Who made the most out of YummersGate?

Jonathan Van Ness’s and Antoni Porowski’s recent PR stunt of pretending to fuck to sell pet food (and branding it Yummers) simply begs for a snarky response. I feel the temptation as much as anyone, but here is where I have to admit my shortcomings as a writer: I am rather ungifted in the art of the dunk. While I am good at complaining about trivialities in casual conversation, making that into snappy and readable internet content is a different skill.1

Thankfully, the people of the internet have no such shortcomings, so the dunks have been plentiful. And now that the dust has settled and the fun has been had, I can make my contribution to the Yummers beat: who had the dunkiest of the dunks? Who really showed these multimillionaires that they posted cringe? Fortunately, I don’t have time to scroll through everyone’s Twitter mentions, so I’ve compiled the best of the dogpile below.

Disqualified: Them for being boring, per usual Them’s recounting of events feels more like homework than anything. I understand their reticence to really own anyone, as they are ostensibly a news publication, but if you promise “a big mess” in your headline then I want mess! Stop equivocating and get in on this like a good internet citizen.

4. Slate Probably the most cited of the crop in this list, Slate’s contribution is… fine. It’s fine! But if I’m being honest, it reads like a lot of bark without much of a bite. It should be a slam dunk, and it’s got a lot of the strong language to show for it, but for some reason I don’t get the thrill of speaking truth to sponcon from this. I did enjoy the kicker though.

3. Gawker Gawker just seems a lot less bothered than Slate. Personally, I’ve just gotten exhausted by actively getting mad over things like this, so I tend to prefer the blasé attitude over the cries of “moronic” and “a fairly stunning new low” from the Slate piece. In the same vein, Gawker also realizes from the jump that this isn’t stunning at all:

From both a writing and being a bad person perspective, I love this lede. Gawker understands that the best way to be mean to people on the internet is in short, sharp shocks rather than longer complaints. The first sentence manages to be so cutting, illuminating, and incisive in 17 words that I actually winced when I read it the first time. And while the third, wordier sentence is absolutely helped by just how dumb the stunt is, “pretending to be in a sexual relationship in order to shill for pet food” manages to paint them in an even worse light than the facts of the situation do, which is a huge feat. This is exactly what Gawker was reborn for.

2. Gregory But for all of the brevity and clarity that Gawker accomplishes, Gregory has them beat. I will be quoting this for years.

1. Jonathan Van Ness This is a nurse log of dunks.

If you want to keep the cycle going, blowing the entire thing way out of proportion like this is a great way to get a bunch of little dunklets in your replies. I almost can’t describe the tweet without getting in on it myself, but your first thought of something like “being annoyed about a dumb stunt = complacency about rising theocracy in America?” is probably better than my best attempt. (Jonathan Van Ness? More like, Jonathan Van Tweet Less. Oooo!) Also god I hate to do this, but Dobbs wasn’t even what was overturned.

For generous contributions to the dunk ecosystem, JVN wins.