At Mic, she was able to dabble in different jobs and negotiate grandiose titles like “executive social editor.” Often, she prefers the theater of tweeting back and forth with the editor she sits next to rather than speaking face to face.

“If you can be young at heart, I think it makes your personal, and not only your work life, better,” added Ms. Plank, who left for Vox last month after two and a half years at Mic.

Mic apparently isn’t a good fit for everyone. Madhulika Sikka, who left NPR last year to join Mic as executive editor, announced earlier this week that she was leaving the website, saying on Twitter that she was “ready to take on something new.”

Perhaps because of this very culture of workplace-as-reality-show, Mr. Pavelski, the prevaricating treehouse builder, remains notably unchastened.

“Maybe this is because I’m young, but, like, I don’t think that there is a lot about my personal life that I wouldn’t want to incorporate into what I’m doing professionally,” he said. “The reason I wrote that essay in the first place was about catharsis, and I wanted to walk through my thought process and figure out what was going on with me.”

The logic of that may be more apparent to his age group.

“The one thing I don’t want people to mistake is that we’re serious about this,” he added. “And that we’re taking over. That is all.”