The end of BuzzFeed exceptionalism?

We’ll never not read hot takes on the media/tech world when it’s from Slate’s Will Oremus, and his latest analysis of what happened at BuzzFeed over the past week is a good one: ie., there’s a reason why one company’s laying off of 15% of its workforce in a notoriously shaky industry felt abnormally outsized and tragic.

That is, to readers and its own staffers, BuzzFeed has become effectively synonymous with the internet culture we’ve come to know over the past decade — it was, as Oremus describes, “a beacon of 21st-century journalism and entertainment.” The view from the inside has always been jubilant at best, maybe humbly self-congratulatory at worst. But as it turns out, not even the most heady strain of exceptionalism could keep the party going forever, and it’ll be verrrrrry interesting to see how the master of the internet will navigate what’s next.

(Full disclosure: ya girl is employed by BuzzFeed and obviously has a personal vested interest in all of this, obvs!!)