Oh No They Didn’t, sometimes known as ONTD, is the largest community on LiveJournal. It has more than 100,000 members. Sometimes, it is written together, ohnotheydidnt. The community focuses on celebrity gossip and pop culture.
Most of the posts are aggregated from other gossip blogs. In 2010, the platform formed a partnership with pop culture blog network Buzz Media. Yet it was not renewed one year later.
According to some statistics, the Ohnotheydidnt has more than 1 million visits daily. That is quite a high traffic for a website by regular people. The website has increased the comment limit on posts from 5,000 to 10,000 comments because of the high demand.
Once you are at the website, you can use the Quick Links like film, television, celeb social media, celeb reactions, music, or ONTD original to browse through content.
What is it?
Ohnotheydidnt is a community site originally created in 2004 by teenagers Erin Lang, Bri Draffen, and Breniecia Reuben.
They publish more than 100 posts per day on average. Most of the posts get between 100 and 500 comments.
Community moderators post a weekly post that they call Free for All Friday, or short, FFAF. This post allows members to post off-topic comments. Oh No They Didn’t uses these posts to expand and include community discussion posts for important events like the Academy Awards, the Olympics, and Saturday Night Live viewing posts.
The site relies heavily on user participation in the comments section. There, members can express their opinions on posts. They can either comment by words, or use an animated GIF image representing their feelings.
Fun fact: following the passing of Michael Jackson in June 2009, users expressed their collective grief by posting Fantasia Barrino GIF. In this GIF, the American Idol star wails and flails her arms wildly. Many used the popular GIF taken from the Thriller music video featuring a scene of Jackson eating popcorn.
How popular is the website?
OhNoTheyDidnt is one of the more popular celebrity gossip websites. The main reason for its popularity is that it is user-generated service. It does not rely on journalists to post news and gossip.
In 2008, the website won the Best Gossip Blog at the Weblog Awards, beating out popular blogs like D-Listed, Perez Hilton, and TMZ. Artist Lily Allen referenced the online community in her Playboy Magazine interview in March 2009.
Swedish newspaper Metro describes the community as gossip on steroids. Other publications call the community “a psychopathic celebrity news gossip wire-of-sorts”. They call their users a community of pathologically obsessive gossip sadomasochists.
Why Fans Love them?
The biggest reason why fans love the website is the platform itself and its features. It is basically everything goes. Fans can contribute news and gossip.
But the biggest reason is their motto. It says, “the celebrities are disposable, the gossip is priceless”. Maybe this is how some fans view celebrities. They do not put them on a pedestal. Instead, they think of celebrities as regular people with problems and challenges just like the rest of us. And it is time to show it to the world.
Here is a comment by a fan, “I check OhNoTheyDidnt every day before class and when I get home. It is to me what crack is to Amy Winehouse“.
Do you understand the editorial style of the website now?
Some of their Exclusive News
While ONTD gets most of its gossip aggregated from other blogs, they also break some exclusive news. For example, it was the first community to break the news of Jamie Lynn Spears’ pregnancy. They leaked an OK Magazine unpublished front page cover.
They were also the first to report that Kirk Acevedo had announced via his Facebook status that he has been fired from the Fox drama, Fringe.
They also use some nicknames for events to distinguish them in future posts. For example, the 2008 hospitalization of Britney Spears was called Hostage Britiuation by the community. Rolling Stone picked up the nickname and used it.
The abuse between Rihanna and Chris Brown was dubbed Domestic Disturbia.
Are there any rules?
While OhNoTheyDidnt is famous as a website where everything goes, there are still rules for posting. The community revolves around celebrities, movies, TV shows, video games, music, and similar forms of entertainment.
The community welcomes all people, regardless of their identity. They do not allow discrimination of any kind, including mental health status, racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, and similar.
Fun fact: people calling you stupid or gross do not commit a major personal attack. The website doesn’t consider it as such. You can report actual substantial and truly offensive personal attacks, like someone saying FU, F*ck you, F*ck off, and similar pejorative language.
Constant trolling is not tolerated and will result in being banned. You can be reasonably critical of celebrities, but serious personal attacks are frowned upon. Users are not allowed to constantly use slurs and offensive language toward a celebrity.
Being misogynistic is another thing that will get you a warning, and eventually a ban. Yes, users can post, but moderators decide what gets posted.
Posting different information from an article already posted is considered a repots. Users should delete it or moderators will.
They do not allow off-topic comments in regular posts. There are ONTD Roundups during the week and Free for All Posts during the weekend when users can post off-topic comments.
There are also some forbidden websites for posting, like Celebrity Babies, Celebrity Baby Blog, Bossip.com, BlindGossip.com, DailyMail.co.uk, Mashable.com, and more.
Users can check the terms and conditions for a full list of the forbidden websites.
