect that. If he does come after you, try to adopt a peaceful wait-and- see attitude about whether his crusade will elevate your radio scandal to front-page firing status.
Snickering over that 700-page submission about a Roman centurion vampire who has a gay affair with Jesus Christ? Well, instead of Xeroxing the first few pages to pass around for giggles at the ed meeting, maybe you should be putting it up for acquisition. These days, it's becoming harder and harder to tell "crap" from "the kind of crap that sells hundreds of thousands of copies."
