For context, whatever the background to the Mineserver story lets set that aside - make of it what you will.
What IS worth understanding is that the aftermath is the Cringely was relentlessly and endlessly hounded about this issue by people who can only be described as mentally unwell - they were so fixated, so deeply angry that this happened that they never ever left any Cringely article or post without flooding it with their deep deep anger and righteous indignation.
But "it MATTERS" all the trolls and weirdos would say as they carried their stupid grudge for decades.
And this guy here who wrote this post is just another one of those mentally unwell permanently angry people.
They're stalkers really with the level of ongoing never ending venom they had for Cringely.
I feel sorry for their ex-partners who likely also are being hounded by people never ever able to let go of their anger.
Can you imagine being so deeply enraged by the failure of a Minecraft server Kickstarter that it becomes your never ending mission to hound that person and to declare them to be the worst of the worst forever - really sad.
So if you pile on in the comments and declare Cringely to be some sort of evil person then just be aware you are being manipulated by mentally unwell trolls who want you to behave the same way they do, to amplify their decades old campaign of righteous indignation and online harassment.
The situation seems symmetrical to me. However "easy" it would have been for people to stop hounding him for updates, it would have been the same level of "ease" for Cringely to have simply fessed up that the project was toast.
Huh? I've never participated in crowd sourced funding - so maybe I'm out of touch - but if I gave someone $100+ for a product and they then proceeded to tell me it's about to ship for multiple years I'd be pretty annoyed. That is a really shitty thing to do.
Would I lose sleep over it? No, but if I encountered a blog post or some other public interaction with this person that has been lying and gaslighting me about a product that was allegedly done for years I don't see a problem calling them out about. That is highly antisocial behavior and should be highlighted so that other people do not fall victim to it. Not to say mistakes aren't made and people don't change... but the repeated attempts to continue gaslighting about this product would indicate that this is not a one off oopsy.
I would have wanted to know about the Mineserver affair if I was making any sort of business dealing with him. I do think the concept of reputation is valuable, and it's a sad thing that it doesn't seem as important as it once was.
That said, I wouldn't want to have any dealing with the stalkers who can't let go of the offense, and post angry comments a decade later. Those are the sort of people you smile at and slowly back away from. Too risky to interact with.
What IS worth understanding is that the aftermath is the Cringely was relentlessly and endlessly hounded about this issue by people who can only be described as mentally unwell - they were so fixated, so deeply angry that this happened that they never ever left any Cringely article or post without flooding it with their deep deep anger and righteous indignation.
But "it MATTERS" all the trolls and weirdos would say as they carried their stupid grudge for decades.
And this guy here who wrote this post is just another one of those mentally unwell permanently angry people.
They're stalkers really with the level of ongoing never ending venom they had for Cringely.
I feel sorry for their ex-partners who likely also are being hounded by people never ever able to let go of their anger.
Can you imagine being so deeply enraged by the failure of a Minecraft server Kickstarter that it becomes your never ending mission to hound that person and to declare them to be the worst of the worst forever - really sad.
So if you pile on in the comments and declare Cringely to be some sort of evil person then just be aware you are being manipulated by mentally unwell trolls who want you to behave the same way they do, to amplify their decades old campaign of righteous indignation and online harassment.