The powerblog Gawker seems to be experiencing shifts in its editorial direction. A few years ago, it consisted of sharp, often hilarious commentary and gossip about the media world here in New York. But they’ve expanded their scope to include celebrities (and micro-celebrities of their own making), New York life, and now more sensational and, to my mind, melancholy topics about sex work. And it’s starting to piss me off.

New York Magazine recently published an article on Gawker and Gawker Media (which includes, among others, Wonkette, Gizmodo, and Fleshbot) called “Everybody Sucks: Gawker and the rage of the creative underclass.” It was interesting and enlightening – Gawker Media is an interesting phenomenon. But this is my issue: their thing is snarky commentary and they’re applying this snark to some inappropriate targets. Nick Denton – or whoever’s calling the shots for strategy – is expanding the role of the commenters, encouraging them to compete for recognition, so effectively each piece is posted to provide commenters with material for their one-liner quips. They’ve also expanded their scope of mockable material to include sex workers, and it’s getting dark.

They’ve been looking at sex work for a while, but from a distance, like Alex Balk’s posts on sex workers and the internet. (And for the record, I’ve always liked Balk’s writing.) But for me, it started to get uncomfortable with the semi-skeevy two-parter, “How to Meet a Prostitute” by Josh Stein. It was a melancholy piece describing an encounter arranged through an agency. The woman didn’t speak English and the agency only charged $300 for her time (standard agency cuts are 50% plus a 10% booking fee). To be fair, Stein’s write-up isn’t juvenile, it isn’t cruel or mocking in tone – it’s definitely stark, which I suspects reflects the profound unsexyness of his experience. But the fact of the matter is that this kid, who’s coming from the land of the snarkiest, decided to slum it up by soliciting the services of a prostitute who didn’t understand English, who was beholden to an agency, who was getting paid very little and was most likely expected to work through the evening, and he wrote it up to be posted among short, sharp rants on hipsters and celebrity. On a very visceral level, it felt gross.

Once posted, it was open to one-liners from the commenters, many of which smack of fratboy ribbing, like, heh, “If I Did It, by Josh” (by timbnyc), and dude, “did you reload?” (by Clarence Rosario), and, like, “the burning question for me is what level of female attractiveness does paying $300 for a whore get you in nyc?” (by the cajun boy). Bitch better be hot, right? Or, “Did you see which pages of Zagat’s she had dog eared? I wonder where one goes to eat after screwing for money for eight hours straight. Personally, I think that Italian or French might hit the spot, but Indian could be good, too.” (by hahasound)

(I’m sorry, Gawker, but it’s hard to mock the rest of the world for being douchey when your commenters – who audition for the privilege – are the douchiest.)

At the same time, other commenters took Stein/Gawker to task, like the spot-on response by ‘tedsez’: “Just 9,999 more like you, and they’ll let her go back to being a radiologist.” And ‘nowimpissed,’ who followed up with, “That was a well needed punch in the gut. This series of posts is just fraught with unbelievable race/class/gender ugliness. Sorry to get all Jezebel on y’all, but I don’t think this post is funny. Just sad.” In fact, a number of the commenters remarked on the discomfort of shifting gears so sharply from Gawker’s usual fodder to something as dark as this, a melancholy thing in the midst of a mockfest.

And I thought it was just a little experiment on Gawker’s part, where Stein, the young tourist, dips his toe in the dirty waters before running back to his comfortable, clean office to report on what he saw. But then they followed up with this: “How to Tell the Real Strippers from the Fakes.”

Again, it’s a piece on the sexual underworld, and again, it’s dark, though this time the depiction leans toward caricature. It’s written by a woman, Sheila McClear, so I asked myself if this made any difference for how I felt about the thing.

Nope.

It’s the context of the piece itself. It’s Gawker. It’s knowing that these women, who work for fuckwits (clubs, agencies) and deal with fuckwits (drunk clients, leering reporters), who get bilked out of their money while being judged daily for their looks and their fuckability, are then thrown into the same entertainment arena as Britney Spears and Lance Bass. It’s knowing that the only reason Gawker’s going this route is to boost pageviews. It’s knowing that at some point there was a staff meeting that included the speculation, “Hey – so, like, what if I do it with a whore?” To which someone said, “Yeah, do it. That’d be totally edgy.”

And sex workers don’t deserve this.