By Tarpley Hitt

Remind us of this when we inevitably have to start a TikTok in three months

The outlook for media companies is grim these days. Layoffs abound. There are now chatbots that can approximate low-level aggregated news, lifestyle quizzes, or Saddam Hussein’s NFL predictions. And there’s the slow degradation of the only social media platform where journalists have sway.

Bad times can push anyone to desperate measures, so it’s no surprise many major outlets are embracing TikTok. The Washington Post was an early adopter of the platform and it’s worked out fairly well for them; the paper’s official account has some 1.5 million followers, or a little more than half the number of their actual subscribers last summer. Few others have been so successful, but that hasn’t kept outlets from trying: a running list maintained by media reporter Francesco Zaffarano, who writes the Mapping Journalism Substack, claims at least 753 outlets globally have officially logged on.

The mass media TIkTok adoption makes a certain amount of business sense; newspapers need readers and a sizable contingent of the reading population is on TikTok. But so far, their presence on the app is a gift to anyone who enjoys seeing institutions that traffic in expertise, authority, and very little humor surrender to the learning curve of a platform whose conventions and vernacular are almost exclusively dictated by teens. Here are some of the worst.

Beeeeeep! What’s that sound? It’s your portfolio flatlining from an imploding stock market and the worst inflation since disco’s heyday. How can you shock it back to life? (Note: This has nothing to do with bell bottoms.)

Try an asset that the ultra-wealthy have used to boost their gains for centuries: blue-chip art, which has outpaced the S&P by a whopping 131% over the last 26 years.

But wait, don’t you need to be a Studio 54 VIP to invest in Basquiats and Picassos?

Nope, you just need Masterworks – the 627,00+ user investment platform where you can invest in shares of multi-million dollar art. Since launching, they’ve realized 11 sales for investors, netting 10.4%, 35.0%, and 13.9% returns with the last 3.

Due to record demand, there’s a waitlist to join. But, Gawker subscribers can completely skip it with this exclusive referral link.

By Fran Hoepfner

A loose tee is the only shirt you need

Like any burgeoning fashionista, I find myself staring wistfully out the window in the winter months, dreaming of the kind of person I will dress as when the weather goes back above 60 degrees, whether that’s in two months or just next week (given the current state of things). For a long time, I opted for the small — but not necessarily tight — shirt, a safe choice for a person of compact stature with short legs and a shorter torso and arms whose length invited the opinion that I would be “incapable” of playing the trombone as a child. It did its job: It fit my body to its shape, announcing little and revealing even less.

But clothes have gotten confusing over the past few years. Women’s shirts have tumbled toward “big regency,” as my colleague Claire Carusillo lamented last spring: puffy sleeves, high collars, milkmaid-esque bodices. Those clothes look good on the kind of person who would’ve had a way bigger dowry than I would have in the 19th century. Other trending styles — babydoll, corsets, just wearing a bra under overalls — also do not particularly jive with my current lifestyle, which consists of mostly sitting in front of a computer or on the couch. What’s left for a gal who wants to stray outside her small shirts?

By Kelly Conaboy

You can hear exclusive affair details on her Patreon

Real Housewives of Potomac’s resident hat businesswoman Robyn Dixon has taken to “Unreasonably Shady,” the podcast she hosts with fellow cast member Gizelle Bryant, to confirm the rumor that her husband Juan Dixon had a pandemic-era affair. (And that you can hear all the details if you join their Patreon for $5 a month.)

Robyn, the sleepy and perennially tardy fan favorite (I’m the fan), spent RHOP’s last two episodes denying a rumor that her ex- and newly current-husband Juan Dixon cheated on her before the show began filming its seventh season. The rumor, brought to light by fellow cast member and three-wick candle entrepreneur Karen Huger, is as follows: Juan was seen holding hands in Georgetown with a blonde woman who looks like Karen Huger. And how could he resist?

By Claire Carusillo

The Princess of Wales smiled through the smut

HelloOoOoOo nurse, and a very hearty awooga to the missus: Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, was the recipient of a lecherous wolf-whistle while on an official visit to a market in Leeds. Aw, c’mon sweetie! It’s a compliment! Beautiful woman like you got a boyfriend?

If the late Queen of England were ever to be catcalled like this, she probably would’ve lobbed a swift “sod off!” back at the aggressor. Kate, stoic as ever, ignored it. According to the Daily Mail, “Kate appeared to hear the distinctive two-note greeting as she waved and smiled to crowds who gathered at Leeds Kirkgate Market to see her. The wolf-whistle appeared to register with the future queen but she politely ignored it and kept walking past the stalls to the launch of her new early years campaign.”