A vanity update, Austin Butler's beauty privilege, Tom Cruise not directing, Dakota Johnson's insane style and energy, a JT karma request, award show coverage process, and the costs of photo licensing
Adding that besides Lainey being a supportive and encouraging editor, her professionalism has also spoiled me completely. My instinct is always to take any pitch I have to Lainey first because I've had just enough bad experiences elsewhere to appreciate what I have here. It's rare in this business.
I keep falling asleep during Masters of the Air. The most I've gleaned from the show is reading Sarah's review, and I think I might keep watching. Sleep is so important for your health.
I also support more creative content over pictures! It's convenient, for sure, to have the photos on the page, but I also don't mind clicking a link to see the photograph somewhere else. I tell all my friends that no one has more insightful commentary on gossip and culture than Lainey Gossip or provides as much context for understanding it all and I don't want to lose that! I'd be here even if you put a blonde wig on Barney and told me it was Taylor Swift. In fact, I might prefer it at this point. (Love Taylor and TNT but the over saturation is REAL.) 🤣
Me, too! I come here and to LG to read, and I do enjoy the pics but it's the writing that I come for. There are very few celebrity/gossip sites I bother with, and some I once enjoyed I no longer visit, and a lot of that has to do with how LG spoiled me for the sites less dedicated to analysis and thoughtful commentary. I come here and to LG every day, which can't be said for very many sites, no matter what the content is.
Yep, LG is literally the only site I still check daily. Not even the news! And I used to have a solid rotation of pop culture websites but now, just this one.
I still visit The Fug Girls if there's an event so I can get a broader range of what the attendees wore but that's really it the only one I bother with anymore. I do follow some of the links posted in What Else, but Pajiba is the only one I'm really interested in, and once a week will do it for me there. Most of the sites I once frequented either don't exist anymore or are just random trash. Once upon a time I visited Tom and Lorenzo, but they eventually became full of themselves and it just wasn't interesting anymore. So yeah, there's no other site I visit daily except LG and here. Hell, it's worth the price of admission just to read Sarah shred a bad movie as only she can, and she and Lainey are both very insightful and make me think. Stephanie, too. It's definitely worth a subscription.
Oh my God, yes! I was actually thinking about Sarah's Cats review when I wrote that. I laughed so hard that tears ran down my cheeks. Sarah has a real way with words, especially when she's got something scathing to say.
"Dakota’s nepo or generational status was absolutely a factor in her fearless approach to Ellen that day." -- now this is a good use of nepo babies!!
I say this half-jokingly, but this is such a great observation. It never occurred to me that Dakota's ability to call out Ellen was because she and her family are so entrenched in Hollywood that she didn't have to fear (or even worry about) blowback. It would be nice if other nepo babies realized that they could use their privilege in a similar way. (Especially the ones that have multiple family members/more than one generation in the industry)
I definitely come for the writing. LaineyGossip has the best writing…the insight and humor are incomparable. Pictures are nice but not the reason I’ve stayed. For instance, c’mon! describing Dakota’s speaking style like she has the lowest blood pressure in recorded history?! And Sarah’s karmic hopes for JT! 😂
I have done IPL (or “face laser” as I call it in my house when I tell my husband where I’m off to) and I’m absolutely obsessed. The 1-7 days while the skin texture is shifting and the sun spots are flaking are not great but the end results are incredible. I’m never tried clear + brilliant but will add that to my research as I think about future treatments.
Also - for photos, I’m totally down with fewer photos if it means more funds to support the people who keep the site what it is. I will accept substitute photos of Barney and Elvis when you don’t want to pay the exclusive fee.
I should clarify that we're "ok" with photos for now. We have some pretty good deals where we get a bulk amount of non-exclusive photos to use in a given period (either a year or per month depending on the agency) but we're definitely buying fewer exclusives these days than we did 5 or 6 years ago. But I appreciate that you guys are mostly on LG for the writing.
The bigger concern is where the deprecation of cookies will go (scheduled in Chrome for the end of this year) and how unprepared the industry is for viable alternatives. Just to give you guys an idea, if a thousand of you see an ad that is decently targeted, mostly because third party cookies give an advertiser a pretty good idea of what your interests are, a publisher like us might get paid $1.50 for a thousand of you to see that ad. If that ad is not targeted, we might see 30 cents for, again, a THOUSAND of you to see that ad. You can see how tough the barriers to entry are in this business, and how those that are in it and relying on digital ad revenue alone are dying a slow death at those rates. And the lack of viable alternatives to targeting by cookies makes it feel like online publishing is walking a plank and there's only so much time to figure out if there's going to be something to jump to for safely at the end of it.
I could bore the shit out of you guys for hours on my ad tech rants, so if you have any more questions I'm happy to thread some answers on a dedicated chat thread. We're here to have fun after all.
All that said, we appreciate you guys for subscribing because as Lainey said above, The Squawk is one way we've softened the blow of the decline in the ad space.
I really like this insight into your ad monetization because I monetize my website (a recipe site) through mostly ads. My site is small, about 175k pageviews a month, but that was bringing in a consistent $5000K+/month side income for my family. But with algorithm updates, ad RPM drops, etc. it’s now been cut by 1/3 in the last few months. It’s hard to see $1000s basically be erased overnight by the changes happening. So it’s interesting to me to hear your side of it as a big publisher. I do think setting up some sort of community/membership like you have with substack will be key to maintaining in the future. It’s hard out there.
Very interesting, thank you so much for the insider baseball. I'll admit I'm one of those privacy freaks (I work in a defence company so it comes with the job) so I feel bad but also I really do not want my data being exploited. I think the option of paying a subscription, like here or the NYT, is the future. Although I know that cuts off a lot of people who might not afford it :(
Lucia I love this comment because there are so many people whose work is sensitive and they need to be careful about their browsing. And that makes complete sense. But I also think that those people will know what to do to ensure their data isn't "loose". For the average Jane or Joe browsing the internet though, I'd like to see platforms leaving those decisions up to the individual and not taking it upon themselves (looking at you, Apple) to shut off the data streams that pay for the "free" internet.
Since we're talking about ads and ad blockers and such, I use ad blockers, but not because I have anything against the advertising, per se. My issue is the ones that flash, scroll, have video, move, etc, as part of it. I live in a rural area with poor internet, and that combined the fact that I have a computer that rebels against that kind of thing makes it hard to even read articles, much less watch videos and such. It will make my screen go black and I have to restart and do my best to avoid where the ads are. So I'd much rather pay to see content without all the random flippy-floppy stuff (a technical term I'm sure is familiar to non-techie people like me.)
This is also a good point and a major reason ad blockers rose in popularity. For much of the 2010s ad tech took advantage of users (and advertisers) in what was a bit of a Wild West in the ad space. Sites would stack, run audio-on by default, etc. I would suggest whitelisting those sites you know keep their ad experience clean and light (like we do, frankly) and allow those sites to monetize your visits if your default setting is on.
I use ad blockers because of the nature of my work. But I am very happy to pay for quality and this site is definitely one that I’m happy to pay for. This insight into what you guys have to deal with is invaluable. Thank you.
A question about ads - does LG make more money if someone clicks on the ad? If I clicked on an ad would it put more money in LG's pocket? Or would I have to buy something for that to happen? If I'm just killing time I'd be happy to click on a few ads if it helps!
Yes and no. There are some ads that are called "CPC" or "Cost per Click" ads that are generally less "favourable" for publishers because they only get paid if someone clicks. Most are "CPM" which is "Cost per Thousand" and those get paid just for being run and aren't dependent on clicks. But Google Adsense, which used to be the main vendor that dealt in CPC ads, recently shifted over to CPM. So the clicking isn't helping directly. All that said, I would just say that if you see a ad that interests you, click on it because you're interested, and not because you think it will pay us. We appreciate it, but currently the only way in which "click throughs" benefit us is that it may confirm for advertisers that they've found a good fit with LaineyGossip by putting their ads in front of people who are interested in their products. And that's what everyone wants.
Thank you for being so candid about beauty regimen! Yes there is a much bigger convo about beauty standards to be had, but putting that aside, I think it's really nice when people are honest about what they're doing.
Also, while I love having photos for context, I would absolutely take the writing over the photos any day. I think the quality of writing is what differentiates your entire site from others.
I need to point out that Dakota Johnson did not start the sexual wellness brand Maude (ugh, I hate that in order to sell pleasure to women we HAVE to attach a health aspect to it, getting off for the sake of having an orgasm should be enough, no it has to come attached to wellness and well, that just takes it back to purity culture: to feel good without making yourself a better person is still "bad"). It existed since at least 2017, she came on around 2021 which isn't bad but people refer to her as the founder of the brand and that's not true. In the same vein, Cara Delevingne was never a co-owner of the sexual wellness brand LoraDiCarlo, I know this because when that brand up and closed shop overnight, leaving a bunch of orders unfulfilled, she didn't say a peep. Everyone wants to seem like they've founded something until it goes tits up and then it's radio silence. I've never tried Maude's stuff but I admit that Lora DiCarlo's Sway is pretty damn great and I'm glad I got one when I did.
I was thinking about this with Emma Grede. She's a legitimate business person with reality TV "cofounders" telling everyone how hard they "work". I want someone to ask those hard workers how they came up with the idea for SKIMS as "co-founder"? Twitter man paid to call himself founder of the car company. Money buying legitimate titles without effort is annoying considering the same person call regular working people lazy.
You can tell the ones who are legit when shit goes sideways and they step up and take responsibility. If they are nowhere to be found, they are lending their name for a paycheck. I’m particularly sensitive to this because the people who have been fighting to destigmatize sex toys for women and femmes have been working on it for years and often end up having their stores vandalized and lose their methods of collecting fees because when they try to sell sex toys, banks decide that those businesses are promoting sex trafficking and won’t allow them to utilize them (see also: sex workers who also get deplatformed and cannot use PayPal or Venmo). It’s incredibly difficult to secure funding for a sexual wellness business, especially if you are a woman or femme of color. So after they do all this unpaid work, actresses swoop in and claim to want legitimize these businesses without giving credit to the workers and artisans (some sex toys are ART) who have toiled for years in that space paving the way for Dakota Johnson to hold court at The Museum of Sex.
Here in the States, SESTA-FOSTA has had a devastating effect on sex workers ability to accept payment online. S-F was enacted, supposedly, to combat child sex trafficking but in reality it has been used to deplatform sex workers and drive them further underground. It's the reason why the term 'seggs' is used by everyone, including those who try to use social media to talk about sexual health and reproductive choice. S-F made banks leery about allowing any of these people to utilize them in fear of being seen as promoting sex trafficking, so they banned all of them, which was always the intent. Hardly any kids have been saved by it but a lot of adults have lost a significant portion of the livelihoods and/or have been forced into unsafe working conditions because of it.
I know nothing about this, but the way the system is set up everything you say tracks. It will fit into several scenarios. It's grating. Who's been legit so far?
Am I the only shallow and selfish one to say I love the amount of original photos on LG and hope they stay? I don’t mind the click throughs to other sites or the Instagram posts. But the particular photos you choose give a lot of context to the discussion and I am a visual person.
I LOVE THE VISUALS! I have so much fun writing to visuals - so it's our intention to keep the photos, I didn't mean today's post as a heads up that we're getting rid of them. It was more intended to share with all of you what the behind the scenes administration is in order for us to be able to run the site as it exist today. Our hope is maintenance and, if there is the opportunity, gradual and responsible growth, like bringing on new voices, and The Squawk, which we did last year. With your support that we are so grateful for.
Ok I just read through other comments and realized I don’t know what exclusives are vs regular photos. With the photos that appear on the bottom of the page…we can definitely do with less of those, they’re more of a nice to have. Anyway we are here if you need feedback but you all obviously do an incredible job in managing LG. Carry on!!!
Have a look at my comment below. We're definitely not setting up a pull-back on photos at all. Not if we can help it. If anything, we already have, gradually, in that we don't buy as many exclusives as we used to. But the galleries at the bottom are staying. I might also add, that we take pride in those galleries because we're probably the only celeb blog that runs photos in a clean viewer as an overlay and not with accompanying ads.
As soon as I wrote that, it made me realize that I actually love those galleries. Scrolling through them makes me ruminate on the words I’ve just read. It’s what makes LG unique!
I mistakenly engaged my adblocker on LG a while back, and could not see ANY of the photo galleries. It was driving me insane! The page was not loading correctly at all either. Once I realized and whitelisted, magically LG was there in all it's glory! It really made me realize how much I reflected on the photos included to bring home the writing. Thanks for a well rounded experience. :)
Agreeing with others who have said they'd choose writing over photos. I'm a daily LG reader, read every word on nearly every article, and I rarely look at the photos in the carousel at the bottom. (Unless the photos include Julia Roberts, my personal fave bad bitch. "Who's Natalie!!?")
The discussion about Dakota Johnson’s nonchalance towards nudity reminded me of Kate Winslet. I remember for a few years after Titanic there was lots of pearl clutching about nudity in general and specifically a megastar like her appearing nude in a number of films. And she was always blasé-trending-toward-defiant about it. It was also layered with a lot of bullshit about how “brave” it was for her to appear nude (because apparently I ended up in the timeline where Kate Winslet isn’t considered an absolute smoke show at every stage of her career). In any case: more people being matter-of-fact about their bodies please!
Maybe it's because she's British. The Europeans (UK is in Europe) can get rid of clothes for whatever scenes that call for it. Americans are still hypocritical about nudity.
Adding that besides Lainey being a supportive and encouraging editor, her professionalism has also spoiled me completely. My instinct is always to take any pitch I have to Lainey first because I've had just enough bad experiences elsewhere to appreciate what I have here. It's rare in this business.
Hooray for great editors!
Holy shit that photo of my zapped face - i have never seen it this size, i just scared myself
I was thinking I really liked your eyeshadow!
That's a very specific observation Sherry.
Lol, the red was expected, since she already mentioned it, but the metallic stood out.
I noticed it too
Similarly, I love that you are still wearing eye shadow at your facial!
I keep falling asleep during Masters of the Air. The most I've gleaned from the show is reading Sarah's review, and I think I might keep watching. Sleep is so important for your health.
Anna that last line! 🤣🤣 I’m dead.
I also support more creative content over pictures! It's convenient, for sure, to have the photos on the page, but I also don't mind clicking a link to see the photograph somewhere else. I tell all my friends that no one has more insightful commentary on gossip and culture than Lainey Gossip or provides as much context for understanding it all and I don't want to lose that! I'd be here even if you put a blonde wig on Barney and told me it was Taylor Swift. In fact, I might prefer it at this point. (Love Taylor and TNT but the over saturation is REAL.) 🤣
Me, too! I come here and to LG to read, and I do enjoy the pics but it's the writing that I come for. There are very few celebrity/gossip sites I bother with, and some I once enjoyed I no longer visit, and a lot of that has to do with how LG spoiled me for the sites less dedicated to analysis and thoughtful commentary. I come here and to LG every day, which can't be said for very many sites, no matter what the content is.
Yep, LG is literally the only site I still check daily. Not even the news! And I used to have a solid rotation of pop culture websites but now, just this one.
I still visit The Fug Girls if there's an event so I can get a broader range of what the attendees wore but that's really it the only one I bother with anymore. I do follow some of the links posted in What Else, but Pajiba is the only one I'm really interested in, and once a week will do it for me there. Most of the sites I once frequented either don't exist anymore or are just random trash. Once upon a time I visited Tom and Lorenzo, but they eventually became full of themselves and it just wasn't interesting anymore. So yeah, there's no other site I visit daily except LG and here. Hell, it's worth the price of admission just to read Sarah shred a bad movie as only she can, and she and Lainey are both very insightful and make me think. Stephanie, too. It's definitely worth a subscription.
I live for Sarah's reviews - I go back to her Cats review like once a month.
Oh my God, yes! I was actually thinking about Sarah's Cats review when I wrote that. I laughed so hard that tears ran down my cheeks. Sarah has a real way with words, especially when she's got something scathing to say.
100% support the content over photos choice, any day of the week. I’ve been reading LG since 2007. I love this site—and often ignore the pics!
Same!!! Often I don’t even look at the photos beyond the top one
Co-signing that I’d rather have text than photos (or less photos). I’m an Old so while visuals are nice I do read you for the articles 😉
"Dakota’s nepo or generational status was absolutely a factor in her fearless approach to Ellen that day." -- now this is a good use of nepo babies!!
I say this half-jokingly, but this is such a great observation. It never occurred to me that Dakota's ability to call out Ellen was because she and her family are so entrenched in Hollywood that she didn't have to fear (or even worry about) blowback. It would be nice if other nepo babies realized that they could use their privilege in a similar way. (Especially the ones that have multiple family members/more than one generation in the industry)
I definitely come for the writing. LaineyGossip has the best writing…the insight and humor are incomparable. Pictures are nice but not the reason I’ve stayed. For instance, c’mon! describing Dakota’s speaking style like she has the lowest blood pressure in recorded history?! And Sarah’s karmic hopes for JT! 😂
Those were both so good.
PLEASE CHARGE US MORE!!!! Your work is so valuable and we are so grateful for all of your hard work and dedication to quench our gossip thirst.
Also, I am so honored that you answered two of my questions. In the voice of Wayne and Garth, “I’m not worthy!”
I have done IPL (or “face laser” as I call it in my house when I tell my husband where I’m off to) and I’m absolutely obsessed. The 1-7 days while the skin texture is shifting and the sun spots are flaking are not great but the end results are incredible. I’m never tried clear + brilliant but will add that to my research as I think about future treatments.
Also - for photos, I’m totally down with fewer photos if it means more funds to support the people who keep the site what it is. I will accept substitute photos of Barney and Elvis when you don’t want to pay the exclusive fee.
I should clarify that we're "ok" with photos for now. We have some pretty good deals where we get a bulk amount of non-exclusive photos to use in a given period (either a year or per month depending on the agency) but we're definitely buying fewer exclusives these days than we did 5 or 6 years ago. But I appreciate that you guys are mostly on LG for the writing.
The bigger concern is where the deprecation of cookies will go (scheduled in Chrome for the end of this year) and how unprepared the industry is for viable alternatives. Just to give you guys an idea, if a thousand of you see an ad that is decently targeted, mostly because third party cookies give an advertiser a pretty good idea of what your interests are, a publisher like us might get paid $1.50 for a thousand of you to see that ad. If that ad is not targeted, we might see 30 cents for, again, a THOUSAND of you to see that ad. You can see how tough the barriers to entry are in this business, and how those that are in it and relying on digital ad revenue alone are dying a slow death at those rates. And the lack of viable alternatives to targeting by cookies makes it feel like online publishing is walking a plank and there's only so much time to figure out if there's going to be something to jump to for safely at the end of it.
I could bore the shit out of you guys for hours on my ad tech rants, so if you have any more questions I'm happy to thread some answers on a dedicated chat thread. We're here to have fun after all.
All that said, we appreciate you guys for subscribing because as Lainey said above, The Squawk is one way we've softened the blow of the decline in the ad space.
I really like this insight into your ad monetization because I monetize my website (a recipe site) through mostly ads. My site is small, about 175k pageviews a month, but that was bringing in a consistent $5000K+/month side income for my family. But with algorithm updates, ad RPM drops, etc. it’s now been cut by 1/3 in the last few months. It’s hard to see $1000s basically be erased overnight by the changes happening. So it’s interesting to me to hear your side of it as a big publisher. I do think setting up some sort of community/membership like you have with substack will be key to maintaining in the future. It’s hard out there.
Hi Kristina, feel free to shoot me an email if you have any questions about our experience with Substack or the ad stuff.
Very interesting, thank you so much for the insider baseball. I'll admit I'm one of those privacy freaks (I work in a defence company so it comes with the job) so I feel bad but also I really do not want my data being exploited. I think the option of paying a subscription, like here or the NYT, is the future. Although I know that cuts off a lot of people who might not afford it :(
Lucia I love this comment because there are so many people whose work is sensitive and they need to be careful about their browsing. And that makes complete sense. But I also think that those people will know what to do to ensure their data isn't "loose". For the average Jane or Joe browsing the internet though, I'd like to see platforms leaving those decisions up to the individual and not taking it upon themselves (looking at you, Apple) to shut off the data streams that pay for the "free" internet.
That makes sense!
Since we're talking about ads and ad blockers and such, I use ad blockers, but not because I have anything against the advertising, per se. My issue is the ones that flash, scroll, have video, move, etc, as part of it. I live in a rural area with poor internet, and that combined the fact that I have a computer that rebels against that kind of thing makes it hard to even read articles, much less watch videos and such. It will make my screen go black and I have to restart and do my best to avoid where the ads are. So I'd much rather pay to see content without all the random flippy-floppy stuff (a technical term I'm sure is familiar to non-techie people like me.)
This is also a good point and a major reason ad blockers rose in popularity. For much of the 2010s ad tech took advantage of users (and advertisers) in what was a bit of a Wild West in the ad space. Sites would stack, run audio-on by default, etc. I would suggest whitelisting those sites you know keep their ad experience clean and light (like we do, frankly) and allow those sites to monetize your visits if your default setting is on.
I will do so. Thanks!
I use ad blockers because of the nature of my work. But I am very happy to pay for quality and this site is definitely one that I’m happy to pay for. This insight into what you guys have to deal with is invaluable. Thank you.
A question about ads - does LG make more money if someone clicks on the ad? If I clicked on an ad would it put more money in LG's pocket? Or would I have to buy something for that to happen? If I'm just killing time I'd be happy to click on a few ads if it helps!
Yes and no. There are some ads that are called "CPC" or "Cost per Click" ads that are generally less "favourable" for publishers because they only get paid if someone clicks. Most are "CPM" which is "Cost per Thousand" and those get paid just for being run and aren't dependent on clicks. But Google Adsense, which used to be the main vendor that dealt in CPC ads, recently shifted over to CPM. So the clicking isn't helping directly. All that said, I would just say that if you see a ad that interests you, click on it because you're interested, and not because you think it will pay us. We appreciate it, but currently the only way in which "click throughs" benefit us is that it may confirm for advertisers that they've found a good fit with LaineyGossip by putting their ads in front of people who are interested in their products. And that's what everyone wants.
Okay, thanks. This behind the scenes stuff is really interesting!
Dear Squawk community,
I am taking a break and enjoying the best month of the year ☺️
But I wanted to stop by and say hello. I miss you all 😘
Ps: Great mailbag!!!
Thank you for being so candid about beauty regimen! Yes there is a much bigger convo about beauty standards to be had, but putting that aside, I think it's really nice when people are honest about what they're doing.
Also, while I love having photos for context, I would absolutely take the writing over the photos any day. I think the quality of writing is what differentiates your entire site from others.
I need to point out that Dakota Johnson did not start the sexual wellness brand Maude (ugh, I hate that in order to sell pleasure to women we HAVE to attach a health aspect to it, getting off for the sake of having an orgasm should be enough, no it has to come attached to wellness and well, that just takes it back to purity culture: to feel good without making yourself a better person is still "bad"). It existed since at least 2017, she came on around 2021 which isn't bad but people refer to her as the founder of the brand and that's not true. In the same vein, Cara Delevingne was never a co-owner of the sexual wellness brand LoraDiCarlo, I know this because when that brand up and closed shop overnight, leaving a bunch of orders unfulfilled, she didn't say a peep. Everyone wants to seem like they've founded something until it goes tits up and then it's radio silence. I've never tried Maude's stuff but I admit that Lora DiCarlo's Sway is pretty damn great and I'm glad I got one when I did.
I was thinking about this with Emma Grede. She's a legitimate business person with reality TV "cofounders" telling everyone how hard they "work". I want someone to ask those hard workers how they came up with the idea for SKIMS as "co-founder"? Twitter man paid to call himself founder of the car company. Money buying legitimate titles without effort is annoying considering the same person call regular working people lazy.
You can tell the ones who are legit when shit goes sideways and they step up and take responsibility. If they are nowhere to be found, they are lending their name for a paycheck. I’m particularly sensitive to this because the people who have been fighting to destigmatize sex toys for women and femmes have been working on it for years and often end up having their stores vandalized and lose their methods of collecting fees because when they try to sell sex toys, banks decide that those businesses are promoting sex trafficking and won’t allow them to utilize them (see also: sex workers who also get deplatformed and cannot use PayPal or Venmo). It’s incredibly difficult to secure funding for a sexual wellness business, especially if you are a woman or femme of color. So after they do all this unpaid work, actresses swoop in and claim to want legitimize these businesses without giving credit to the workers and artisans (some sex toys are ART) who have toiled for years in that space paving the way for Dakota Johnson to hold court at The Museum of Sex.
This is so interesting. I had no idea the payment platforms pick and choose this way.
Here in the States, SESTA-FOSTA has had a devastating effect on sex workers ability to accept payment online. S-F was enacted, supposedly, to combat child sex trafficking but in reality it has been used to deplatform sex workers and drive them further underground. It's the reason why the term 'seggs' is used by everyone, including those who try to use social media to talk about sexual health and reproductive choice. S-F made banks leery about allowing any of these people to utilize them in fear of being seen as promoting sex trafficking, so they banned all of them, which was always the intent. Hardly any kids have been saved by it but a lot of adults have lost a significant portion of the livelihoods and/or have been forced into unsafe working conditions because of it.
I know nothing about this, but the way the system is set up everything you say tracks. It will fit into several scenarios. It's grating. Who's been legit so far?
Am I the only shallow and selfish one to say I love the amount of original photos on LG and hope they stay? I don’t mind the click throughs to other sites or the Instagram posts. But the particular photos you choose give a lot of context to the discussion and I am a visual person.
I LOVE THE VISUALS! I have so much fun writing to visuals - so it's our intention to keep the photos, I didn't mean today's post as a heads up that we're getting rid of them. It was more intended to share with all of you what the behind the scenes administration is in order for us to be able to run the site as it exist today. Our hope is maintenance and, if there is the opportunity, gradual and responsible growth, like bringing on new voices, and The Squawk, which we did last year. With your support that we are so grateful for.
I’ve no doubt you’ll evolve LG in a brilliant way. It’s why you have dedicated and loyal followers after all these years!!
You’re not alone I love the visuals as well.
Ok I just read through other comments and realized I don’t know what exclusives are vs regular photos. With the photos that appear on the bottom of the page…we can definitely do with less of those, they’re more of a nice to have. Anyway we are here if you need feedback but you all obviously do an incredible job in managing LG. Carry on!!!
Have a look at my comment below. We're definitely not setting up a pull-back on photos at all. Not if we can help it. If anything, we already have, gradually, in that we don't buy as many exclusives as we used to. But the galleries at the bottom are staying. I might also add, that we take pride in those galleries because we're probably the only celeb blog that runs photos in a clean viewer as an overlay and not with accompanying ads.
As soon as I wrote that, it made me realize that I actually love those galleries. Scrolling through them makes me ruminate on the words I’ve just read. It’s what makes LG unique!
A million gold stars for the overlay galleries! You are right to be proud of that!
I mistakenly engaged my adblocker on LG a while back, and could not see ANY of the photo galleries. It was driving me insane! The page was not loading correctly at all either. Once I realized and whitelisted, magically LG was there in all it's glory! It really made me realize how much I reflected on the photos included to bring home the writing. Thanks for a well rounded experience. :)
Agreeing with others who have said they'd choose writing over photos. I'm a daily LG reader, read every word on nearly every article, and I rarely look at the photos in the carousel at the bottom. (Unless the photos include Julia Roberts, my personal fave bad bitch. "Who's Natalie!!?")
"Who's Natalie?" 🤣🤣🤣 I forgot about this thank you for the LOL
You're so welcome. It's a deep gossip cut. :-)
The discussion about Dakota Johnson’s nonchalance towards nudity reminded me of Kate Winslet. I remember for a few years after Titanic there was lots of pearl clutching about nudity in general and specifically a megastar like her appearing nude in a number of films. And she was always blasé-trending-toward-defiant about it. It was also layered with a lot of bullshit about how “brave” it was for her to appear nude (because apparently I ended up in the timeline where Kate Winslet isn’t considered an absolute smoke show at every stage of her career). In any case: more people being matter-of-fact about their bodies please!
Maybe it's because she's British. The Europeans (UK is in Europe) can get rid of clothes for whatever scenes that call for it. Americans are still hypocritical about nudity.
YES writing over pictures! The pictures are visual aids, the writing is what sets LG apart.