The Creative Underclass is Still Raging - Freddie deBoer

Fifteen years ago, New York magazine published a piece called “Gawker and the Rage of the Creative Underclass.” (Alternative headline: “Everybody Sucks.”) The piece argued that Gawker, then still a niche publication beloved of insiders, was powered fundamentally by the resentment of those struggling in creative industries or who aspired to creative industries but had not made it. This, the piece suggested, drove both Gawker writers and Gawker readers. That cultural moment is very much gone, the original Gawker is no more, and the internet has developed a whole suite of new pathologies in the meantime. Yet I have come to think that the basic tenor of online life is still heavily influenced by the dynamics identified in that ancient-by-internet-standards piece. The creative underclass is still raging.

Fifteen years ago, New York magazine published a piece called “Gawker and the Rage of the Creative Underclass.” (Alternative headline: “Everybody Sucks.”) The piece argued that Gawker, then still a niche publication beloved of insiders, was powered fundamentally by the resentment of those struggling in creative industries or who aspired to creative industries but had not made it. This, the piece suggested, drove both Gawker writers and Gawker readers. That cultural moment is very much gone, the original Gawker is no more, and the internet has developed a whole suite of new pathologies in the m