This morning, Richard Grayson put up a clearly fabricated ad on Craig’s List, seeking a “hipster intern.” Within hours, Gawker picked it up, asking for reader guesses. What’s more, Grayson posted this poem to provide clues. (Gawker, of course, didn’t observe that the poem was posted on March 8th, the same day as the Craig’s List ad.) But Grayson, being the good sport, revealed himself to be the author of the ad. So here’s the question (and perhaps Mr. Grayson might want to step in and answer): Was this a prank conducted by Grayson to see if he could get onto Gawker (and, concomitantly, this site)? An even bigger question: Are the Gawker writers so hard up (and we’re not just talking for material, but income to supplement the slave wages that Denton pays them) that they’ll troll Craig’s List in a desperate effort to find some inconsequential gossip item? Either way, Gawker got played big time.
i accepted that poem for 3 a.m. magazine like 13 months ago. i’m 3 a.m. magazine’s poetry editor. i just posted emailed it to 3 a.m. a few days ago and emailed grayson about it late last night. it was a coincidence that i posted it the same day the craigslist ad went up.
richard grayson is good and clever for taking up space where lindsay lohan would probably be on gawker with his poem about myspace.
i recommend richard grayon’s books by the way.
i like this story by him: http://reader-of-depressing-books.blogspot.com/2006/05/story-by-richard-grayson.html
i’m not just promoting my blog
i read most of his books and picked that one to post on my blog, if that story was anywhere else on the internet i would have posted the link for that
Tao is right, but it wasn’t a coincidence. With the link to the poem, I knew Gawker could have something to make fun of me for. They certainly were not going to mention my literary books.
By the way, I got the idea from Gawker’s posts about Ned Vizzini’s Craiglist ad for a personal assistant that I found out about through his friend Nick Antosca at dinner on Monday night. We are all in a big conspiracy. Writers have to do terrible things to get publicity. I had more hits on my website this afternoon than I did in the six months before this.
there should be an organization for writers on how to take over gawker
richard grayson could be president and CEO
i can be secretary or something
Brilliant, Richard. I stopped reading Gawker months ago, but gladly opened it up this morning to see the results of your experiment.
Well played, Mr. Grayson.