Inside The Auto Blogging Industry: Editor Switches Dildos

WARNING:  The content following the jump, albeit taken from a popular car site, could be viewed as highly objectionable when viewed here. It could also get you fired at YOUR workplace, or get you in DEEP trouble at home. DO NOT click the jump if this offends you, and DO NOT complain if the warning is not heeded. Mature language. Parental guidance is advised. It is now common knowledge (at least, it is familiar to the folks who are into this stuff) that longterm TTAC writer Steven Lang departed TTAC. His great stories about the secret world of car auctions, and his first person insider reports from the drive here pay here underground will be sorely missed, and I don't mean this in mean jest.  I keep telling people that nobody is irreplaceable, but Steve is.  He will be, unless we find the owner of a drive here pay here joint, who is also an auto auctioneer, and who can write – an unlikely combination of talents. Wherever he goes, read his stories. But is Steve safe where he goes? It looks like he might be jumping from a small frying pan into sustained fire. According to his story at Jalopnik, Steve departed TTAC over the use of a word that stands for short-haired women loving women, along with "random articles that feature sex toys and general meanness at total strangers."  (The Jalopnik story linked to the respective shocking stories at TTAC. The story also repeated the D-word, which I don't D-are to repeat for fear of waterboarding.) Apparently, he thinks he is in subtler hands at Jalopnik and Yahoo. People have varying thresholds for disgust, I understand. What I have a hard time understanding is that someone with such well-developed sensitivities is proud to write for Jalopnik, a site, which we all know, knows no shame. This is no value judgement. A good journalist should not be bashful. To assist Steve in his career, we developed this multipart look Inside Of The Auto Blogging Industry – with a special emphasis on Jalopnik and its corporate owners at Gawker. This is useful information to any new writer at Jalopnik. Gawker will exert  much more influence on  Steve's stories than Verticalscope on ours. Which is easy to do: VS never exerts any influence on stories at TTAC, never did, never will.  I have been reliably informed that Steve not so much wanted to have a cleaner TTAC, he may have sought a job as the chief of the august publication. There is one way to create an immediate job opening: Make our corporate owners change or influence a story on TTAC, and I will immediately leave. Too much has been written already, therefore, we let pictures speak for themselves.  Here, we provide a pictorial insight into the social dynamics that await a not so young writer at his new Jalopnik workplace.  We provide the pictures with full links as proof that we did not make it up. If you want to shoot someone, don't shoot the messenger. Last chance to leave, we are entering the world of Jalopnik At TTAC, Steve was upset about a regular, albeit high quality dildo. (Jack Baruth loved the sex aid.)  At Jalopnik, Steven sees himself confronted with a Christian dildo, used as an illustration for "Cab driver banned from displaying crucifix because it looks like a penis." At TTAC, Steven had to endure picture of floppy ears. At Jalopnik: Pictorial cruelty to animals. Nobody seems to care, as shown by the headline "Well, There's Your Problem." Jalopnik seems to be obsessed with reproductive organs: "Russian Drawbridge Defaced With Giant Penis." Jalopnik has a special section for Penis size News , Videos, Reviews. Probably just to fool Google, but they fooled me. Here, news about "Penis Size and Speeding Tickets: A Sizable Correlation." More reproductive organ obsession: "Yes, That's A Snow Penis." It's huge, considering that it's cold. Save the whales: "Pam Anderson Forces Russian SUV-maker To Circumcise Whale Penis Leather Interior." Stereotyping, Lamborghini edition: "Meet The Most Stereotypical Lamborghini Owner In The World." Stereotyping, Lamborghini edition, 2: "Meet The Most Stereotypical Lamborghini Owner In The World." Signs of clinical penis obsession: "Ten More Unfortunate Street Names" The road less traveled: "Ten More Unfortunate Street Names." Says Jalopnik:  "Take too many trips down this road, though, and you'll end up on Cockburn Street." Domestic violence: "The Ten Strangest Tanks Ever Built" Illustration for a Viper V10 topic: "Y U NO HAVE MORE LOW END TORQUE!? Cars? What cars? Expletive undeleted: "Tuesday Night's Stock Car Race Was A Total Shit Show" „The Diesel Dyke!" When Jalopnik used this highly pejorative word (trucks should be up in arms and demand that author Davey G. Johnson be fired,) nobody complained – as far as we know. However, there seems to be strange self-censorship going on. Where is the picture of the diesel? Ah! Here it is! To access this picture, a cached copy had to be used. However, now we are totally confused. Not upset. Confused. What was wrong with the truck? Jalopnik has a special section for Gay News, Videos, Reviews and Gossip. For news like "Top Gear "Bans" Gay Couples From Studio Audience." Or for reports like this one: "VW Rabbit Most Queer-ied Car In First Quarter, 2009." Did anyone demand Matt Hardigree's ouster over this disparaging word? Sometimes, Google plays tricks on us. I'm sure Ray Wert did not say this about Jim Press. However, Google makes it appear as if he did. And if you can google it, it must be true, no?  Collateral damage caused by SEO saturation bombing, I guess. Say stop. Ok, I stop. I leave it up to you: Was Steven's outrage genuine? Or did he simply not do enough due diligence before his Jalop-hop? PS: The Jalopnik stories about Steven Lang resigning his editorship  appear to have been mostly removed from Jalopnik. The link under the Read …  leads to Kinja, and a click on the link gets this: At least it does so on my machine. Likewise gone is the picture of yours truly, in which Jalopnik caught me groping two men. The men are my former Typhoon offshore racing teammates Randy "Mad Dog" Schleuss (left) and Jim "J-O"  Natoli (right). Subliminal message: They are all gay. As if it's bad. Too bad we aren't, those long nights in the camper, dragging a black 29ft 525hp raceboat down never-ending freeways would have been more entertaining.   Still there among the comments at Jalopnik is the obligatory picture of the little Dutch boy sticking his finger in the dike, along with sundry "Lesbaru" references. On TTAC, there would be smoking ruins by now. At Jalopnik: Absence of outrage. And how do we feel about this uncurated comment? Where Steve comes from, it's "general meanness at total strangers" when a reporter at a Chinese auto show takes pictures of a floppy-eared booth professional who was put there so that reporters could take pictures of a floppy-eared booth professional. Meanwhile, at his new workplace, there are comments that could easily be seen as sexist, racist, and as a suggestion of trafficking. Where's the reader revolt? Besides, she's not half my age. She's 20 years younger. And, she says, "I'm not Asian, I'm Japanese." The discussion is open. Feel free to discuss the above. As far as the D-word goes, I have learned my lesson. I apologize to anyone who honestly felt offended. I won't use the word anymore, now that I know that sensitivities are much higher at TTAC than at Jalopnik. The ban on a discussion of the D-word topic itself remains in place. We leave that to the other sites, and to people who need to be better at feigning outrage.  (All pictures, except Google screenshots, courtesy Jalopnik.com, Groping picture: Tomoko Schmitt) from The Truth About Cars http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com

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