Valleywag’s never been one to pull punches, especially if the punch puts at risk the more prudish element of the audience. But they’ve never, as far I as know, gone full-on NSFW at the site itself. Celebrity sex tapes are all the rage on the Internet, but do a search on Valleywag and only one result comes back—one for Gene Simmons.
In a t-shirt, no pants.
And a blonde who’s definitely not Shannon Tweed (I’d heard they had an “open” relationship, never thought I’d see it in action.) And that just makes the whole thing extra ewwwwy.
Like watching somebody’s dad get it on (creepily casually, chewing gum, as though being serviced) with the babysitter. Ewwy, again.
After the shock wore off (this involves a rather elaborate process of eye-drops, self-flagellation a la Opus Dei, ritualistic interpretive dance, a chicken sacrifice, and a promise to never, ever do that again), I remembered that Valleywag is a Silicon Valley gossip site.
So, if Bill Gates or Eric Schmidt (double-dawg ewwwy) popped out a tech-billionaire romp vid taken from inside one of the Google Jets or at a hotel in Davos, it might make an inkling of journalistic/blogolistic sense why their Full Monties would be displayed. The safe route even then might be just to link out and give it the old NSFW warning, along with a you-probably-don’t-want-to-see-this warning.
But Gene Simmons and some Australian spokesmodel (NSFW) who both look like it’s more about business than pleasure? Scratch that last part, doesn’t matter how they looked, and I’ll need to repeat the purging process mentioned earlier.
Valleywag’s sister site Gawker, where you expect celebrity smut news to be, didn’t even go quite that far. There are very selective screenshots taken from the vid, which are still yucky, but might pass the safe-harbor broadcast test.
It wasn’t even the writer you’d expect. It was Owen Thomas, not Melissa Gira Grant, Valleywag’s resident Valley sex reporter and reputed “page-view champ” at the site.
Oh. Maybe that’s it. Nick Denton did change the way his writers were paid: per page-view. If that’s the case and Valleywag’s writers are desperate for some extra cash in the upcoming pay-cycle, then we might expect to see more porn pop up at Valleywag.
They probably should be working on that age-verification thing, then, you think?
