I think of Kinja comment sections as the AM radio of the internet. That’s why I’m a big fan of AM radio. We must fight for its survival, just as we must fight for Kinja commenting to survive.

Ziff Davis migrated Lifehacker away from Kinja while Jezebel was down. Disturbing. I dare not ask if Paste has plans to do the same with Jez and Splinter. So many treasures in those old comment sections. I imagined my grandchildren enjoying and learning from them as I have.

Perhaps there exists a wondrous fantasy world where being a plagiarist/archivist/scholar of TomatoFace is the same thing as being TomatoFace.

Upvoted.

Top priority should be hiring TomatoFace. How many days did I come to Kinja and TomatoFace was the best writer on the site? Lots. Tomato wanted to open Kinja to business journalism and I still think that was a good idea, so he should be given editorial authority.

If the nature of your project isn’t secret could you share it with us? Are you attempting to follow every account on Kinja? Is it an archiving project? Lots of my old accounts still haven’t been followed by you.

How did Kinja get so broken? Why hasn’t it been fixed by now? I curate an historical archive of the TomatoFace canon. It’s been rendered unbrowsable and further historical research has ground to a halt. TomatoFace fans are upset and want answers but I don’t know what to tell them.

TomatoFace foresaw the end. Every one of his dire predictions for Gawker and its successors has come to pass. He offered helpful suggestions to increase reader engagement, but they were taken as jokes. They weren’t.

Harvard has a dark past, but show me one old American institution that doesn’t. TomatoFace went to Harvard. So did Barack and Michelle Obama. Harvard’s come a long way since the 1950s.

I’m with Prince Harry. Any job is real if you want it to be. I set up an Historical Trust and appointed myself Curator. It’s a real job in a real organization and nobody can tell me different.

The handwriting was on the wall when Neera Tanden got cancelled for trolling. America doesn’t believe in redemption anymore.

I’m not TomatoFace, though I totally understand why you would believe I am. I wouldn’t believe in such a thing as a TomatoFace superfan archivist unless I were that person.

TomatoFace is an artist and entertainer who needs a large audience to do his best work. From November 7, 2018:

I’ve seen TF talk candidly once

I’m a scholar and archivist of TomatoFace and I’m not convinced this Beryl_Fitzlegrint account is Tomato. The account has been active since April 10, 2019. That was 6 months before the demise of Splinter and almost 2 years ago. The weird writing style has been consistent. I suppose it could be Tomato, but I’d need to…

Terrible day. Can former trolls ever be allowed to reinvent themselves and become productive members of society? It seems the answer is no.