Voice Post

Blog: Lainey Gossip

- Blog about the latest in entertainment news and celebrity gossip

- In order to relate to and simply enjoy Lainey’s blog, one must be “in the know” of current celebrities in the limelight and what is going on in the entertainment world.

- To keep up with what is relevant in Hollywood at the moment, it is pertinent to have access to social media platforms, thus making the world of entertainment accessible at one’s fingertips.

Blogger(s): Lainey, Jacek, Sarah, Duana, Sasha, Maria, Hayley, Joanna, Kathleen

- Unfortunately, not much is revealed about the main author of this blog, nor about her counterparts.

- Lainey has other writers who share posts on her blog as well; however, they all share a very similar voice and overall writing style.

- In the bios section of the website, nothing even remotely personal is revealed about the authors — their profile pictures aren’t even of them!

Post #1: “Jennifer Lawrence kisses Darren Aronofsky” (posted 11/4/16)

In this particular blog post, Katleen weighs in on one of Hollywood’s newest couples — Jennifer Lawrence and Darren Aronofsky. Needless to say, Lainey succeeds in portraying her own two cents on the matter. She begins the post by addressing the fact that these two celebrities are indeed a couple. However, she quickly veers from a merely factual statement to an extremely opinionated one by saying, “When I first saw the photos [of the couple on a date], my first reaction was ‘Ew.’ Does that make me an asshole?” Not only is Lainey expresses her dismay, but she is also involving the readers in her post, by asking them to weigh in on their own opinions. Although Kathleen’s post is, in the end, listing facts, she does an extremely well job incorporating her own lightheartedness. For instance, at the end of her post she writes, “In an attempt to not be a completely superficial bitch, I looked up interviews with Darren Aronofsky because sex appeal isn’t always just physical. Maybe he’s got a sexy voice or some serious swagger.” Her word choice is very casual, and even on trend, like the word “swagger.”

Lainey’s overall tone in the post is humorous and casual, frequently asking the audience questions in order to keep them engaged in her writing. She uses words and phrases such as “seriously,” “let’s be real,” and even curse words like “asshole” and “bitch” which all create a more humane, relatable persona for Lainey. Lainey is all about including her audience — she uses inclusive pronouns like “we” and “our.” In regards to Lainey’s punctuation in this post, she is pretty grammatically spot on. Her paragraph shape and flow is also appropriate, making her post an easy read and overall, easy on the eyes.

Post #2: “Keira Knightley is Tragically Normal” (posted 11/4/16)

In this post, the author, Duana writes about how Keira Knightley differs from Gwyneth Paltrow by pointing out how “normal” Keira Knightley really is. Her tone throughout the post is seemingly sarcastic; however, she does give a lot of credit to Keira Knightley by saying, “Celebrities don’t need to be our role models — not lease because they often don’t actually live in the real world. But if you’re looking for someone to appreciate, you could do a hell of a lot worse.” Although Duana possesses a cynical tone that flows throughout each paragraph, she does contradict herself in the end by saying that even though Keira Knightley is a celebrity and has zero concept of the real world, she is at least a celebrity they “we” should appreciate because she expresses problems faced by the majority of “normal” women.

Duana uses words and phrases like, “I know” and “Right?” which insinuate that she is confident in her own opinion and assumes that the readers agree with her. In contrast to the last post on Lainey’s blog, this post is definitely more serious and factual. Duana references a lot of quotes from Keira that were cited in a Haarper’s Bazaar interview, which make her post a bit more credible than Kathleen’s. The punctuation in this post is also well done, and it is important to point her how Duana highlights the quotes from Keira Knightley’s interview — she puts the entire quote in bold and gives the quote its very own paragraph, allowing it to stand out to the reader’s eye. Overall, the paragraph flow was a bit choppy. Each paragraph is about three sentences long, making them appear too short, which makes the post in its entirety seem too long because it is so spaced out.