caro:

I finally got around to reading this awkward little piece by a bright but naive blogger who seems to believe that in order to be part of “New York media” you have to socialize with an abhorrent set of people who will fawn over Keith Gessen and Emily Gould in person and then go right back to their keyboards and start tapping out hatespeech, fan themselves from the summer humidity with their Ivy League degrees while prancing about in their American Apparel underpants to “Oxford Comma,” and hang out exclusively at OMG BROOKLYN HIPSTER PARTIES AT BROWNSTONES OWNED BY CLUELESS PARENTS!!! AND THE COCAINE FLIES LIKE CONFETTI!!!! If you do not subject yourself to the aforementioned, you clearly cannot be a writer in New York and you will never, ever, ever make it on this cruel IFC reality show of an island.

(Hey, I hear Houston is great this time of year.)

As someone actually employed as a writer, albeit not the sort of cranky navel-gazing social looker-on that Miss Bangs-and-Eyeliner seems to have once dreamed of being, I can tell you that the same thing applies to the media industry that applies to all niches of New York life. This city is what you make of it, and I can’t stress that enough. If you find their writing mean, don’t read it. If you find them intolerable, don’t go to their parties. If you’re convinced that you’ll never ever ever ever be famous unless you manage to strike up a conversation with Keith Gessen at a loft party and dazzle him with your repartée, put things into perspective and keep in mind that nobody who doesn’t read Gawker religiously has any clue who he is anyway. There are plenty of interesting and successful (well, relatively speaking) writers in New York who aren’t among the irritating ranks detailed in this heavily-quoted-and-reblogged post.

I’m sure that the semester abroad in Paris was on the books long before this girl declared her public disillusionment with “The Scene,” but really, it’s not going to do her any good to frame it like a response. Talk about melodrama.

If she’s going to be that narrow-minded, I’m hardly sad to see her go. The fact that she ever “idolized” this crowd seems to make me think her priorities may have been a little skewed to begin with.

Oh, callow youth.