Rex Sorgatz knew an account of his bed-hopping among New York bloggers would ignite controversy; he's the internet infamy expert. But why did he play along with protocelebrity now so worthless?

Twitter users are a sorry bunch. Especially the media! Errata, excuses, and eye-rolling from today's tweets:

It was kind of an awkward joke to begin with: CNET News.com writer Caroline McCarthy publicly imagining how her fameball buddies David Karp and Charles Forman would be mocked by Perez Hilton if the celebrity blogger worked for Valleywag. Hilton would, of course, call the cuddle-buddies gay, as McCarthy made clear in a mockup posted to her Tumblr Wednesday night. But throw in the fact that McCarthy and Karp very recently, we heard, broke up, and the image takes on an entirely more vicious, passive-aggressive sheen.

Blind items are the gossip world's equivalent of the mathematical puzzles that keep engineers entertained. Try your hand! They're easier than a Rubik's Cube. CNET News reporter Caroline McCarthy has posed the following one:

It's complicated. God, is it ever. The same October Details story that follows around New York's "Internet playboys" and their bicoastal hangers-on runs with this chart of who dated, funded, or hated in this overdocumented side of the Web scene. So sweet to know we're not the only ones keeping a scorecard, but one of its subjects, Caroline McCarthy, claims there's inaccuracies! Let's do Details and the kids recently fanning their fameballs from the coverage a favor and fix it up then. Ready? Let loose in the comments with your errata.

[Editor's note: You probably didn't read Sassy magazine's Cute Band Alert back in the '90s. But that girl in your campus lab, the one who made her own zines and wore slips as outerwear? She did. In homage, we give you Cute Startup Alert!] Tumblr is at the apex of blog cute right now. We blame founder David Karp and his short pants. There's something indierock about the way Karp avoided Silicon Valley to found his company in Manhattan and stock it with Williamsburg residents.You won't find Tumblr in your sysadmin's RSS feeds. Tumblr bloggers follow one another on the site's internal Dashboard system. By design, the site limits bloggers to a few formats, gracefully styling their most self-aggrandizing prose into tasty niblets. It's like the beauty of a three-chord postpunk love song packaged as a middle-school love note: "Do you want to / Follow me? / Yes/No" New York's chattering classes — the new old media kids, the new new media kids, and the even newer kids who want to be the new new kids — have gleefully hopped aboard Tumblr. Karp's ladylove, CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy, is there. So are a raft of current and former Gawker editors and their hangers-on, drunklinking one another late into the night, thanks to Tumblr's one-click reblogging tool. "In one particular social circle," Karp explained recently, "we've collected a lot of New York users. It's a clique like any other where you'll see a lot of negativity." True, and what cuddly, darling negativity it is. (Photo by Rex Sorgatz)

"So you shit on me on Tumblr, let's talk about it." [Fishbowl NY]

CNET News.com writer Caroline McCarthy published a nice scoop today on how social networking site I'm In Like With You raised $1.5 million from venture funding firm Spark Capital. Silicon Alley Insider has been chasing the story for weeks! How did McCarthy pull the exclusive out from under their nose? Who's to say! But, um, it's probably worth noting that McCarthy is dating David Karp, founder of blog network Tumblr and an intimate, bed-cuddling, entire-body-carrying friend of I'm In Like With You founder Charles Forman. Karp's company also shares Spark Capital as a venture funding backer. So, basically, McCarthy had sources close to her boyfriend to draw on. (Pictured, the happy threesome of Forman, Karp and McCarthy, as photographed by Richard Blakeley.) Should McCarthy's CNET blog post have carried a disclaimer? She doesn't think so:

HEARST TOWER, NEW YORK — Far from the sweaty, screaming fans that attended Digg's Brooklyn meetup Wednesday night, the suits of the Alley and Valley gathered last night on the top-most floor of the Hearst Tower for another Founders Club party to celebrate each others' transcendent splendor. All night, giant screens at either end of the party played clips from Citizen Kane, the barely fictionalized biopic based on the life of Hearst Corp.'s own founder, William Randolph Hearst. There wasn't a Hearst in the crowd, but there were those who aspire to be him. Blog moguls like PaidContent's Rafat Ali, Gawker Media's Nick Denton and AlleyCorp's Henry Blodget mingled. New Gifts.com CEO Jason Rapp attended, as did Digg cofounders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's mentor, Valley bad boy Sean Parker, was rumored to be in the crowd as well. Jimmy Wales, cofounder of the world's most comprehensive list of William Randolph Heart's angry responses to Citizen Kane, attended with Andrea Weckerle on his arm. Photos below.

Spotted at the MashBash in New York City on Saturday, CNET reporter Caroline McCarthy with Tumblr founder David Karp and Michelle DeForest of NextNewNetorks. Karp and McCarthy are officially an item we understand, which warms our geeky hearts. Can you suggest a better caption? Do so in the comments, and the winning one will become the new headline on this post. Friday's winner, in a close one: rwe112, for "Now it's time on Sprockets when we dance." (Photo by Leora Zellman)

If CBS were to greenlight a TV series about life at a modern media giant, the director would find it hard to cast anyone but Quincy Smith as himself. Call it 60 Seconds, a version of the news show sped up for the Web. His $1.8 billion CNET buy is just the latest episode in the life of the fast-talking president of CBS Interactive. Smith is sui generis; the stereotype, which grates on him but fits, is that of a frenetic dealmaker. Last month, he said he was looking for "the next YouTube"; instead, he bought a company which, having been founded in 1992, is eight times older than the current incarnation of CBS. CBS handlers offered to have him speak to me; I accepted. In the middle of the mile-a-minute conversation-argument, I think we both wondered what we'd gotten ourselves into. A partial transcript — the most I was able to type out while trying to keep up with Smith's banter:

After a week of browsing booths and attending parties in San Francisco for the Web 2.0 Expo, New York-based tech reporter Caroline McCarthy rained on the local bubble's annual hype parade. [News.com] (Photo by Brian Solis)

At the PSFK Conference in New York earlier today, NASA and auction site Etsy joined to invite the craftsmen who sell their goods on Etsy to compete to see who could make the best NASA-themed handmade good. "We'll send the two winners into space," Etsy founder Robert Kalin told the crowd. The crowd, along with News.com's Caroline McCarthy, took him at his word. Visions of a ride on Virgin Galactic took hold. Only to be dissolved. Because sadly, it turns out Etsy will not send any two people into space, but only their prize-winning goods. (Photo by pingnews.com)

News.com's Caroline McCarthy cornered Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at SXSW and asked him when Facebook would make the kind of philanthropic efforts that Google and Microsoft do. Not yet, Zuck said. ""We're not incredibly profitable, we're not at that stage." For now, he said, people should remember that Facebook itself is a charitable gift to the world.

Think of a high-school reunion held the day after you graduate: That was the vibe at the Side Bar Sunday night, where Gawker Media (publisher of fine weblog media products) threw a party for Valleywag and our sister sites, io9 and Lifehacker. We won Twitter praise for the free beer and minimal line out front, despite the wall-to-wall crowd in the Side Bar's expansive patio. Valleywag alumna Megan McCarthy, whom I never see in San Francisco — yes, she's been avoiding me — showed up toting Wired's award for best website started before most SXSW attendees were born.Vile videoblogger Loren Feldman showed up and didn't say anything truly nasty, to my disappointment.Julia Allison appeared, dressed as Julia Allison with a furry, green hat. Scott Beale and Brian Solis were on hand lensing everyone; Beale caught me and Caroline McCarthy of News.com having a moment, above. More photos, after the jump.

"Quick, post the pictures before you sober up!" the ever-helpful Paul Boutin emails me. I'd love to, Paul, but it seems that Brian Lam, gadget expert, forgot to put charged-up batteries in this superhigh-tech, amazingly unusable Sony camera he lent me. Thanks, Brian. This is why he's running a gadget blog and I make fun of venture capitalists for a living, people.

Like one of those brave chimpanzees NASA sent to space before humans, CNET's Caroline McCarthy today took to the heavens aboard the inaugural flight of "BetaBlue," JetBlue's new onboard Wi-Fi service. It's supposed to allow passengers access to email and IM via their BlackBerrys and Yahoo accounts.

Digital media types here in New York are always looking for a reason to celebrate their own achievements. A couple of months ago, a few of them began calling themselves the Founders Club and decided to start holding mixers around town. Last night, NBC hosted the latest in the series on the set of Saturday Night Live. Who showed? Mostly wantrepreneurs looking for a VC teat to suckle, of course. But I also ran into Digg CEO Jay Adelson, pictured above; a definitely not-pictured angel Ron Conway, who dodged my camera; a Facebook "founder"; and MC Hammer.

We're getting live reports on who's making it past the velvet rope at Google's New York party. The bash, held in Google's West Chelsea offices at 76 Ninth Avenue, has already kicked up a fuss. Google's controlling-but-not-that-bright PR people have tried to limit the guest list to consumer and fashion reporters, figuring they'd be more likely to critique the buffet and less likely to ask pesky questions about the search engine's business practices. So far, they've had mixed results. Here's who we've heard has showed up so far — and who's been barred at the door.

Hey New York CNET employees, have a good time last night? Some of you did, from what we hear. Whomever you were, um, "entertaining" posted a missed connections ad on Craigslist. Behind the scenes research (er, IM chats with employees and former employees) has revealed that the "CNET girls" in question are not on the editorial side of things, which rules out our best guess, New York-based reporter and sometime CNBC pundit Caroline McCarthy. So far, speculation centers on the ad-sales department, known to insiders to include at least one "perverted, young girl-chasing alcoholic" figure who reportedly inspires most of the wild nights out. We're dying to know if the missed connection was made, and if the alleged girl-chaser was a factor. Fill us in.