Was writing for newspapers and magazines around this time. Never for Conde Nast, but my impression was nobody in that business knew how to make money, it had already been made and they were just spending it like a third generation inheritance. They rode coattails in and while there were a few sharks on the corporate side, below the first name or two on the masthead it was hangers-on all the way down. It was a bubble.

The '00's were this odd period where it was easy to be seduced by the idea you could be famous for being clever. Men published and even read literary fiction. Before it became the troubled former child star of content it is today, Vice was actually a funny and subversive upstart. Book launches were society events. Being a columnist was a thing. It's hard to see how excesses of that period could be relevant today.

I commented on them in a previous thread about reddit, odd to see them here again. If Conde Nast is still staffed by people who cut their teeth in that era, they're going to need restructuring.