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I have spoken to the future of journalism and his name is Perez.

Before you despair, gentle reader, consider the facts: Mario Lavandeira (a.k.a. Perez Hilton), age 30, is the openly gay, Cuban-American founder of the celebrity gossip blog Perezhilton.com. The site, which according to industry trackers generates well over a million hits a day, is known for its unabashedly juvenile style of posting celebrity photos with Hilton's own dirty doodles scrawled over top. (Think "Eat bitch!" beside Lindsay Lohan's emaciated spine.)

In essence, Perezhilton.com is the sort of organ that makes high-minded, middle-aged readers of newspapers like this one shudder in horror, take a long draft of pinot noir and crank up Shelagh Rogers on Radio One.

But Hilton's site, for all its bratty bad taste, is also a defiantly populist, innovatively written and somewhat reliable image-based media source frequently monitored by, yes, journalists. Add to that the fact that it's as addictive as chocolate-coated crack and you know why it earned Perez the unofficial title of Hollywood's Most Hated Website - an accolade of which he is enormously proud, by the way.

He's also proud of his new book, Red Carpet Suicide: A Survival Guide On Keeping Up With the Hiltons, which offers a tongue-in-cheek guide on how to become the kind of "skinny, notorious, mischievous, hot, loves a party, dates a lot, drives drunk, poses seductively for the camera, rarely works, dates some more and doesn't eat" small-h "hilton" (code for celebutante) that Perez has made his name blogging about.

What makes Hilton unusual is that, unlike most purveyors of abusive gossip (he has been known to "out" closeted celebrities and is not above name calling, labeling Sienna Miller "Sluttyenna" and Amy Winehouse "Wino"), he has managed to gain access to the ranks of those he skewers.

It's an irony that surprises him as much as anyone else. "Just the other day I invited [reality TV stars] Spencer Pratt, Heidi Montag and the Kardashians out for milkshakes and gave them free copies of the book," he told me in a phone interview from his Los Angeles apartment, which he leaves only on the weekends. "It was hilarious because I insult them and make fun of them all the time, but they still came and were really nice. It was the perfect way to publicize the book and what I do."

Asked why he thinks these reality stars would show up for a photo op with someone who makes a living by publicly slagging them, I can almost see Hilton petulantly rolling his eyes through the phone line. "They don't care what it is; they just want to be written about," he says, adding, "They're old-school fame whores."

It is this age-old Hollywood arc of a celebrity's ascension to the altar of fame followed by ritual media slaughter that Hilton so cleverly exploits. In his world, there is no difference between bad or good, love or hate, acclaim or loathing. There is only one crucial distinction - the one that exists between fame and obscurity, which, come to think of it, is a frightening reflection of mainstream culture. In other words, we get the hiltons we deserve.

As he writes in his book, "People think you just have to show up to an event and act famous and then everyone will love you. Wrong. They have to hate you to love you. I know that part very well. They have to love talking about you but hate the fact that they love it. To be a hilton, you have to love to be hated, or at least not care if you are hated."

It's a dark, provocative and twisted vision of success, but Hilton is oddly upbeat.

"I don't hate celebrities; I love them!" he says in the tone of a pimp extolling the virtues of his "girls." "There are so many new ones out there acting badly; I never get bored. And for every hot mess like Lindsay Lohan, there's a [straitlaced] Jonas brother."

Unlike his namesake and personal friend, Paris Hilton, he is not famous for being famous but famous for making others famous for being famous. How's that for the cyber-serpent eating its tail?

As for the potential pitfalls of partying with his subjects, Hilton is unapologetically lacking in both pretension and principle.

"I'm not compromising anything because I'm not trying to be anything other than what I am. It's Perez Hilton.com," he says. "It's not The New York Times."

For now, at least.

lmclaren@globeandmail.com