![]() You’re not blowing up the way Taylor Swift blew up. They used to call it micro fame, and it’s this experience of blowing up when you don’t expect to. “There’s a particular kind of fame that’s very normal now,” Allison told me. On her blog, she posted a photo of herself, sporting her condom-covered dress. To everyone, she was a new, enigmatic type of celebrity. To Allison’s detractors, she was an undeserving “narcissist.” To her fans, she was a savvy, self-deprecating woman trying to forge a new path for herself. One Gawker editor described Allison as “our Paris Hilton,” a recurring figure whom everyone had an opinion about. It was the start of a long-running online rivalry between Allison and Gawker that brought more attention to both. On her blog, she posted a photo of herself, derriere to the camera, sporting her condom-covered dress. When they refused, she decided to respond. Allison was distraught, crying for three days and begging the editors to take it down. The hate-read attracted hateful comments. (In true 2006 New York style, it even had a little barb thrown in about Allison being unknown to Patrick McMullan.) The subtext of the article was clear: Who does this woman think she is? Who decided she was influential? And yet, the article acknowledged, “she’s everywhere, it seems.” The next day, at Denton’s request, Gawker writer Chris Mohney ran an 800-word article called “Field Guide: Julia Allison.” The post was vicious, accusing her of attention-seeking in cruel language. When she showed up to Gawker founder Nick Denton’s 2006 Halloween party as a “condom fairy,” in a dress she made out of prophylactic packages, he realized that she was no longer a figure the website could ignore. Gawker staff writers promptly chastised her for “gratuitous self-promotion.”Īllison was undeterred. Allison flooded the blog’s tip line with links to her own articles, and when she commented on Gawker stories, she would often include links to her own work.Ĭommenting relentlessly on someone’s post to try to get attention for yourself is commonplace now, but it was galling back then. ![]() She leaned into her blog and by 2006, people started to pay attention.Īt the time, Gawker was the most influential site for (and about) online media in New York. Katy Winn/Getty ImagesĪllison soon concluded that the print-media gigs she’d been chasing were a dead end. Julia Allison at a 2009 Fashion Week party at Bryant Park. She appeared on TV to give dating advice on air. She auditioned for and was even cast in reality-TV pilots. “I’ve got to be known and become a name.” Wolfe built his brand in another era, but he wasn’t the only archetype for Allison to follow.Īllison started writing under her first and middle name, Allison, instead of her real last name, Baugher. Everywhere he went, he appeared in his iconic white suit. ![]() The pay was $50 a week.Īllison got an idea when she saw Tom Wolfe on a book tour that year. Eventually, AM New York, a free daily paper, gave her a weekly column. A few bylines and a college column weren’t impressive enough to big legacy magazine editors-in-chief. Upon arriving in New York, Allison relentlessly emailed editors around the city. That year, on a list of goals she brought to the city, she had written “become a cult figure.” Her goal was to parlay her bylines to a writing career in New York City media. ![]() She had an undeniable magnetism, and she was unafraid to hustle. And yet, every last thing she predicted about media and technology came to fruition.īy the time she graduated and moved to New York City in 2004, Allison seemed poised for greater success. Julia has never been publicly vindicated. I included Allison’s story in my new book, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet, because there has never been a reckoning or a reexamination of what these women were put through. Their names have been stricken from Silicon Valley corporate narratives, their lives torn apart by online hate, and the media, even today, continues to trivialize them as silly “it girls” - if they’re mentioned at all. These women forged entirely new career paths, built the now-half a trillion dollar content creator industry from the ground up, toppled traditional notions of fame and power, but they paid a steep price. The story of Julia mirrors the story of so many women who played formative roles in online culture. Julia was villainized and brutalized by journalists, pundits, and online trolls. Back then, most people, especially the media, resorted to misogyny. Today, she would be referred to as an influencer. But practically no one recognized her as such, in part because there wasn’t language to talk about what she was doing. In the mid-2000s, Allison dominated the online world as one of the first multi-platform content creators. Almost no figure from the early days of the internet was more misunderstood and maligned than Julia Allison. ![]()
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