Reality Blogging: No Celebs Allowed?

April 7, 2008 — -- For a blog that prides itself on being the first of its kind to focus on the antics of average citizens instead of celebrities, it was an ironic turn of events when a scandalous photograph of pro-football player Matt Leinart brought attention to TheDirty.com.

"It wasn't our intention to become this famous," said Ari Golden, the site's president and CEO. "The funny angle [about the Matt Leinart scandal] was that [the photo showed average] 19- and 20-year-old girls he's holding the beer bong for."

The site, which Golden admits is "controversial" and, well, "dirty," depends on average Joes submitting photographs and videos they find amusing.

The site's resident blogger who goes by the pseudonym Nik Richie then posts the material and provides commentary.

It was a lucky coincidence when one of the site's average Joes e-mailed it photos -- which none of the other usual celebrity photogs had their hands on -- of Leinart partying near Scottsdale, Ariz.

The number of visitors to the site spiked after the Leinart photo appeared -- to between 200,000 and 300,000, not nearly as many as, say, PerezHilton.com, which has millions of hits a days but more than its usual number.

And while Golden is proud of his site's coup, he still asserts that it's not the celebrities his site is after: It's you and me.

Similar to JuicyCampus.com, the controversial college gossip site where users across the country post rumors about what classmates did the night before at the bar and later in their bedrooms, Golden and his team are trying to capitalize on the embarrassing -- and often intoxicated -- moments of regular folks.

"You've got all these sites out there that are pointing to celebrities, our focus is the regular person," said Golden. "Lindsay and Britney are so distant from the everyday American and are so hard to relate to."

The photographs and commentary are definitely risque -- several girls pose on beds for the camera and have captions written by Richie suggesting the girl get a boob or a nose job.

In others, a young woman, evidently intoxicated, is helped down the street as she flashes her thong to onlookers.