Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
News
NY Times College Sex Story Inspires Hedge Fund Manager To Offer Biting Dating Advice
By
Ben Yakas
Published Jul 17, 2013
Modified Jul 17, 2013
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
By
Ben Yakas
Published Jul 17, 2013
Modified Jul 17, 2013
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
We live in a world of consequences: if enough people can't stop talking about Sharknado on Twitter, we get Sharknado 2: NYC Boogaloo immediately greenlit. And if the NY Times is going to continue to publish 4,800 word Style section treatises that took five months of work to conclude that college women (at one particular Ivy League university) enjoy casual sex in the year 2013, then they deserve to be made fun of by master troll Katie Roiphe. The only people remotely surprised by (or interested in) the content of the Times' story seem to be the "Morning Joe" crew and some monocle-dropping parents. One of those parents happens to be Whitney Tilson, a millionaire hedge funder who put his semi-violent response to the "horrifying" story online for all to see.
Tilson, the founder of Kase Capital, was particularly shocked by a section of the patronizing abomination in which one young woman recounts a particular sexual encounter (one which hedged on the phrase, “get down on your knees”). He wrote a fired-up blog post about it, imploring his three daughters to "bite it" if it came to that.
Then for good measure, emailed the piece to his education reform listserv. “A handful of people asked to be removed from my [list],” Tilson told the Post, though he didn't say what his daughters reactions were to getting totally "OMG DAD SO EMBARASSING'd" in the press.
The NY Times overtly and implicitly defended the piece, which became #1 on their most emailed list over the weekend because SEX, in a long interview with author Kate Taylor yesterday; it's in that interview that we learned Taylor spent five months working exclusively on this ridiculous piece. The Times is one of the few places left in America that has the resources to pay journalists to do real investigative reporting over long periods of time...and this is what we get. Which is not to say there isn't an article about female sexuality in college that is worth reporting—this is just not it.
It's another sign that the Times has no interest in letting up with the contentless self-parodying (and ultimately depressing) trend articles, which continue to find new and more irritating ways every week to teach us about non-existant dating rituals or troll us with profiles of futurism consultants. We suppose we should be grateful that the paper of record can still make us laugh heartily, and still reports real news, too.
Tagged
bullshit
ny times
sex
trend stories
trends
trolls
Whitney Tilson
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE news
Inside Luigi Mangione's legal strategy before his federal guilty plea
Newly unsealed transcripts and court filings reveal how his lawyers weighed a mental health defense — and the risk it could have posed to his federal case.
By
Samantha Max
Published Oct 20, 2026 at 12:37 p.m. ET
NYC proposes crackdown down on AI customer service chatbots
Customers would have to be provided the option of speaking with a human.
By
Arya Sundaram
News
NYC proposes crackdown down on AI customer service chatbots
Customers would have to be provided the option of speaking with a human.
By
Arya Sundaram
Early Addition: There's a new hot duck, this time in Queens
By
James Ramsay
NYPD hate crime unit investigates smashed windows, ‘Pal Action’ graffiti at UES Capital One
By
Ryan Kost
A reliably Republican part of NJ, until ICE came to town
By
Mike Hayes
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .