You (Yes, You) Are Keeping Zack Taylor Down

taylor1.jpg Pity the poor gossip blogger! That is what Zack Taylor would have us all know. Canada turns upon its gossip bloggers like it does its homegrown celebrities.

Now, perhaps you might be asking yourself, "Who the fuck is Zack Taylor?" You are not alone. And lest you be confused, let us assure you that he is not the Black Ranger from Power Rangers. Torontoist, and many other media outlets besides, were spammed yesterday by Mr. Taylor, who will have you know he is "Canada's answer to Perez Hilton."

According to Wikipedia, Zack Taylor is famous because he's the guy who posted those nude pictures of Toronto Maple Leaf forward Jiří Tlustý back in 2007.

According to Zack's own bio, he is famous because he's the "creative mastermind" who "teamed up" with hotornot.com as a gossip blogger (apparently "teamed up with" is now synonymous with "was employed by") and who also "ran" hotornot.com before his "success and popularity continues [sic] to soar," and now Zack Taylor blogs about celebrity gossip on a daily basis for his "millions of viewers." (A quick glance at independently collected statistics for his site suggests that if he has millions of viewers, they must all be sharing the same computer.) And according to most of Toronto's media industry, Zack Taylor is famous because he tells everybody how famous he is on a daily basis, or sometimes even more often than that, in a never-ending series of emails from his personal PR agency spammed out to absolutely anybody who might at some point need Zack Taylor's services and a whole lot of other people besides.

And Zack is mad.

[W]hen I first started my website a couple years ago, many media outlets in Canada couldn't get enough of me... I was asked to appear on TV shows, and provide my opinion etc. etc. But the second I accepted my media invitation to attend The Oscars, American Idol, Teen Choice Awards and other A-list events across the United States, some of my Canadian friends/partners decided they would no longer support my initiatives... Programs such as The Much Music Awards, which are based in my own backyard (Toronto) have now rejected to have me at their show...

Torontoist would perhaps suggest that Mr. Taylor consider that maybe his ostracization has something to do with his inability to correctly use the word "rejected" or his weird habit of italicizing words seemingly at random. But then again, this is new media and nobody cares about grammar or spelling or shit like that any more, so it can't be that, right? Heck, have you seen those kids today and their texting messages? They make words that don't look like words!

Of course, one might also consider that getting a press pass to cover a major American event is really not difficult or that the MMVAs in particular have always been a bit more selective about offering press access because the venue doesn't have a lot of space. However, none of that matters, because Zack Taylor knows the truth. And the truth is conspiracy!

I'm not complaining here, I could do what everyone else does and keep quite on this issue and just go about my everyday business, but I want it to be known that I DO SUPPORT CANADA and I want to do my Canadian peers a favour by using my media/popularity around the world that I've worked so hard for, to help showcase the CANADIAN acts performing/presenting at this event & others... Just my own country isn't allowing me to do so.

We're all in it together, actually. Last week the entire country held a secret referendum about whether or not to let Zack Taylor be a gossip blogger, and nobody told Zack Taylor about it. That's how Canada rolls.

Seriously, though: Zack Taylor's cry of injustice is, big shock, completely self-serving. This is because Zack Taylor isn't actually famous in any meaningful way, no matter how many exclusives he gets with Brody Jenner's girlfriend. Zack Taylor's influence in the entertainment world is about one-tenth of that of the corpse of Tiny Tim. Consider this scientific study of Zack Taylor's Q-rating as measured by his popularity on Twitter:

twittertaylor.jpg

(We would like to take this time to tell George Stromboulopoulos that we are very disappointed in his poor showing. Work harder, Strombo!)

We can't blame Zack Taylor for wanting to be a career blogger. Speaking from experience, jobs where pants are frequently strictly optional are few and far between, and it's pretty awesome getting paid to surf the internet. (You can get paid to surf the internet at most office jobs, but then you have to look busy.) But Zack Taylor seems to believe that becoming a famous important blogger person is something you can manage by sheer force of will; if you tell enough people you're a famous blogger, eventually you will become one by osmosis or something else involving science of some kind.

The sad truth is not everybody can be Perez Hilton, or even "Canada's answer to Perez Hilton." There just isn't enough serendipity in the universe for someone as useless as Perez Hilton to strike success in the same horrifically miraculous way that Perez Hilton did. Come to think, calling yourself "Canada's answer to Perez Hilton" is kind of like advertising yourself to be "Canada's answer to disease-ridden rats." Actually, given the choice we'd probably rather have the disease-ridden rats than Perez Hilton. The rats wouldn't try to tell us which big stars might be gay this week. They'd just give us the plague; rats don't care about the cast of The Hills. Because they're rats.

Such responses and rejections as the one above make it easier for me to look more towards making home-base in The United States, where no matter how big you get, you will always have support from some major networks. No wonder stars such as Elisha Cuthbert, Howie Mandel, Keanu Reeves, Rachel McAdams, and Ryan Reynolds have all bought homes in the States and hardly come back home to Canada unless its to visit family or film a movie/show. Some Canadian stars have gone to the extreme and ditched their Canadian residency to become American citizens!!

Presumably those famous stars bought homes in the United States because that's where they work, because the American film and TV industry is massively larger than ours is. Canadian celebrity careers have a distinct arc to them: you get hot, you move to the States, you have a great career, and then eventually people stop taking your calls so you move back to Canada where you're still a big shot. It worked for Norman Jewison and Colin Mochrie, and Neve Campbell should be making her grand return any day now.

taylor5.jpg
Zack at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards, wearing a shirt we swear we haven't Photoshopped.

If some of them get American citizenship, it's not because Canadians felt the need to knock them down; it's because they felt that America was now their home. It happens when you live somewhere else for years and years. Hockey players who move to Canada because they play here get their Canadian citizenships all the time. Your citizenship is a big deal. People don't change it because their feelings might get bruised. (Except for Conrad Black.)

I know that if I keep trying and trying to support Canada, and in return all I get is rejection, maybe I to will jump-ship like the others.

NO, ZACK TAYLOR! Stick it out! In a few years, with a little effort, you could be one of those people on eTalk! Like that girl! Or the guy in the suit! You probably can't be the next Ben Mulroney—come on, there's only one Ben Mulroney—but you could be the very next closest thing. ETalk is perfect for physically attractive people who want to be famous but lack any actual talent or skill, and having gone through your archives extensively for the purpose of writing this article, believe us: that's you.

Photos from Zack Taylor's MySpace.

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Comments (22) [rss]

Maybe we should hook him up with some laid off auto workers so they can compare who has the suckiest life right now.

user-pic
Now, perhaps you might be asking yourself, "Who the fuck is Zack Taylor?"
And I still am, because I can't be bothered to read about a gossip blogger. I only have myself to blame.

Why is Levar Burton so popular on Twitter?

Why is Levar Burton so popular on Twitter?

I believe that would be because Levar Burton is the fucking man.

And because he was a character on Star Trek. And Star Trek is popular.

Well done on the article, Bird.

That's a whole lotta words about a guy I have never heard of before, and will most likely never hear about again.

but you read all the way to the bottom and posted a comment about the article. Isn't that just a wee bit counter-intuitive?

In any event, this guy is fucking hilarious!

Also: I found it interesting to learn more about the inner workings of the celebrosphere, even if it was by negative example. (i.e. how celebrity bloggers get made as evidenced by the story of Zack Taylor failed celebrity blogger.)

I thought Rachael McAdams lived here, no?

I have no idea what I'm doing to keep Zack Taylor down, but if someone could tell me I'd do it a little harder.

Although someone needs to help free him from that avalanche of trashy tabloids.

Seems to be a thoroughly deserved takedown, except:

Torontoist would perhaps suggest that Mr. Taylor consider that maybe his ostricization has something to do with his inability to correctly use the word "rejected" or his weird habit of italicizing words seemingly at random. But then again, this is new media and nobody cares about grammar or spelling or shit like that any more, so it can't be that, right?

the noun form of ostracize is ostracism. Muphry's law strikes again!

Actually, "ostricization" is a recognized noun form of "ostracize." Go check dictionary.com if you don't believe me.

I am very happy to report that, in accordance with Muphry's law, you're both wrong!

"ostricization"—the word first used in this article—is indeed not a word, but "ostracization" ("z" and all) is. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the latter term is "The fact or state of being ostracized; banishment from a society or group; ostracism. Also: the action of ostracizing." I've fixed the typo!

The other day I was preparing to comment at Feministe and wallah, you'd already commented. Then again at BFP's. Both times saying, loosely, what I'd intended to say. Sometimes our synchronized commenting really creeps me out.
--your sister

1) My bad, ostracization is a word after all!

2) montauk/my sister: I had no idea this was your Torontoist pseudonym but suspected it after seeing your comments in another thread, saying exactly what I was thinking. Yeeeah.

UPDATE: Taylor graciously thanks Torontoist for trashing him, because there is no such thing as bad press.

UPDATE TO UPDATED UPDATE: Yeah, it's gone. It was a tweet where Taylor thanked Torontoist for the "awesome article." I would assume that in between issuing the tweet and deleting it, Taylor probably actually read the article, rather than just seeing his name.

Zack Taylor's real surname is Zack Teperman - a name you are familiar with if you've ever seen a building being demolished. He lies about his traffic all the time and has been caught posting a fake concert review (http://popgoesthenews.blogspot.com/2008/08/blog-posts-bogus-concert-review.html) and he's been caught plagiarizing (http://popgoesthenews.blogspot.com/2009/01/blogger-plagiarizes-popgoesthenewscom.html). But with Teperman family money, why should he care?

He should get used to doors slamming in his face. People only read his site to laugh at him in disbelief. Good for Torontoist for calling him out in a intellectual and fair manner. A shoe store could have as many followers on Twitter as him. HaHa. I am sure that some of the positive comments on here are from Tepperman himself posing as somebody else.

It's easy to write off a douche like Zack taylor as, well, a douche. A douche who is seeking online success by aping a format set forth by a blogging American.

Kind of like a Torontoist/Gothamist thing.

The guy hypes himself to no end. He can't spell. He's not as clever as a blogger like Christopher Bird. We get it. I'm still not sure what spawned this vicious and "intellectual" attack. Why bother with someone like Zack Taylor? Is this happening?

Personally I think his whole website is an interesting failure in that he started out with a lot more Canadian content. It hit all the Perez Hilton notes but was about guys like Paul Gross.

It flopped.

Maybe it would have succeeded under a blogger with a more subtle touch. Maybe Canadians love gossip, but just not gossip about Canadians. Is there room in this country for a "star system" with all that entails?

To me, these are more interesting questions to write about than this hatchet job.

MuchMusic has some kind of relationship with Perez Hilton so he'll probably be there...plus that annoying Lainey chick from eTalk. They're both quite established so why do they need this guy too? They get a million requests for media passes for the MMVAs. Plus Much wants to protect their celebrities...they're not going to let someone they DON'T have a relationship with run around and potentially get dirt on their guests.

And it's true, we just don't care much for gossip about homegrown Cdn stars. And I'm fine with that. I think Rachel McAdams does in fact own a house here and lives here some of the time. She's talented, I don't blame her for going where the money and stardom are.

I'm pretty sure that Lainey is, for better or worse, "Canada's answer to Perez Hilton". She rivals Perez in the bitchy comments department, and generally has pretty good scoop.

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