Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

Cecily Von Ziegesar Has Blood On Her Hands (Even Though She Neither Invented Nor Popularized Adolescent Bitchery)

Which is to say, when they start imitating Celebrity Rehab, we should talk, but until then:

Life is imitating television on the Upper East Side, where an anonymous eighth-grade girl has founded a gossip Web log modeled after the one that is the backbone of “Gossip Girl.”

While on the TV show the fictional parents and school leaders appear oblivious to the catty Gossip Girl blog, the real-life provocateur, who calls herself Miss ITK (for Miss In The Know), has caused an incredible stir. School hallways are buzzing with the name of her URL; eighth-grade girls across the city are reportedly breaking down in tears, and, in the final climax, an unknown force has pushed the site offline.

Before it was shut down earlier this week, the blog had generated more than 300 comments, with some posters remarking on Miss ITK’s accuracy and others begging her to kill the blog, describing many tears shed and some friendships broken.

Miss ITK chronicled the social lives of what she described as the class of 2012’s “elite A-list.” One post described two girls’ attempts to revamp their images: one through eye-coloring contact lenses and another by dancing suggestively at a bat mitzvah. Another crowned a couple “our very own Queen and King.” Later, a post cataloged the class of 2012’s “A List” and “B List.”

Parents and students said the blog seemed like a deliberate copy of the one that is the heart of “Gossip Girl,” and whose author, Gossip Girl, narrates the show.

Like the television Gossip Girl, Miss ITK had her own signature salutation. On television, it’s “XOXO.” In real life, the line that reverberated with students was “Hello my butterflies.”