Nick Sylvester, Viral Marketer

Is former Village Voice fabulist Nick Sylvester in talks to write for The New Yorker, as Gawker has it? The line between fact and fiction is hard to pin down where Sylvester is concerned, but Sylvester seems to have gotten a foot in the door already. In this week's issue, John Cassidy writes about online social networking--quoting a Yalie named Matt Morello about the "agonizing" process of choosing bands to list in his Facebook profile:

So what's there now? Albums by Babyshambles, Lady Sovereign, Marxy, and My Bloody Valentine, respectively an indie rock thing, a grime thing, a twenty-minute album released on my friend's record label that's brilliant and heard by practically no-one, and a canonic album from the late 80s.

The "friend's record label" is Beekeeper Records, which was founded two years ago by Sylvester, along with fellow Pitchfork Media writer Matt Lemay.

--Leon Neyfakh