Charles Bartlett

Or: How I learned the value of online communities from tentacle porn

Since the point of this little project is to restore a sense of community around my work, it might be relevant to tell you how I discovered the value of online communities for the first time.

Way back in the mid-2000s, I was working as Road Test Editor for a little blog called Jalopnik. That was brand new at the time, and more of an experiment in trying not to be another boring car website than it was a viable business. I was 25 or 26 when I started there, and was brought on as the voice of experience, and a sign of legitimacy, since I’d actually had a job at an actual magazine before.

Like the other sites owned by Gawker Media, there was a function where readers could leave something called a “comment,” under articles. There was never any unifying thought process behind this feature; you got the feeling it was more a box one of the Hungarian developers didn’t know they were supposed to check to disable when they copy and pasted whatever code they used to put the sites together. And also as you’d expect, the comments section was a gaping chasm of unspeakable horror.

My job was to review new cars. I was uniquely qualified to do this because, like I said, I’d worked at an actual print magazine before, and somehow that still held enough gravitas that I was able to borrow test cars from car companies. The biggest hurdle to reviewing new cars was not, surprisingly, my complete and utter lack of expertise, but rather the relationships with car manufacturers that could grant me access to things more exciting than a Ford Taurus X, and on any sort of timeline that might make us able to compete with the established titles for readers. So, my job was brand building more than it was car writing.

The conversations we were having with the car manufacturers weren’t about readership numbers so much as they were about the outright legitimacy of the publication. The maxim at the time was, “never read the comments,” but there they were, picking up just after the actual article I’d written left off. So, they came up any time we would try to convince a car company that we weren’t just a bunch of assholes in our twenties trying to scam free cars.

Maybe because one of our sister sites under the Gawker umbrella covered the porn industry, or just because the nature of the Internet at the time gave voice to weirdos, but one of the unifying themes that quickly developed in our comments section was heavily sexualized fan fiction about yours truly. And you can imagine how that played in meetings with very conservative car companies.

Me: “We’re a super-serious, heavily-legitimate website you can’t afford not to work with.”

A Very Stern German Person: *Turns a Hewlett Packard laptop running Windows XP around to reveal a buggy, distorted version of our website complete with a 5,000-word work of tentacle porn, about me, appearing in the same exact piece as a review of one of their cars.

Me: “About that…”

So, one day, I responded to one of the heavily sexualized comments. Basically I said thank you, and explained that while I didn’t really understand the author’s obsession with me, and I was flattered, it was beginning to compromise my work. They responded immediately with profuse apologies, explaining that they never thought I, let alone a car company, would see that stuff.

That commenter’s name was Charles Bartlett. Over the next few weeks, we began to chat in the comments sections, sometimes even about the cars I was reviewing. And Charles started to act like an advocate for me, encouraging other commenters to knock off the fanfic, and treat me like a human. More of them started to actually talk about cars, I started to regularly chat with them, and slowly but surely a sense of community began to develop.

Today, one of the things Jalopnik is known for is its strong community. Readers offer the kind of insight that adds value to the article, or an alternative perspective, the staff participates in that conversation, and the whole thing is so useful to everyone involved that it also attracts car designers, race car drivers, engineers, and other people with unique insight to the conversation. One of the best ways to get a job there is to demonstrate your unique ability to add value to the site as a commenter, first. In the time since I was there, at least two of the Editors-in-Chief began their careers at the site in the comments.

I eventually moved on to my own motorcycle site and a freelance career, before returning to Gawker a decade later when I pivoted to the outdoors space. And one of the values I offer as a writer is the strong community I bring with me across the Internet. I’m a better writer thanks to the feedback I get from commenters, and my stories get more page views, more time on site, and generally just more engagement because really smart people come along and add value to them. I enjoy my job more because of those interactions. And all of that is thanks to Charles.

Charles and I struck up the kind of Internet friendship that’s become common in years since. We’d email each other articles if we found one the other person might think was interesting, we’d comment on each other’s social media posts, and we’d occasionally chat on whichever messaging app people were using at the time. Every now and then, he’d apologize, then give me a heartfelt compliment if he thought I looked nice in a photo or on video. I always told him I was flattered.

Charles lived in Arizona, and I lived in New York, Los Angeles, then Montana during the time we knew each other. We never got the chance to meet in real life. Last year, I got word that he’d passed away after suffering a heart attack. That two very different people, with nothing but an interest in cars in common, can meet under the strangest of circumstances, then end up learning from each other, and striking up a genuine friendship as a result, represents the unique potential online communities are able to offer. Miss you buddy.