Today marks the last day for MediaWorks’ gossip site SCOUT. If you didn’t have time to say your goodbyes, Alex Casey has assembled a shrine to the greatest headlines the site ever published.
Let me tell you why you should in fact be Grieving with a capital G. We’ve lost an amazing treasure trove of stories about grim New Zealand celebrities pottering around the place in ugly shoes.
I’m not gleeful to lose SCOUT, in fact I’m a little glum. The site has long been a pitch-perfect Clickhole parody of what a plucky wee country might try to make of its prominent folk, except it’s all real and it’s all bloody fantastic. You can’t write this stuff – yet somebody did, over and over over again. We’ll all remember the launch day classic that could have come from nowhere else in the universe:
Scared of losing an archive, last week I trawled back to the beginning of SCOUT and read every. single. headline. It was a thrilling ride that took me about two hours, one now sadly unavailable to the rest of New Zealand. So, in memory of the plucky yet doomed gossip site that couldn’t, here are ten of the site’s greatest headlines:
10
YES
9
FRICKEN’ LASER BEAMS ATTACHED TO HER FRICKEN’ NOSE
8
You just can’t beat it.
7
SUCH AN OMINOUS ELLIPSIS
6
SEA CHEEZELS
5
Revenge is a dish best served… ripped.
4
GET A CLOSER LOOK!
3
Can confirm that this is huge news and that Helen is an excellent follow.
2
He’d shoot the Kiwi instead.
1
God bless ye SCOUT, may ye watch over our lovely celebs from your new throne in gossip site heaven. Our Running Men are all a little less gratuitous on this day.
Alex Casey
Alex Casey is a senior writer at The Spinoff with over a decade of experience writing about popular culture and social issues in Aotearoa. She lives in Ōtautahi and likes watching reality TV and walking the dog, occasionally at the same time.
