New York: No Comment

"Brownstoner’s posts tend to read like the reportage of a particularly smart and opinionated community paper. The comment section, by contrast, has become a rolling transcript of the borough’s new anxieties, shameful prejudices, and secret fears. For a long time, those anxieties centered on being left out or pushed out—hopeful buyers or displaced renters thwarted by prices rising out of control."–The What You Are Afraid Of, Adam Sternbergh, New York Magazine, May 25, 2008.

"The value of [Julia] Allison to Denton is not only tits=page views: It’s also her popularity with Gawker’s commenters, the largely anonymous readers whose responses to Gawker’s posts are included on every item page. Commenters are the mob sneering at the tumbrels as they pass by—their comments are sometimes hilarious but always cruel and vicious, an echo chamber of Gawker’s meanness."–Everybody Sucks, Vanessa Grigoriadis, New York Magazine, October 15, 2007.

"On UrbanBaby, the private lives of city mothers are lit up and exposed. All the houses are glass there, and everybody’s got a rock... In part, this is because UrbanBaby is anonymous—and online, anonymity acts like a combination of a truth serum and a very strong cocktail. But this is also because being a mother can feel like sitting in a solemn lecture room, listening and taking notes, and repressing impulse after impulse to yell out dirty words. On UrbanBaby, people blurt out these dirty words."–Mothers Anonymous, Emily Nussbaum, New York Magazine, July 17, 2006.

Questions? Comments?