
Some things need to change - zhyder
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/28/some-things-need-to-change/
======
zhyder
This is terrible, worse than people speculating about Steve Jobs' health, as
an example of how low folks in our industry can go. (I know they're unrelated
but the 2 evoke the same emotions in me.)

I desperately want Michael Arrington to cover my startup as well, but I still
can't understand those that threatened or spat on him. Michael, I hope you
return to regular writing after Feb, but if you don't, thanks for all the
great work so far.

~~~
axod
I agree, it's a sad state of affairs, but

"I desperately want Michael Arrington to cover my startup as well"

I don't really get this... startups don't fall or succeed based on tc
coverage. It might spike traffic for a day with some geeks. That's all at the
end of the day.

Seems like some of this is TC's own doing - they have made people believe you
_have_ to get techcrunched, or you won't succeed - which is completely false.

I think they do a great job in the main though.

~~~
litewulf
I've had three things I've worked on get posted to TC, and it was totally
useless. Traffic had minimal stickiness (lots of clicks to the frontpage and
nothing else), and when I think about my behavior when I read TC, it
definitely makes sense.

And yet, for all of those startups, getting the TC story was a milestone of
sorts.

Its like getting your first hundred users, it doesn't define your success or
failure outright, but its a big psychological hurdle I think.

~~~
rantfoil
Our experience has been contrary to what others have said about minimal
stickiness -- Techcrunch coverage has precipitated blog coverage and attention
that each time has resulted in a new bar for traffic and retention. -- YMMV

Regardless of how valuable TechCrunch is to us or any other startup, the fact
remains that violence and threats of violence against bloggers is utterly
unjustifiable. People act like Michael Arrington owes them something, and
that's the fundamental problem underpinning the latest attacks.

~~~
dasil003
I think that's just luck of the draw. If your startup is good enough for TC to
precipitate mass blog coverage, than I imagine it would have worked the other
way around had TC not covered it early.

In any case, I think fighting for press coverage is stupid. Press coverage is
not going to make people use your product, and if enough people use your
product you are guaranteed coverage. On the other hand, if you want to break
into the public consciousness, traditional marketing will help, but there's no
point doing that until you know you have a winner on your hands.

------
Goladus
I'm not a part of the startup community, and have no hatred of Arrington. I
haven't heard any of the rumors and don't know any of the drama that wasn't in
the linked article. I've been a casual reader of Techcrunch for 1-2 years.

I have found Techcrunch articles to be of inconsistent quality at best. My
impression from reading Hacker News for the past two years is that TC articles
are often poorly written, poorly researched, and sensationalistic. 'Integrity'
isn't the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Techcrunch. It is
perhaps more candid than say, MSNBC, but that isn't saying much.

If I were Arrington, I'd try to stay focused on improving that image. Venting
personal frustrations on the front page of the site doesn't strike me as
helping all that much.

------
geedee77
For a while now I've been wondering about the industry and the people in it,
and this story just makes me question it all so much more.

It seems that the majority of people who work in IT (or at least, those that
contribute to the various sites) are acting like they are still in high
school. You've got to be associated with this person or that site to be 'cool'
and a 'guru' and if you're not you're nothing. It's getting beyond a joke.

Congratulation, you got a mention on TC or HN, or you've been 'dugg' by lots
of people. It doesn't mean your startup or product is actually good or useful
you know. If that is all the marketing you are relying on then you've only got
a 50% chance of success.

The whole thing even extends to people. I'm not going to name names but there
seems to be some sort of god-worshipping to people just because they write a
blog. Yes, I enjoy reading them, yes I pick up things from people who have
done it before, but it doesn't mean they're some sort of superstar ... and I'm
not even going to talk about the "we've just got a new CIO who used to work at
Google brigade" (oh, he worked at Google, he must be a hero).

Thanks for reading.

~~~
unalone
Partly it's because this is an industry that acts like it's very geared
towards youth. The emphasis is on the young millionaires: Zuckerberg comes to
mind. (I'm 18 and applying to YCombinator, so I fall into this category too.)

The environment is much more geared towards the hotheaded youth. It's not that
you have a few outliers that act immature that get kept in check: _everybody_
is immature, and the outliers are the people who act mature. Beyond that: a
lot of the people in this scene are the unpopular sorts. People like that
often have a ramped up persecution complex: they feel like everybody's got to
be against them. As a result, you get very ramped up fights over really stupid
things.

I get this a lot whenever I take the time to read Gawker - I followed the big
Jakob Lodwick fight when it happened. Every side was awful. Gawker took
potshots at Lodwick to get hits, people online started threatening him because
he was a public figure, Lodwick worked up, and in the end he denounced the
masses for being "common", Gawker still takes every chance it can get to diss
the guy, and people like Ted Dziuba go out of their way to denounce him as
pathetic and meaningless. It's a shame, because Lodwick does incredible work
and Dziuba doesn't, and so the one takes it out on the other.

(Then, of course, there's Connected Ventures, which makes a few good-but-
overrated things and whose staff tries to act perpetually like they're frat
kids. They're fun, but it doesn't help this attitude of people that it's okay
to be over-the-top and conceited and _loud_ about it.)

It's an attitude that I despise, and it hurts the community at large.

~~~
dbrush
"The environment is much more geared towards the hotheaded youth. It's not
that you have a few outliers that act immature that get kept in check:
everybody is immature, and the outliers are the people who act mature."

My experience being a part of Y Combinator is that everyone is precisely the
opposite, though my experience is limited them the people I've met directly a
indirectly because of Y Combinator.

~~~
unalone
That's why I like YCombinator, and consequently why I like Hacker News: it
avoids that level of immaturity. All the HN users who have YCombinator-funded
companies tend to have great conversations. I can't think of a troll here who
also was part of YC.

That said, this is the exception. I can't think of many more online groups
that are this adult.

------
trickjarrett
Arrington gets a lot of shit. I mean honestly he's a journalist. The core
problem is that when someone's livelihood is on the line, people change. When
someone is out of work looking for a job, there are usually two responses to a
rejection: depression or anger.

TechCrunch (and Arrington to a lesser extent these days) get hundreds of tips
or requests for coverage from companies and when TC passes them over, these
people who are relying on press to get their name out there, can sometimes get
angry. And when TC does cover a company in the same market, or sector, but not
their company, it can be interpreted as an insult.

Arrington is the face of TechCrunch. As much as Erick and the others write for
the site, Arrington is still seen as the embodiment of it.

I don't care for him, as he does come off as unlikable, and he is also prone
to sensationalism for the sake of traffic I feel sometimes, but I hate to read
this post. No one deserves that sort of treatment.

~~~
Harkins
Generally Arrington hasn't been respected by the journalists I've met. He
covers companies and fields he has a direct financial interest in, he's OK
with posting rumor and innuendo, and he can be sensationalist. The first one
is a big problem, the others are mostly style things. Faking photos like
[http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/27/cal-to-offer-course-
in-...](http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/01/27/cal-to-offer-course-in-advanced-
starcraft-theory/) is totally uncool.

(I'm not speaking here about my coworkers, or my employer, or my employer's
content-sharing agreement with TC.)

~~~
smhinsey
Sounds like we might work for the same news organization with a content
sharing agreement with TC. I was appalled/not surprised at all when that
happened.

~~~
Harkins
I wasn't trying to keep it secret; I've just already mentioned in other
comments that I work at the Washington Post. Most of what I was relating I've
heard from other journalists I've met, I just haven't really talked to any
coworkers about Arrington/TC.

~~~
smhinsey
Are you in DC? I'm in the Arlington office for the time being.

------
sounddust
I think that what it comes down to is that a certain subset of the population
has mental illness - some more severe than others - and when you come in
contact with a lot of people, you are going to have to occasionally deal with
those people. You can complain all you want, but even if the tone of the
internet community as a whole changes, you're still going to get death threats
and get spit on. It's a problem with the way that society handles mental
illness, not a problem with the attitudes of the VC/startup community.

~~~
blasdel
Michael Arrington is one of those people.

~~~
sounddust
Come on... of course you could argue that all humans are mentally ill to some
extent. But Arrington's behavior is easily within the realm of acceptable
social behavior, even if he does like to cause minor controversy.

However, death threats and randomly spitting in someone's face are
unambigiously crossing those social boundaries by a wide margin.

~~~
blasdel
Arrington is a pathological narssicist.

I'm not remotely surprised that he's pissed off other crazy people enough for
them to get retaliatory.

------
mnemonicsloth
I don't read TechCrunch, but I know _exactly_ why some people hate Michael
Arrington [1].

For various reasons [2], human beings tend to think about social groups in us-
and-them terms. We're naturally suspicious of Them (whoever they are), while
we tend to give Us (our own group) the benefit of the doubt.

Arrington's problem is that he wants to provide information to Us. That means
he's One Of Us, because he's helping Us and because we don't listen to Them. A
lot of the information he's providing is about a particular group of Them we'd
like to join: successful Silicon Valley people. This is a valuable service,
and _on a rational level_ we know he has to work hard at it. Even so, when he
describes TechCrunch as a startup, associates himself with other successful
startups, and even takes credit for some of their success, our emotion-driven
social circuitry hears: _I am an insider describing to you outsiders what it's
like to be inside._

If Mr. Arrington knew about this dynamic, I'm sure he'd spend less time
talking about being "battered for three days straight with product pitches
from entrepreneurs desperate for press."

[1] In case it's not clear, I'm ambivalent about him. It should go without
saying that spitting in the man's face is too much, and threatening his family
and business is beyond the pale.

[2] [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/a-tale-of-two-
tradeoff...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/a-tale-of-two-
tradeoffs.html)

------
froo
I guess the person who spat on Michael really showed his level of integrity.

I respect the guy (Arrington) professionally, I've never met him so I can't
comment on him personally but this type of shit is totally not cool.

I know you occasionally read this site Mike, so please come back when you've
taken time off, even if its to take a more backseat role in what you do.

------
geuis
Wow. He shouldn't have to put up with that crap. The whole death threat thing
is freaking scary. Hopefully Michael doesn't shutter Techcrunch, but he's
right. Something has to change.

~~~
babul
_Hopefully Michael doesn't shutter Techcrunch_

Given how much money it makes, I doubt it will happen.

------
pavelludiq
I don't like techcrunch, and i don't like Arrington, but i can't understand
why all the hate? Spitting on people is not cool, and threatening their lives
is even not cooler. The worst i ever did was just ignore all the techcrunch
links here, i think that was enough.

------
bdfh42
Internet fame is like "rock star" fame but without the rock star security
entourage.

People begin to treat folks like Arrington as an object and not a person but
by the nature of the job they do they are inevitably in closer contact with
those that would treat them that way - than (say) a Hollywood film star.

I suspect that we will see more such incidents affecting key technology
writers and pundits - fame is dangerous in so may ways.

------
jdvolz
This kind of reminds me of the T-Shirt Hell guy's entry a couple of days ago.
Basically, everybody is just tired of the crap and they are taking time off or
quitting. You shouldn't be assaulted for your opinion (and spitting is assault
in the US AFAIK).

------
alain94040
This is unacceptable. I'll venture to guess that it's coming from a european
entrepreneur who didn't get the bad jokes that Mike was putting out in his
fake fight with Loic.

But (you know there's a "but" coming). But actually, no, it's unexcusable, no
matter what.

To you the spitter: no matter your issues, you made the wrong choice and
deserver zero respect.

------
manmanic
Disgusting as it clearly is, I feel the spitting incident is a bit of a red
herring.

If this had happened 2 years ago during the rapid growth in Web 2.0
investment, I think Mike would have soldiered on.

Instead, he has a nasty experience while his business and kingdom are
shrinking. Deep down, I suspect he wanted out already.

In his situation I would.

~~~
froo
I completely disagree with what you're saying. I'm not sure if you've stood
back and had a look at just how much flack Michael actually cops from day to
day.

Sure, he may simply ignore a lot of it - but eventually if you're getting
attacked from all sides, there will be a point that you break.

This was his.

~~~
manmanic
It's impossible to know the answer, since it's hidden somewhere deep inside
Mike's subconscious. My intuition says that he'd be more willing to put up
with something like that if his company was still growing rapidly.

~~~
froo
I disagree, it is more than possible - it was the likely outcome.

As Shakespeare once wrote _"If you prick us, do we not bleed?"_

I think the problem is that people are blurring the lines between the
professional Arrington and the personal Arrington.

Let me highlight it using a hypothetical but extreme case.

You start up a new web app. For every 100 user signups, I get to kick you in
the groin (literally, not metaphorically) - How would that make you feel?

I think if people want to attack his professional life - great, compete hard
with TC, refuse to do business with him, boycott his blog - whatever... but
when you start blurring (or crossing) the lines between a personal and
professional attack is when situations like these arise.

~~~
manmanic
If it was my main life project, and the number of users signing up between
each groin kick was increasing exponentially, my entrepreneurial fire would
keep me going.

But when the ratio between groin kicks and sign ups started going in the wrong
direction, I'd want out.

Hey, it was your metaphor, not mine... :)

------
ghshephard
It's times like this that make you feel a bit better about living your life
out of the spotlight. I wonder how people like David Pogue, or Walt Mossberg
deal with this type of attention. Come to think of it, they cover higher
profile companies, and probably don't have to deal this this kind of crap.
Most of the time.

The only equivalent I can think of would be the reporters at papers who cover
the shady-side of the business world. David Baines (Vancouver Sun) was the
target of a lot of threats and innuendo during his coverage of stock-scams in
Vancouver, to the point at which he just stopped working in that space for a
while.

Sounds like Arrington has come to that place. Let's hope he comes back from
it.

------
edw519
_I always assumed that our work and integrity would speak for itself._

It does.

Unfortunately, in your business, just like ours, you have to account for
outliers. When we miss them, computers mess up. When you do, ever worse things
can happen. Sorry to hear about it.

Have a nice month off, Michael. Looking forward to having you back in March
for the 99% of us who really do care about your (and your family's) well
being.

------
jderick
_And I hope that my peers who tend to sit on the sideline while others attack
will start to take a stand against it._

And I hope people take this literally. IE, grab the jerk and call the police.
Don't just let him walk away.

------
arjunb
I do agree that this is over the line.

But I'm also slightly conflicted - why did I laugh when the Arabic reporter
threw his shoe at Bush a few months ago? In retrospect, that event should have
been just as inexcusable. What if Georgey wrote up a similar blog post about
his experience? How would I have felt then?

~~~
menloparkbum
Universally across human cultures, throwing a shoe is considered hilarious
whereas spitting is considered is rude and gross.

------
jupiter
I always thought people attending a conference like this are civilized but no
matter if you like MA or not, this is below all standards

------
JacobAldridge
_"That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 +
1 is 2, not 3"._

Spitting is a long way past that point. Not cool.

------
old-gregg
Spitting to me is pretty violent behavior, and while Michael suggests that
it's borderline with something "far more violent" I personally can't imagine
what could be worse. I'll take a good punch attempt over a spit any day.

 _"Before TechCrunch I assumed most people were essentially good, and assumed
that an individual was trustworthy until proven otherwise. Today, its exactly
the opposite."_

I think any history buff would disagree with this assumption. People tend to
be "essentially good" when there are plenty of resources and nothing to fight
about. Numerous societies collapsed and some even resorted to cannibalism when
resources became scarce.

Also I don't really get people who hate Arrington or love Angelina Jolie or
want to kick Brad Pitt's ass. They don't know these people personally, they
only can see an artificially engineered media-projection of them. Arrington
didn't cover our startup, but hey - _we haven't done anything for him either_
so I never felt bad about it. However, I had a chance to chat with the guy
once and even though he looked tired and overwhelmed with attention, he still
managed to give me a few very useful suggestions, far better than an average
"wow that's nice" doublespeak you'd hear from people who aren't interested but
just trying to be polite.

------
jpcx01
Spitter was probably from a PR firm. Remember this post?
<http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/>

A little spit never killed anyone, and I would say any controversial figure is
going to encounter that every once in a while. But the death threat stuff goes
way over the line. The police needs to find that guy and put him in jail
immediately.

~~~
tlrobinson
Or a disgruntled European entrepreneur who didn't like the opinions he
expressed at Le Web... <http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/961885>

------
brandnewlow
Ok. Here comes another opinion.

Maybe Arrington should not work from his home to save money. He can't secure
it. It's unsafe.

Maybe it's ok if Arrington has to hire security for his workplace. Every
newspaper in the country does this because they publish things that would get
people shot, maimed, kidnapped or worse. Arrington's stuff runs in the
Washington Post and is very influential in a major industry sector. Why is he
surprised that people would come after him? He's got money and can make or
break people's careers.

Is the spitting lame? Sure. But welcome to the big leagues dude. If you want
to call yourself a news organization and play hardball, there's a price that
comes with it.

Perhaps this is more about bloggers coming up against the problems that face
traditional news organizations rather than a new problem in the industry.

------
jyothi
This is a complete dishonor. Yes things have to change. Startups and people
involved should show basic respect and honor for others even if they are
competitors or so-believed goal makers - TC and other blogs, VCs or anyone who
pump some fuel. At the same time bloggers, VCs and angels should show some
respect and humility to ppl in startups who are slogging day and night to
build something dedicating their personal lives and lot more.

Getting listed on very popular blogs as someone rightly commented have
manifested themselves as a milestone, a psychological hurdle. Not just these
but the arrogance of people in this circle is definitely making the startups
disgruntled. A little amount of humility and humbleness (Mike if you are
hearing) will make them so much more big and fond of.

------
vaksel
stuff like this is why you need to keep your personal life and your business
life separate.

Sure its nice to save the few grand and work from home...but is that really
worth putting your family at risk?

Hell, the least Arrington should have done is get a P.O. Box and used that as
his address for techcrunch whois.

------
tptacek
Maybe there wouldn't be so much Arrington animus if TechCrunch would stop
doing things like republishing the Twitter streams of disgruntled data entry
employees as retaliation for a management team that refused to comment about
that employee.

Maybe there wouldn't have been so much animus if Arrington hadn't done things
like single out the lead dev for his favorite web service and run story after
story about his purported incompetance.

Nobody should spit on Arrington --- at least, nonconsensually --- but it's not
like this is Bill Moyers we're talking about here.

------
ensignavenger
Personally, I commend Micheal on not punching the guy that spit upon him in
the face. I;m certain it took a great deal of self restraint. I would have
likely taken it as an immediate threat of harm, and beat the tar out of the
guy. (I have learned to control my temper much better over the years, but
there are some things that are intolerable.)

I would also recommend he go to Front Sight and get the training to protect
himself and his family (from the death threats, not the spitter).

------
mattmaroon
"Before TechCrunch I assumed most people were essentially good, and assumed
that an individual was trustworthy until proven otherwise. Today, its exactly
the opposite."

Most people are trustworthy until there's a large amount of money on the line,
as in startups. Then you really never know who is. You think "oh, we've been
friends/coworkers/brothers for years, he'd never screw me". Then 6 or 7
figures become and you find out what people are really made of.

~~~
wallflower
> Then 6 or 7 figures become and you find out what people are really made of.

Like alcohol can sometimes do temporarily, extreme money will magnify your
personality and who you really are.

------
petercooper
I'm an Arrington fan, so just wanted to get that out of the way.. but.. petty
assault is really, really common in Europe. Well, at least here in the UK.

Only Michael can really know what the score was on the day, but I wouldn't be
surprised if random Americans get petty attacks quite often while they're in
Europe. What with all the chavs and all nowadays..

Anyway, shame on whoever did it. Showing the disturbing old European spirit
yet again.

------
g__g
Isn't this becoming the norm now? Whether related to technology or anything
otherwise, expressing opinions is becoming increasingly dangerous.

------
jaspertheghost
This is ridiculous. A lot of the rumors about him covering only recommended or
friends of friends startups are just plain untrue. He does cover startups he
invest in, but in the end, it doesn't help them that much (just look at
Edgeio). I think people have an exaggeration on him being a king maker for
startups.

------
joe_the_user
Wow!

I think that this indicates an incredibly cut-throat feeling in the startup
world.

The state of the economy in general can't be helping.

How could this be different?

------
shimi
I don't like TechCrunch, and I don't like Michael Arrington. I can write a
book on why, but this is not place.

Death threats and spitting are way over the top!!! It's a shameful behaviour
that needs to be outcast. TechCrunch help lots of businesses and in the
process killed some. That's life, suck it mate!!!

------
braindead_in
Why not fight back? If people are saying negative things about him, spreading
rumors then he should be countering them. Maybe start a personal blog. Rebut
them. Make your point be heard loud and clear. Not tough for a person who's in
media already.

------
OoTheNigerian
I think any violent action is condemned! If you do not like what he writes,
then do not read it! You can discuss it here on seesmic.
<http://seesmic.com/videos/gEfLwq4pqG>

------
rivo
Doing something like TechCrunch in an ever-growing Internet startup world,
Arrington is (wrongly) perceived as a deciding factor to success, as a God to
some, maybe even. Although it's wrong, I'm not surprised this happened.

------
finebanana
Mike, If you ever read this, may be it's time to shutdown TC!. As you
mentioned, you've got a template for farewell letter from T-Shirt Hell ;)

No, don't. Just kidding. Be careful out there.

------
bocalogic
This reminds me of "kenneth whats the frequency"

Spitting on someone is wrong and cowardice. However, I would not lose sleep
over it.

------
mojonixon
a lesson in civility from MA? The guy's an asshole. If you can't take the
consequences for talking shit about people, stop talking shit. He's done real
damage to people with the crap he puts up. If he said the shit he publishes in
a bar, he'd get his ass kicked. And he's surprised he got spit on?

------
brandnewlow
The spitting sounds more like a lack of social skills than anything else...

~~~
axod
For all we know it could have just been someone from Wales...

"Never ask for place-names in Wales, Baldric. You'll be washing the spit out
of your hair for weeks". (Blackadder)

------
medianama
I feel bad about the fact that I liked whatever happened....

------
hk
Spitting in his face is going a bit far, but it's pretty difficult for me to
feel sympathy for the guy. I struggle to think of a more dislikable, arrogant
jerk. This belated plea for human-to-human sympathy falls on deaf ears, for me
at least.

In my group, Arrington symbolises everything we hate about the "Web 2.0" greed
culture. He's relentlessly promoted himself as the gatekeeper to this bullshit
world of easy VC money, now crashing down around him. Good riddance.

If it hadn't been something as revolting as spitting, and instead say a nice
cream pie to the face, I'd be delighted.

~~~
jsdalton
Why do you have so much animosity toward him? You say he represents everything
you hate about Web 2.0 greed culture, but is that a valid reason to delight in
someone receiving a nice cream pie in the face?

I think you need to stop and reconsider whether this is the appropriate
attitude to take toward someone who really does nothing more than write
articles and speak at conferences.

I'd also argue that a culture of tolerance, civility and diversity of views
does far more to foster the open exchange of ideas than the silencing of those
with whom we disagree.

I do agree somewhat with some of the criticisms that you and others have put
forth about Techcrunch as a publication, in particular that it was prone to
hype. But otherwise I think he performed a valuable service to our industry,
and I think his willingness to speak his mind is both rare and laudable.

It saddens me that the animosity and intolerance that have shadowed Techcrunch
have boiled over to something as despicable as this.

~~~
Scriptor
I'm worried about exactly how that person received so many upvotes. This
person does not seem to have much basis to his/her hate other than some blog
posts. More importantly, there seems to be a sizeable number of people who
agree with the idea of "I disagree with you and don't like what you write
about, so you must be an asshole."

~~~
handelaar
_"More importantly, there seems to be a sizeable number of people who agree
with the idea of "I disagree with you and don't like what you write about, so
you must be an asshole."_

Because of course it couldn't possibly be that people object to the _way in
which he spouts_ those disagreeable opinions. Or the ex-cathedra pontificating
on technical matters he has no understanding of whatsoever. Or the use of his
extremely loud megaphone to bully individuals.

The bulk of the antipathy towards Arrington, I believe, has very little to do
with what he says and almost everything to do with how he says it. When TC was
new, none of the most obnoxious behaviour was yet apparent. As time's gone on
it's been on a continual slide into egomania and vindictiveness.

[And, fwiw, no: I have never been covered, or asked to be covered, or had a
project which was relevant to be covered, by Techcrunch.]

[edit: In case anybody's unclear, nothing here should be misinterpreted as
support or defence of gobbing in his face.]

------
giles_bowkett
here's the fucked up thing about Arrington. I'm not surprised this happened to
him; I think everybody should pay attention to the fact that this happened;
and I think it will happen again, because when he speculated about the
spitter, he assumed it was some entrepreneur. it never occurred to the guy
that anybody but a slighted entrepreneur would want to spit on him, when in
reality many more people do. but that's not the fucked up thing. the fucked up
thing is that with all of that information, I was AFRAID to post my opinion
about this, because what if Arrington discovers who I work for and takes
revenge by ignoring our products. think about how fucked up that is. the guy
doesn't know very much. his posts often have huge technical inaccuracies and
other bad information. and I'm scared to OFFEND him in a random comment on
Hacker News, because he might retaliate for me expressing my honest opinion,
and my company might get fucked because of his whims. so he has all this
influence, and pretty much every time he discusses tech that I know details
of, he gets shit wrong. that's what's fucked up about Arrington. I guarantee
you there are people reading this whose opinions on the subject we will never
know. and that's probably why he got spat in the face. somebody who could
normally have just said what was on their mind didn't have that option, got
wound up all tight, and went a little bit crazy.

but Kathy Sierra, some misogynists went a little bit crazy. we can't tolerate
this kind of thing, no matter how much this particular target deserved it,
because it creates a dangerous atmosphere. so although I think anybody who is
upset that this happened is a fucking idiot, and anybody who was surprised is
probably too stupid to spell their own name, we need a way to prevent this
kind of thing from happening, and part of it involves tuning out idiots like
Arrington instead of letting them amass all this ridiculous inappropriate
influence in the tech world.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
_I think anybody who is upset that this happened is a fucking idiot, and
anybody who was surprised is probably too stupid to spell their own name_

You sound like a delightful person to be around.

The gist of your entire tirade is that Michael Arrington doesn't deserve the
influence he has because he often gets technical details wrong, ergo he
deserves people spitting in his face.

Are you kidding me? It's his blog, he can do whatever the fuck he wants with
it. If he doesn't want to cover your company because he judges that you're an
asshole, how does that give you the right to assault him?

------
TweedHeads
Using lies and manipulation to attack some companies you dislike (or get paid
to do so) is not the same as reporting on startups, once you threaten others'
way of life, yours will be threatened back too.

Focus on startups as you say, and stop mudslinging with a hidden agenda.

~~~
simonk
Oh come on! Very few of his posts are negative and mostly those are when the
company closes up shop. Paid to do so, you have any poof of that?

------
darkhorse
let this be a reminder that actions have consequences, and none of us lives in
our own isolated bubble.

treat others as you'd like to be treated - and that applies both to Arrington
and to the spitter.

------
giles_bowkett
woah, this karma thing is worse than I thought. downmodding my opinion, I hope
you all die.

anyway, for what it's worth, because I'm thinking out loud, the thing w/both
Arrington and Sierra is it's live by the sword, die by the sword. especially
with Arrington. you can't set up a system where your income depends on fame
and then be surprised by the fact that people project things onto you. that's
what fame is. it's not the only thing fame is, but it's a huge part of what
fame is. there's a whole lot of people who don't need to know who Arrington
is, but know who he is anyway. Arrington created that deliberately, because
building your fame builds your ad revenue.

interesting thing about neurology, if you hear about a celebrity often enough,
you actually end up with a neuron dedicated to that specific individual. so he
literally invaded our brains because it would make him money. that's fine;
wasting our time for his selfish purposes isn't a problem in his book. but
when it bites him in the ass, it's not fine?

I'm not saying this is how fame should work, but it's how fame does work, and
if he's not realistic about that, that's nobody's problem but his. you can't
help yourself to all the upsides of fame and then literally go running home to
Mommy (as he himself says he did) when the downsides enter the picture. that's
just not going to work.

------
giles_bowkett
I think this is awesome and terrible at the same time. Awesome because I
wanted to do it myself, and you knew it was only just a matter of time.
Terrible because even though Arrington deserved it, Kathy Sierra didn't.
Attacking people because you disagree with them, that's a really awful trend.

For Arrington to be surprised that this happened, though, jesus. That's
ridiculous. Go to my blog and google "Arrington." Got at least five links to
him spitting in people's faces online. Probably many more than five. And
that's not even going anywhere near the politics, power-playing, manipulation,
or his claim that promoting his own companies means "journalism is evolving."
He's a horrible human being.

I'm against the idea of randomly attacking bloggers, but if you had to pick a
blogger to randomly attack, you couldn't find somebody who deserved it more.
And if this incident shuts down TechCrunch, we should find the spitter and
give him a medal for helping the tech community scrape that thing off our
shoes.

------
medianama
I believe he just made that up to grab attention and a few more pageviews

------
jcapote
Pics or it didn't happen.

------
adrianwaj
Arrington has spat in the face of many startups and blogs, metaphorically
speaking, and the most successful business people in general are ruthless.
This doesn't excuse the literal spitting behaviour, but Techcrunch is a blog
with way too much power, for better or worse depending on the way you look at
it.

~~~
pclark
why does everyone think startups are doomed if they get a bad TC review?

There's a perfect example of this THIS WEEK! Arrington has been ripping into
Cha Cha for years, and they just got a massive funding round.

~~~
froo
Just because ChaCha got funding, doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.

I've never used it before, so I decided to give both it, Google, Yahoo, Live
Search and Ask.com the same search phrase in response to this comment and see
what the results are.

 _What is the speed of light?_ \- I felt a simple enough question.

    
    
      Google took just 0.11 seconds to give me an exact answer.
      Yahoo took 0.28 seconds
      Live Search has no timer, but it was much less than 1 second, I assume around the same speed as Yahoo
      Ask.com no timer, but same perceived speed as both Yahoo and Live Search
    

Finally, I tried asking the question to ChaCha, I asked it around 4:16pm, it
asked me to sign up, so I did, went through the signup process, confirmed my
email address - now its sending me through an SMS to confirm my mobile..

EDIT - it's now 4:25pm, still no SMS on my mobile phone from ChaCha.. I think
its fair to say that comparing 10 minutes to 0.11 seconds is a pretty clear
indicator why human search isn't a good idea.

Even if you take out the signup stage, human reaction time can't even compete
with 0.11 seconds and that doesn't begin to factor in things like time it
takes to read the question.

EDIT #2 - 5:06pm, still no SMS...

~~~
gravitycop
_What is the speed of light? - I felt a simple enough question._

Why didn't you try a _non_ -simple question? Google is basically an almanac.
When I have an almanac question, I don't hire a professional researcher. I
consult an almanac.

~~~
froo
I wasn't planning to ask it too difficult a question as I really don't feel
like waiting hours for a response... although given the circumstances I don't
think it matters.

Its now 1:30am, I'm just about to head to bed and still have been unable to
sign up for chacha (even though I've attempted to do so again with a different
email address/username since I last updated my comment) I feel that I can
quite comfortably say that I wont use them for my searching requirements
anytime soon.

------
iuguy
I hope he stops writing. I really do. If you're reading this, Michael
Arrington, please go away and never touch the Internet again.

~~~
fallentimes
Like him or not, Techcrunch has helped tons of startups out.

~~~
okeumeni
It has destroyed a whole lot too; depending of what side of the fence you are
you should be able to recognize this too. They rush to say something nasty
about a startup but most of the time will say something nice about startups in
their friend circle.

------
quellhorst
I don't like Michael Arrington because of the way he acts. His latest post
backs up my dislike. He needs to grow a backbone and not cower behind
security. If you are in California its much harder to have a gun to protect
yourself. You could always move to Texas (Austin is nice). :)

Also, if this guy is a felon how does he have a gun and Arrington knows this
is a fact? When you buy a gun they do a FBI check to make sure you don't have
such a conviction.

Your startup will succeed regardless of its inclusion in TC. Worry about the
product not some silly blog.

