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Urlbotonians, it's time to get (a little) serious. I know, I know... you guys come here to enjoy some jorshing, a little snarking and maybe a bit of jesting, but when a new decade dawns it is appropriate to reflect on our habits and the effect they have on the world. Since this site is all about the intratubes, let's reflect on the results of our online behavior.

It's easy to treat these here interwebs as an alternate reality, disconnected from consequence. But as we've seen time and time again, real human connections are forged online. As the infrastructure of old media increasingly sloughs off into the ether, the simple fact that online communities have real world ramifications will become undeniable.

So, I'd like to make a New Year's web resolution: stop going to perezhilton.com.

The reasons to ignore Perez Hilton are numerous and none of them is "gossip is trite and spiteful." I'm fine with gossip. There's a way to be catty, funny and, dare I say it, a little bitchy about the lives of famous people without being hateful, negative and bigoted. There's a way to do it with some wit. Michael K does it at Dlisted. The girls of Go Fug Yourself do it well as well.

Perez is different. Perez -- in addition to lacking their wit, sophistication and decency -- is simply, undeniably, nakedly a bigot*. I won't delineate each of his offenses, but suffice it to say that his racism is thinly veiled and his misogyny barefaced. The level of his contempt and hatred for women is, frankly, often staggering. This is behavior that I don't care to support with my page views.

Really, though, more than anti-black or anti-woman, Perez is anti-human. Take a look at this post and tell me that you see anything besides a normal middle aged man. That's all I see. Not Perez. For Perez, normal aging -- AKA the human condition -- is disgusting and shocking.

That alone -- as if the bigotry weren't enough -- should convince you to blacklist him. The man simply has contempt for humans. Cut him out of your RSS feed.

- Mike

*To be accurate, I should say that his copywriters are naked bigots or, rather, support a nakedly bigoted agenda (oh damn, ya burnt!). Yup, Perez writes not a word of the drivel that propagates his brand. Isn't it surreal to realize that all of those embarrassing spelling mistakes are there on purpose? That the sophomoric jokes and inane white "scribbles" are part of a formula? Yup. It is.