[*That is, before they were overrun by medical marijuana despenseries and were consisted mostly of escort services, et al.]

Imagine a bunch of randy pre-teens furiously rifling through the porn ads, “massage” services and other adverts for (mostly) ill repute that fill the back pages of your local alt-weekly paper.  Now imagine those same kids, probably boys, equally randy, actually being the ones running stories for said alt-weekly.  Stop imagining because it’s already happening.  You see, last month Westword published what they are calling a “pictorial guide” of “Raver Girls and you”, with the allegedly humorous premise of “dreaded raver girls” on the attack. It is full of images of scantily clad young women from the recent Skylab rave in Denver.  

 In my opinion, the pics themselves aren’t offensive, though I doubt their parents think the same.  However, a prudish take on questionable clothing options is not my issue in calling this article out.  There’s no question that this is fairly normal behavior at raves and like-minded events.  And it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume the photographer wasn’t doing something surreptitiously when shooting these girls.  My beef is with the editorial decision behind reposting these photos.  It is nothing more than a cynical attempt at driving up pageviews by exploiting in-house stock photography of near-nude young women, because if you posted it once, why not do it again?  If you are a Westword decision maker and have to ask that question, you are a lame. 

Boobies, pasties and mean-spiritedness misygonistic “observations” are not novel ways to drive up web traffic.  Purveyors of gossip, celebrity skin and skin in general on the web and print know this well.  There’s an observable metric proving the the popularity of New York Post’s Page 6 column and the fact that Gawker Media’s most popular web property is a NSFW porn blog, Fleshbot.  Sex sells.  “No shit”, you’re thinking.  But just because something is true doesn’t mean you can rid yourself of the ickiness factor when perpetuating.  Again, the real question is with the decision to proceed after presumably taking into account the values of your readership.  From the looks of the comments to the post, Westword got what they wanted – pageviews, but at what cost? 

The more I think about this though, the more I’m torn with what is most offensive about the post – is it that it exists at all, as focused in my points above?  Or is it that the thin premise of humor is completely lacking?  In other words, the tackiness doesn’t come close to being eclipsed by the lameness of the bit.  I’m really not sure about that. 

I am sure that the author, Jef Otte, is not funny. Speaking of which, Otte chimes in with his enlightening, so to speak, motivation in response to an indignant commentor in the comments section (which generally speaking is proof of the downfall of modern society, but to Westword readers’ credit, heavily tilted against the post’s objectification):

Leading a blog post with boobs is absolutely a cynical, dude-centric grab for page views. In fact, I even set this article up so that boobs would appear before each page break, enticing people to go the next page and look at more boobs.  Sex sells, Ben — and you know what? You looked.

Good on you sir.  The retched stink of your journalistic standards are clear to the world.  Hiding behind an admittedly lowbrow rag does not count as an out, as integrity knows no bounds.  Causing a trainwreck and trying to share culpability with on-lookers is equally lame.