Michael B. Duff

Duff: Check out the hottest magazines on the Web – not available in print

The hottest magazines on the Web aren’t magazines at all. While most entertainment mags are losing audience, Nick Denton’s Gawker site is drawing 300,000 visitors per day.

Denton manages a suite of 14 Web sites, covering everything from travel to videogames. His flagship site, Gawker.com, started as a witty, acerbic guide to New York – sharp young outsiders poking fun at the elite.

Now, after ten years of snark and gossip, Gawker hasn’t just chipped away at the elite, they’ve redefined what elite is.

Gawker editors cut their teeth making fun of figures in mainstream media, only to get snatched up and hired away by the very publications they’re mocking.

New York publishing moguls may not have a sense of humor, but they know good writing, and Denton’s blogs are all about good writing.

These blogs succeed by putting words first. While mainstream media sites are packing in widgets and cramming links into every inch of screen space, the Gawker sites are stripped-down, almost austere by comparison.

These sites aren’t built on traditional journalism. Instead, they market themselves as the antidote to traditional journalism – a delicious mix of gossip, humor and innuendo that would send most magazine publishers running for their lawyers.

The blogs aren’t aggressively obscene (unless you count the porn blog) but they are clearly written for adults. And now, with the addition of user comments, the editors are frequently upstaged by their audience.

Gawker is my favorite Denton property, but the empire isn’t built exclusively on snark and celebrity gossip. Denton’s game blog, Kotaku, offers outstanding coverage of video games and Internet trends, while a sister site, Consumerist, helps shoppers find deals and get fair treatment from arrogant corporations.

Defamer covers Hollywood and celebrity gossip. Deadspin offers a twisted take on sports and Jezebel is to women’s magazines what the Sex Pistols were to rock ‘n’ roll.

The future of magazines has arrived, but you need a Web browser to see it. Text isn’t dead, it just let its hair down. The Denton blogs have defined a new writing style for the Web, and the old guard magazines are struggling to catch up.

Crisp, rude, funny and informative – this voice doesn’t sound like journalism. It sounds like a dorm room bull session, like nightclub chatter, lubricated by good music and a few drinks.

Readers in the 18-34 range eat this up. Gawker’s audience is 75 percent young and 66 percent female.

In an age where most publications are struggling to attract young readers, Denton is putting them to work.

Gawker commenters generate a staggering amount of content now. While the editors toil for moderate wages, dozens of brilliant writers are contributing for free, cracking jokes at the party, becoming micro-celebrities in their own right.

And of course, these sites are not for everybody. Older readers are likely to find themselves bewildered or even repelled by the tone of these blogs. Denton’s sites have taken a lot of heat (and lost a few advertisers) over the years, but you can’t redefine an industry without breaking some eggs.

Duff: Avoid the pain, drama of TMI online

Call them the TMI Generation. TMI stands for Too Much Information – a slang term people use when friends or co-workers start revealing too much of their personal lives in public.

The declaration of “TMI!” is usually accompanied by backing away and frantic hand gestures, as if trying to physically ward off details about your uncle’s operation or elaborate descriptions of a co-worker’s nightclub exploits.

Bad enough in real life, but the Internet has taken TMI to a whole new level. We’ve seen an explosion of personal blogs since 2000 – public journals and online diaries, Facebook and Myspace and an alphabet soup of dating sites that urge you to reveal your deepest desires to the Net.

Internet veterans call it “Open Source Life” – an ethic of online exhibitionism that encourages people to record audio, stream video and post intimate photos of themselves at all hours of the day. Tools like Twitter and Facebook encourage people to post snippits of text throughout the day, sharing details about what they eat, what they buy and who they snuggle up to in real time.

My favorite example of an Open Source Life comes from jakobandjulia.com – a joint venture run by an entertainment reporter named Julia Allison and a New Media tech developer named Jakob Lodwick. A lot of people like to tell their friends when they start a new relationship; Jakob and Julia issued a news release.

Julia and Jakob already had personal blogs, so when they got together, they decided to take the romance public. They decided to make jakobandjulia.com a public celebration of their love – the good times and the bad, chronicled in painstaking detail.

The couple — wildly exhibitionist and impossibly photogenic – made for good reading most of the time. Then, at the end of November, Jakob lost his job. He was asked to leave the company he founded and everything seemed to go downhill. Jakob and Julia had a big fight on Dec. 3 and by Dec. 5, the relationship was over.

The Web site they started as an expression of love quickly became a forum for hurt feelings, as Julia cursed Jakob and railed at him for being an insensitive jerk. At one point Jakob says, “I don’t think a public Web site is the appropriate forum for this type of discussion” and Julia retorts, “This was your idea in the first place.”

And so we see the downside of an Open Source Life. Julia ran back to her personal blog and started talking about how great her previous boyfriend was. Ouch. One of the peanut gallery said Julia would eventually regret posting her 20-something ramblings in public, and I am forced to agree.

I know how embarrassing this kind of public disclosure can be because I did it for 10 years. Around 1996 or so, I was obsessed with Web-cams and online diaries. I posted long screeds about my personal life, systematically creeping out friends, family and total strangers with my most intimate thoughts.

I’ve deleted most of it, but it still surfaces from time to time. Trust me, no matter how smart you think you are at 25, by the time you hit 30 you will regret everything you used to think. Eventually there will be a service for people like me, an organization you can pay to remove every trace of yourself from the Net.

This is particularly dangerous with teenagers who like to post intimate details on Myspace. And no, this isn’t the usual journalistic fearmongering about child molesters on the Net. I’m talking about the dangers of emotional revelation. You run a lot of risks when you open your life to the public. Most people reading won’t understand the full context of your life. Most commenters won’t even read beyond the first paragraph.

The Net is full of people who like to insult strangers and judge people based on incomplete snippits of text. You think you’re sharing your life with an intimate circle of online friends; then the party crashers show up and you end up defending your choices to people who’ve never even met you.

High school is already a crucible of insecurity and peer pressure. Now, with search engine archives and 24/7 access to the Internet, the drama of your high school years can be captured for eternity, ready to be dug up by jilted lovers and prospective employers long after you’ve outgrown yourself.

I understand the appeal of an Open Source Life. Something deep inside us longs for openness and honesty. We all want to share ourselves and be loved for who we really are. But words are tricky things and not everyone who views your Internet face will understand what they see.

Most people with Internet journals would be better served with an email list. Keep in touch with family and friends, but be selective, and keep your secrets out of Google. Your future self will appreciate the discretion, even if you don’t quite understand it now.

Duff: Confessions – and Explanations – of a gender-switch gamer

My name is Michael Duff, and I am a gender-switch gamer.

That means although I am a man, I frequently create (and play) video game characters who are female.

I can imagine an army of amateur psychologists now, nodding their heads sagely as they smirk. “He’s a guy who likes to pretend he’s a chick, and we all know what that means.”

But it’s not quite that simple. Most male gamers have “crossed the digital divide” once or twice, for a variety of reasons. The stock answer is to blame it on aesthetics, in a way that reinforces the masculinity of the gamer. Most video game characters are viewed from the back, so men naturally prefer looking at female backsides while they play.

This is a great answer, because it throws the insinuation back on the questioner. “So you really like looking at male buttocks all day? Maybe you’re the one with the problem!”

Although the majority of game players are male (84 percent according to one World of Warcraft survey) the character distribution is much more even. So for whatever reason, a lot of men are out there playing female characters.

I can’t answer for all of them, but I’ll tell you why I do it.

The first thing to realize is that I don’t think of my character as me. My character isn’t really a stand-in for Michael Duff. I don’t picture myself doing all these cool things as I play. It’s more like a story I’m watching, the same way you’d watch a movie or a play. I think of my character as an actor in need of direction. I watch her about her the same way you’d watch Luke Skywalker or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

My character isn’t a costume I wear; it’s more like a car I drive. And just like a car, I want my character to look cool, move fast and run over anything that gets in my way. I pick out equipment and fine tune all kinds of settings to make my character perform better.

So when you ask me why I prefer female characters, it’s kind of like asking why do you drive a Corvette instead of a Jeep?

On one level it’s a pure aesthetic choice, and on another level, I like watching female heroes kill stuff. Probably the same reason Joss Wedon writes “Buffy.” You don’t have to be female to appreciate female heroes, just like you don’t have to be male to enjoy “Star Wars.”

I don’t have any deep psychological reason for choosing female avatars, but I’ve certainly learned a lot. All the stereotypes are true. Male players treat you better when you’re wearing a female face. I’ve had random strangers whistle at me, flirt with me, invite me to groups and give me free stuff, just because I was playing a female. I still get very uncomfortable when this happens. Usually I just say, “Sorry, I’m a guy.”

I’ve been hit on while playing a male, too, but this is much less common.

World of Warcraft has been widely criticized for the way it presents female avatars – with exaggerated body types and revealing clothes. As you climb up in levels you realize the more powerful the armor is, the more skin it is likely to show when you put it on.

I always thought people who complained about this stuff were nitpicking, until it happened to me. The first time I took my female warlock to Outland, I got some outstanding quest rewards that were much better than my previous equipment. I put on my new magic pants and looked like I was adventuring in a piece of sexy lingerie. My regal, dignified warlock character was walking around with her hips exposed, attracting whistles and catcalls from all across the zone.

It got so bad I actually sacrificed some attack power and put on a weaker pair of pants, just so I could cover myself.

I’ve always been a quiet supporter of women’s rights, but I didn’t really understand the issue until I put myself in a woman’s shoes. The game experience has made me more careful about how I talk to women online and made me more conscious of women’s issues in real life.

Don’t believe me? Roll up a female blood elf and walk around Orgrimmar for a while. You’ll see what I mean.