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Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool

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Re: Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool

#61

Post by martythemaniak »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #47
sumukh1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As a rule, the only thing that can kill a good startup is the startup itself" - http://www.paulgraham.com/superangels.html As a rule, the only thing that can kill a good _ecosystem_ is the _ecosystem_ itself Edit: We live in a democracy. If there is something that stands to significantly harm us, then we should (and can) do something about it. A recent example would be SOPA. The biggest threat we face is not from Wa…

Is there any rational reason to derive this from pg's statement? Word substitution does not work in all cases. For example: > As a rule, the only thing that can kill a good _human_ is the _human_ itself.

I definitely see the similarities and would agree with it. Nearly every successful entrepreneur will talk at length about the incredible importance of company culture on success (as that culture in turn permeates through the product, customer service, hiring process etc). I don't see why the same principles would become invalid at the slightly higher level of startup ecosystem.

Re: Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool

#62

Post by rbanffy »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #48
martythemaniak wrote: post #17

It's tempting to dismiss this as just e-lebrity gossip, but I think that this kind of rottenness is probably more dangerous to the Valley than threats from Washington or talk of bubbles. If who you know and how well you can politic overshadows what you did and the results you got, then you're in trouble. If somebody is an unscrupulous douchebag, don't to business with them, don't read their blogs, don't upvote their…

If who you know and how well you can politic overshadows what you did and the results you got, then you're in trouble. For me its just another sign that 'tech' is growing up. Pretty much any industry creates an economic flow, and the flow is a source of power (some would argue the only real source in peace time), and one can harness that power by having influence over the flow. Back when the Homebrew Computer Club wa…

A game can be a gentleman's game, but only if we all agree to play it like gentlemen.

There are days we can't even disagree like gentlemen here. :-(

Re: Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool

#63

Post by rbanffy »

philwelch wrote: post #56
avoutthere wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is more dangerous to the Valley than threats of force from Washington.

Threats from Washington are the natural consequence of shitty, unethical behavior. Which really brings it back to what the OP is about.

Not shitty and unethical per se, but any behavior that compromises the value function of a given ecosystem will cause regulators to step in, in an attempt to correct it.

Re: Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool

#64

Post by droithomme »

sgarg wrote: post #52
martythemaniak wrote: post #17

It's tempting to dismiss this as just e-lebrity gossip, but I think that this kind of rottenness is probably more dangerous to the Valley than threats from Washington or talk of bubbles. If who you know and how well you can politic overshadows what you did and the results you got, then you're in trouble. If somebody is an unscrupulous douchebag, don't to business with them, don't read their blogs, don't upvote their…

I completely agree. Would you trust Yelp for restaurant reviews if Yelp invested in the restaurants it provided reviews for? Of course not. Like you said, the only way to really punish behavior like this is to stop using their product.

Wow, interesting example of a company which the comment presumes is ethical.

Re: Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool

#65

Post by philwelch »

potatolicious wrote: post #36
lukeholder wrote: post #26

I stopped reading techcrunch about 9 months ago, after realizing that the majority of articles were friends of the author - and realizing it was almost impossible to get featured on there unless you were connected in some kind of monetary way.

And finally, in 2012, after mocking and lambasting traditional reportage and journalistic standards for years, the Internet finally learns that journalistic standards, expectations, and ethics are a set of rules learned the hard way, that are as relevant on the web as they were in print. Hopefully this is the beginning of the end for "it's just a blog, man".

It's not that proper journalism is irrelevant, and it's not even that not everyone should be expected to be proper journalists. It's that proper journalism is a very small niche, not the norm. There isn't much actual market demand for proper journalism compared to the other crap; most readers and viewers are undiscerning and everyone else is willing to pay, so why bother?

It was probably this way even before the internet. I mean, they award themselves the "Pulitzer Prize"--go look up the guy that one's named after.

Re: Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool

#66

Post by davidtyleryork »

apaitch wrote: post #46
davidtyleryork wrote: post #20

So basically it's only a matter of time before the ideals of the "gold rush" go away and everyone's just in it for the money? I came to Silicon Valley to escape that (the alternative, at the time, was Wall Street). Unfortunately, this kind of behavior (and these kind of people) seem to 'follow the money'. *Note: This is both about the conversation that companies are abusing consumers and then apologizing later, and t…

What would people do if, as you say, everyone gets into it just for the money? Would enough people consider leaving somewhere else?

I doubt it, there's no greater opportunity in the US right now than there is here

Re: Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool

#68

Post by Steko »

oldstrangers wrote: post #18
jwwest wrote: post #13

I've never understood the enormous popularity of M.G. Siegler. His articles are often published without any attributions or even basic spell checking. Yet somehow he's ridden on the coattails of Apple's ascent by positioning himself among the fandom as a "champion of good taste". In interviews he doesn't even come off as particularly pleasant.

Fanboys on either side of the aisle love to pat themselves on the back and reaffirm--almost daily--that yes, they did buy the best product imaginable. It's the same reason Gruber makes half a million a year writing snarky one liners. Some sort of subconscious need to find superiority in consumer purchases and brand loyalty. It's kind of disturbing.

The "fanboy dismissal" is here, as usal, a cop out. It's the same copout that 2/3 of the commentariat falls back on whenever the subject comes up of why Apple is so successful. Must be those fanboys, that pixie dust, that RDF...

"Some sort of subconscious need to find superiority in consumer purchases and brand loyalty. It's kind of disturbing."

Or maybe it's just a good blog?

Despite happily not owning a Mac for almost a decade I've continued to read Gruber all this time because his signal to noise ratio is off the charts compared to any other tech blogger. His voice is unique and entertaining. The entire layout is clean and sparse. It's one of the few tech RSS feeds you know isn't going to be knee deep in repackaged press releases and bullshit false equivalence analysis.

If all you had to do to make a half million dollars a year was turn out snarky one liners there'd be a lot more millionaires in the world.

Re: Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool

#69

Post by r00fus »

Dan isn't innocent here - some of his older posts are sickeningly obvious puff-pieces or hit jobs... of course, he's not excusing himself here or claiming he's not part of the muck he's deriding.

But every once in a while (esp. when he did FakeSteveJobs), Dan hits it out of the park, and this is one of those articles. The crunchfund conflict of interest is concerning.

Re: Hit men, click whores, and paid apologists: Welcome to the Silicon Cesspool

#70

Post by mcantelon »

jwwest wrote: post #13

I've never understood the enormous popularity of M.G. Siegler. His articles are often published without any attributions or even basic spell checking. Yet somehow he's ridden on the coattails of Apple's ascent by positioning himself among the fandom as a "champion of good taste". In interviews he doesn't even come off as particularly pleasant.

He's a Gruber knockoff. Same religious devotion to Apple, same trollish linkbait.
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