11 9 / 2018

 Oh no. Oh no!! Hahahaha! I found this website when I accidentally googled “celebitchy.com” instead of entering it into my browser bar. I was like, “Oh? What’s this?” and clicked further down the page, to this Tumblr. Oh, my god. I’d had no IDEA others were banned from Celebitchy, too! 

So, ok, just a bit of backstory: I used to be a professional culture critic. I have bylines at NYTimes, Guardian, Paste Magazine, a variety of tech websites… I even covered Kesha versus Dr. Luke, when that story was still fairly unknown, for Flavorwire. I’ve mostly been a tech writer my entire life, but for nine months I actually blogged about celebrity gossip for easy money. I replaced Molls McAleer at her old job when she left to found HelloGiggles. (The pay was fine, but… having to pose serious moral questions to yourself every morning, “Is it okay that I cover this?” is… well, it’s crazymaking. I *now* realize there are critical pop-culture analysts like Anne Helen Petersen, but those types didn’t exist back when I did it, back when it was basically dirty money you were earning.) I stopped writing culture-essays four years ago because of something unrelated to celebrity gossip… but I started to get my groove back on Celebitchy, and I guess I was leaving reeeeally long comments… …and then I got banned. 

I got super fucking banned. It was probably because of one of the times I’d written a long analysis about why a bad take was a Bad Take, but it might’ve been as benign as the time I wrote a longform analysis of Jessica Chastain’s changing fashion sense. Who knows? I honestly can’t remember. 

Either way, it was actually really hard on me! I was like, “Wow, what a total failure; you’ll never write for anyone again, you got banned from a random blog, you obviously suck.” I took it mega hard. But banning me didn’t stop me from posting. 

I just switched to my real-name email and kept posting – shorter comments, obviously, and much less pointed ones. I was a rule-follower now, I guess. But oh my god, hahahahahaha! I finally saw the Tumblr questions here that are like “whoa, why did they add the whole thing to their comments policy about deleting comments that are long?" 

Oh, no. I can honestly say that was added FOR ME. I did that! I am why! Oh my god, that is so embarrassing, I am crying. I hadn’t realized that the comments policy was updated FOR ME before now, and… I’m honestly a little bit crushed! I’d thought that my ban was random and arbitrary! It kind of cuts to the quick, that they were THAT insistent that I just leave their website. 

Before now, I didn’t realize how much they wanted me to just leave. (I’m not being delusional btw; the policy change was FOR ME. The timelines match up. This is literally why I was banned, and they made up a rule for me afterward. Ugh.) 

Anyway, I can’t go back and comment on that website again, obviously. To me it’s like, wow! My ban wasn’t a shot in the dark, wasn’t arbitrary. They just really don’t want me to comment ever again. 

Obviously I’m verbose, so you can see why I was banned, too, haha. Sorry! Old habits die hard. But… I know my insights were good. It’s kind of fucked up to claim that people who have lots to say are "distracting from the story,” and that really bothers me. 

To anyone else who fancies themselves as a burgeoning culture critic, just, take your talents elsewhere, ok? Don’t let your opinion of yourself be ruined by these people. I wish there were another good gossip website with a cool comments section, but I guess there isn’t one. That’s heartbreaking, but it’s what it is.

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“Either way, it was actually really hard on me! I was like, “Wow, what a total failure; you’ll never write for anyone again, you got banned from a random blog, you obviously suck. “ - Lol, I felt something similar. ))) 

  1. bannedfromcelebitchy posted this