Not going to lie, it was a site I loved to hate. And boy, did it make itself very easy to hate at times. Perhaps fortunately, as of today, there’s nothing more to hate about it, as its parent company G/O Media formally pulled the plug this afternoon.
Whether it was Hamilton Nolan quietly and cowardly trying to subtly incite class violence in his articles, or Katherine Krueger (an editor in name only as I didn’t see any semblance of actual editorial control at any point during her tenure) hypocritically snarling at the aggressively online while being aggressively online herself, or Rafi Schwartz spouting endless conspiracy theories that the neoliberals were in league with the right (despite all evidence to the contrary), or Jack Mirkenson doing a disservice to journalism with sparse “articles” (I hope he wasn’t paid by the word, let’s put it that way), to the aggressive lack of anything resembling an attempt at journalistic standards…
It was the sort of site for people who were mad at the world, didn’t really understand why, but were at least socially aware enough to know that they couldn’t overtly blame Jews and black people for them.
Don’t get me twisted, you could still think that… you just had to make sure you didn’t say that part too loudly.
It didn’t exactly start on the best of terms. From the beginning, it existed as a site for disaffected white millennial trust fund baby fauxgressives after co-opting the webspace from latinx interests and articles. It was almost like watching online gentrification in real time, and boy did they hate anyone who noted that.
The thin skin didn’t exactly thicken over time either. After a series of absolutely hideously awful articles (one of which being so inflammatory that it got blowback from inside the house) two of their writers made absolutely horrible (and arguably sabotaging) attempts to dampen interest in the 2018 elections, and the entire site went on a purge; ostensibly to combat trolls.
Splinter’s definition of “troll” seemed to be anyone who called out the awful election takes for what they were, because they certainly didn’t purge any of the aggressive (and occasionally violent) rage addicts.
At that point, the writing was on the wall. The more they tightened their echo chamber, the less they were able to actually interest potential readers with their content. Turns out there wasn’t much of a niche in class-warfare inclined privileged whites that refused to acknowledge anything outside of that niche was actually a problem and that anyone who didn’t prescribe to their “lefter-than-thou” brand of fauxgressivism was the enemy that needed to be destroyed.
By the end, they made Jacobin look rational. Believe me, that takes doing.
This is honestly more mercy killing than injustice. Whatever Splinter wanted to be at its inception, what it became was a blight on discourse, often as much of a problem as the alt-right outlets it claimed to despise.
Good riddance. You won’t be missed, Splinter.
TKO Creations 