Now that's news you can use, especially since the most detailed dispatches include full names, photos, cell phone numbers, e-mail addresses, places of employment and favorite hangouts of the alleged man-tramps and hussies. But while the mostly anonymous muckrakers who file such exposés provide some of the web's most incendiary investigative reporting, they rarely receive praise for their journalistic enterprise.
In part that's because they generally offer nothing more than their word as proof of their claims. But it's also a question of scope. As with amour, so with journalism: Size matters. Or as Nicholas Lemann sniffed in a recent New Yorker piece, "Most citizen journalism reaches very small and specialized audiences and is proudly minor in its concerns."
Indeed, while most women aren't very interested in which man-jacking ho has been eye-humping their husband at the local bar, they care deeply about which foreign nation America is currently screwing, or vice versa. Unless they're not professional journalists, that is. Then, it's usually the other way around—which is why newspapers have been hemorrhaging readers for the last 50 years. They're proudly major in their concerns, and poorly equipped to focus on the stuff people really care about.
Outside the world of professional journalists and political bloggers, for example, few people want to fact-check Tony Snow's ass, or even know who Tony Snow is. But the number of people who'd like to humiliate their lying, cheating exes? The market for vengeance journalism has no limit.
Still, one wonders how effective sites like Dontdatehimgirl.com really are. In the age of YouTube and MySpace, when we cultivate attention by any means necessary, isn't public shaming just the best path to your own reality show? All over the web, there are pick-up artist sites where aspiring players learn to seduce, manipulate, and abandon women. An appearance on Dontdatehimgirl.com certifies their prowess, and thus, serves as an endorsement of sorts.
Consider the photos that appear on these sites. They have none of the guilt or embarrassment of traditional mug shots. Instead, they're just candid snapshots, taken from dating-site profiles and MySpace pages: The men are smiling, preening, putting their best faces forward—and when juxtaposed with the stories of their alleged misdeeds, they take on an even more confident, smirking, unflappable air. Bad boys (and girls) always have their admirers, and one imagines there's a reason so few seek to rebut their portrayals: It's getting them dates! Which just shows how powerful an aphrodisiac the Internet is. Even when it aims to keep people apart, it draws them together.