twitter chatter
Taylor Rapalyea

The “it” boys and girls of New Media have driven one ex-employee to spill all of their darkest secrets. User @ExMediaMan popped up March 14, with the promise to “dish” on the many places he has worked, including Buzzfeed, Gawker, The Daily Mail, Huffington Post, and The Atlantic.

The alleged gentleman so far hasn’t spilled anything incredibly shocking, but if his claim of a book deal is true, then he’s likely sitting on a few more specific, scandalous stories. Or he’s a total hoax.

But let’s be honest. Even if it does end up checking out, the tweets just sound drunk and bitter. @ExMediaMan claims that New Media is a game full of primarily white players who all do drugs and sleep with each other, all of which everyone already knew. If the account is a parody, journos everywhere are getting a kick out of it regardless. Various employees from outlets such as Politico, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera America, and the Huffington Post follow our jaded new best friend.

So far, none of the news outlets have formally responded, though some of those @ExMediaMan called out directly have gotten in on it: Rosie Gray of Buzzfeed retweeted her shout out, and Neetzan Zimmerman, formerly of Gawker, retweeted a subtweet (so meta).

 

So far, my baseless theories are as follows:

1) @ExMediaMan is female, going the extra mile to cover her identity.

2) @ExMediaMan is drunk, as indicated by the fact that he deletes tweets – a potential sign of regret, which pairs best with alcohol.

3) @ExMediaMan is Barack Obama, who is sick of your shit.

4) @ExMediaMan is Ben Smith (editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed), who is also sick of your shit but is doing it for the web traffic.

5) All of the above.

An email to @ExMediaMan was not returned.

What are your crackpot theories?