There is no such thing as “important” anymore. It went the way of “seminal,” “classic,” “definitive,” “legitimate,” and true love. The internet killed them. Recent studies show that 99.7% of the internet is comprised of dancing-bear GIFs, poorly-Photoshopped “Natalie Portman” porn, and Facebook albums. And, of course, blogs. With the advent of the blog, cultural commentary got a lot smaller, and the trivial got a lot bigger. Welcome to the Gawker Age.

The gossip blogs—Gawker and offspring Wonkette/Defamer, as well as, for the sake of our own myopic solipsism, IvyGate—have rescued the snippy and the petty from the maws of heavy-breathing print tabloids and elevated them to the level of Highbrow, or perhaps more accurately, its perverted cousin Hipster. To its current level of refinement, though, trivial could never really have been “in” before: By its definition trivia is short-lived, voluminous, and capricious. Even print dailies cannot adequately keep up with it; only the internet could provide the type of instant-update forum needed to successfully track, and then belittle, it.

If you’re still stuck in Olde 2003, here’s a primer. The gossip-tracking and rumormongering websites are necessarily localized (Gawker: New York, Wonkette: D.C., Defamer: L.A., IvyGate/IvyLeak: well, you know…), and generally feature chronicles of celebrity screw-ups, meta-media critiques, and bestowals of (literally) fifteen-minute fame on those drunk or clueless enough to perform attention-getting antics for non-ironic purposes. Unmitigated snark is the modus operandi; quipped a riposter after Gawker enthused about Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, "I'm not sure if I'm ready for a world in which Gawker is earnestly recommending stuff." IvyGate, a sort of watchdog group for fish-in-bucket Ivy-League jackassery (among other things), rendered Alexey “Impossible is nothing” Vayner completely unable to exist as a serious person every again. Gawker’s “Douchebag of the Week” feature smears the smarmy in front of the whole damn world. Defamer is called “Defamer.” As humans, we love reading about other people failing, but as Americans, aren’t we supposed to pretend not to care about our neighbors in the interest of relentless Protestant individualism, and only obsess over their tribulations in secret? This is why I put the National Enquirer cover-down in my shopping cart.

But perhaps the most remarkable element of these rumor mills is just how unabashed they are. Truth is quaint and prestige is insufferably establishment; the gossip rags (self-proclaimed) are increasingly run by Ivy League types, unapologetic about devoting their talent to yesterday’s trash, and eschewing legit-crit publications because 1) of all the Muses, Mockery is the easiest lay: snide put-downs are very conducive to clever turns of phrase; 2) reporting on parties, social stuff means going to parties, social stuff; and 3) riffing on the faux pas of others makes one impervious to criticisms against one’s own standalone ideas, which never have to face the scrutiny of publication. Perhaps they never erected a statue to a critic, but Marlene Dietrich never had to live in an age in which she’d risk being called a wench instead of a patriot.

It can be argued that anyone “deserves” the third-degree from the gossip blogs. Hypocrites, certainly (an analogue might be the Barney Frank Rule in politics, which allows for the conscionable outing of gay politicians who support anti-gay legislation); douchebags, maybe. Politicians, absolutely. Politicians’ kids? Wonkette recently posted a comprehensive list of their Facebook flubs, which were generally antithetical to their parents’ party lines (girls kissing girls still does not have bipartisan support, believe it or not) or just toolish. But while such dimmer bulbs may be privileged to begin with, they are clearly not inculcated into the “anything you do can and will be used against you” ethos, and the internet lasts forever. In an age in which almost any kind of advancement requires a clean slate, will we all eventually have to become either fastidiously secretive or flawless in lifestyle?

That seems unlikely; a modicum of common sense, a tolerable demeanor, and a tendency to do things that no one at all would care about in the least should get us all through the hazards of potential internet notoriety just fine. Perhaps even the slaughter of a few usually-arrogant lambs for the appeasement of the tongue-wagging masses is not so bad. And, truly, never has petty libel had such verve.