I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts about the infamous Emily Gould essay that the New York Times Magazine ran as its cover story this past weekend. My thoughts about it are complicated.

Emily Gould is a 26-year-old New Yorker and used to be co-editor of Gawker, the snarky New York media blog. (I don’t read Gawker regularly, so I’d never heard of her.) Her Times piece is an 8,000-word essay about how she had a blog, then got popular, then got picked to be co-editor of Gawker, then couldn’t deal with all the attention, then left Gawker and tried to become a regular blogger again. This is the cover story of the New York Times Magazine, mind you. It’s been roundly criticized all over the web as a piece of whiny narcissism, and some are wondering why it got printed, let alone why it deserved 8,000 words and the cover slot. Here are some of the more high-profile reactions.

My first reaction was that I hated the piece. Then I realized that part of my hatred was due to envy. Then I berated myself because sometimes I can be so judgmental. I don’t like it when I’m judgmental. After all, I don’t like it when people judge me, do I? And wouldn’t the world be a better place if we would all stop being so negative? There’s something very human about the urge to bad-mouth and look down on others. But does that make it okay?

But that’s my superego talking. Let’s get back to my id.

I saw the essay on the Times website late last week — it appeared online a few days in advance of the magazine — and my first thought was that I definitely wanted to read it, since I’m a blogger and I like reading about blog culture. So I read it over the weekend.

By the end of the first paragraph, I was turned off.

Back in 2006, when I was 24, my life was cozy and safe. I had just been promoted to associate editor at the publishing house where I’d been working since I graduated from college,

Oh, god. Another twentyomething wannabe writer trying to make it in the New York publishing scene.

and I was living with my boyfriend, Henry, and two cats in a grubby but spacious two-bedroom apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Cliché number 2: lives with boyfriend in Brooklyn. She’ll go on to describe Henry as “a lovably bumbling character, a bassist in a fledgling noise-rock band who said unexpectedly insightful things about the contestants on ‘Project Runway’ and then wondered aloud whether we had any snacks.” Great. Not only do they live in Brooklyn, but the boyfriend’s a hipster musician with an ironic sensibility. Is this real or is it from a fiction workshop? Too cute by half.

I spent most of my free time sitting with Henry in our cheery yellow living room on our stained Ikea couch, watching TV. And almost every day I updated my year-old blog, Emily Magazine, to let a few hundred people know what I was reading and watching and thinking about.

This is when the anger kicked in. WTF? Your blog has a few hundred readers? That’s not fair. If I exclude search engines, my blog probably gets no more than 100 hits a day.

Much later in the article, post-Gawker, Emily starts a new blog, and she writes:

Word had spread through my immediate circle of friends about the blog, and it was now getting a few hundred visitors a day

Jesus Christ. How big is your “immediate circle of friends”? You just toss that out there in passing, “a few hundred visitors a day,” as if it’s no biggie? Do you know how many bloggers would kill to have a few hundred visitors a day? Do you know that I’ve been blogging for more than seven years now and I give lots of care and attention to my posts and I can’t come near that number of visitors?

That’s when I started to think, hmm… do you think maybe you might be envious?

As I read on, my revulsion and envy were joined by fear, because I realized I had some things in common with Emily, some things that are not so attractive. I wondered: Is this what I sound like when I write about my thoughts and feelings? Do I sound this self-centered and whiny? Is this what a desire for attention gets you?

So reading the essay was like looking at a train wreck and into a funhouse mirror at the same time.

My question is, why did this essay get printed? At such length? And as the cover story? The editors probably thought it would be oh-so-insightful. Overthinkers and academics love to extrapolate from anecdotes and find Meaning everywhere, even when there isn’t any. See, New York Times readers? This is What Young People Are Like Today. People don’t care about privacy anymore! It’s true because this one person wrote about it in a first-person essay!

Indeed, it turns out that’s totally what they were trying to do:

Putting Emily’s story on the cover was not a tough call. One of the things we are most interested in at the magazine are those lifestyle issues — what we call Way We Live Now issues — that blend personal narratives with larger political or ethical or philosophical concerns. These are the kinds of things readers are engaged by on Sunday morning (or anytime, in cyberspace). How the Internet is re-describing how we understand privacy, intimacy and personal history is, I think, such an issue, and the fact that the story — an 8,000-word story — has already, in 6 [h]ours or so, attracted more than 600 comments (most of them having nothing to do with why we published the piece as a cover story) leads me to believe a lot of folks agree.

No. The reason it attracted more than 600 comments is because it was awful.

The thing is, it’s fine if you want to write about a cultural trend. But if a piece of art isn’t going to be informative, then it has to be aesthetically pleasing, and this one wasn’t. It can’t just be about the destination; it also has to be about the journey. And this journey was cringeworthy.

But can I tell you what really got me riled about this article? In case you thought I wasn’t riled up enough about it?

Emily Gould is taking readers’ questions and comments. Responses to selected questions will be posted at nytimes.com/magazine on Tuesday, May 27.

Cripes. Not only do you let her write an 8,000-word self-indulgent piece of crap, but then you’re going to have her respond to readers’ questions and comments? Wow, New York Times. Let’s just give her more attention. And you’re so hip and cool, aren’t you? You probably think that people are going to be oh so intrigued by her essay and are going to want to ask her all these Big Idea sorts of questions, since, you know, she’s clearly representative of this whole blogging culture? Since, you know, you’ve just proclaimed her as such?

Her responses are now posted. Okay — she seems to be very aware of how her piece has come across. Not a big surprise. But it’s nice to know she’s not clueless about it.

A couple more points.

The first point is, I know that I’m being judgmental here. And again, if I were in Emily’s shoes, I wouldn’t like it. I wouldn’t like having my essay called “an 8,000-word self-indulgent piece of crap.”

That’s what depresses me, though. Because this is my fantasy. I’m ashamed to say it, but part of me, some part deep down, the child that doesn’t feel it ever got enough love, craves this kind of attention. The kid in me would love to write the cover story for the New York Times Magazine and have it be all about me and my life and have it be read by thousands of people. Because it would mean that I exist, and I could make everyone love me! It’s an infantile urge — I don’t mean that in a bad way, I mean that it’s what an infant feels: that I am the center of attention and it’s all about me.

But look what happens when you get that attention. People rightfully attack you, because why the hell should other people care about you and your petty problems? What makes you so special? Because, you know, you’re not so special. And it turns out that even though you’ve gotten all this attention, people don’t love you.

So the fantasy is worthless. I realized this a few years ago. If I can ever manage to become a published writer, I’d rather write about history and politics. Not only do I find it interesting, but it’s healthier, because it’s something external to yourself.

The second point is, I realize that I’ve just spent over a thousand words giving attention to an article that I claim deserves no attention.

Damn you, you New York Times and your jujitsu. You tricked me!