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Some things need to change

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Re: Some things need to change

#161

Post by jsdalton »

yters wrote: post #155
jsdalton wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 to…

Presidents do nothing more than say and write things. Why are they so hated?

That's not true, except in a reductio ad adsurdum sense. Presidents administer laws, hire and fire staff, spend money, withhold money, declare wars, veto laws, etc. In the absurdly literal sense they do execute these actions by exercising their vocal chords to speak and triggering their fingers to write, but this is totally different from being a journalist writer and speaker.

It is also true that not all speech is equally tolerable, in both the moral and legal sense. The Supreme Court ruled long ago, for example, that yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is not an instance of protected speech.

Re: Some things need to change

#162

Post by 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.

Re: Some things need to change

#163

Post by jerf »

xenophanes wrote: post #128
migpwr wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could issue a restraining order but he chose not to do that because it would give the guy specifics about the places he regularly visits and where he lives.

I meant why couldn't the police do something effective that would make him safe? isn't that their job?

No, it's not their job. Police respond to things, but they are basically not allowed to be proactive, barring a riot. There's a ton of reasons for this, including that without an actual law broken tailing this guy could be construed as police harassment, would likely involve a violation of some Constitutional right or other, and, of course, the real reason, that they simply don't have time for that sort of thing.

When you set policy for things like police, you get tradeoffs. Protect one person's rights, and you'll block actions the police could have taken to stop another. This isn't intended as political commentary and I don't have any particular thing in mind; think of it as an engineering view of law enforcement. You Can't Have It All. (And Certainly Not For Free.)

Re: Some things need to change

#164

Post by Retric »

shiranaihito wrote: post #135
hk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not. And I'm not fine about it at all, it's a disgusting thing to do. I just can understand why people might be driven to do it, and don't think it should be an actual crime! I'm beginning to suspect my writing style is prone to misunderstanding, though. C'est la vie.

I for one understand your point of view, and don't think you deserved any downmods either. You've been bravely standing behind your words, even in the face of the "public shaming" of so many downmods. That's respectable. Besides, should a downvote be used to express mere disagreement, or reserved for posts that one thinks are really inappropriate or maybe jarringly stupid? In any case, I agree that insulting someone…

There can be a fine line between something you disagree with and something that is jarringly stupid. "The world is flat" and "The world is a sphere" are both wrong, but they both are also reasonable approximations at some level.

Under some interpretations of US law, a 22 year old taking nude photo's of them self could be prosecuted for creating child porn if they look 16.

I think if you asked a thousand people off the street:

Is that accurate? Is that moral? Is that a travesty of justice? Is that reasonable?

You would get yes, no, and sort of to all of those questions and it's not really a "major" hot topic.

Re: Some things need to change

#165

Post by jerf »

zhyder wrote: post #144
biohacker42 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an example of how low folks in our industry can go There's nothing special about our industry, crazy people are everywhere. It's a simple numbers game, become popular enough and your popularity will cover some number of mentally unstable individuals. Actresses, singers and presidents have all been shot for no other reason then they were famous. Public criticism or lack of coverage probably makes things worse for Arri…

Actresses, singers and presidents are a little different though. Actresses/singers want much of the popularity, but struggle to maintain the right balance. And presidents -well- many folks have logical reasons to want them dead. I can't see the logic behind wanting Michael Arrington dead though, and I don't think he wants to be popular himself (as much as to make his blog/events popular). And somehow I hope our indus…

"And presidents -well- many folks have logical reasons to want them dead."

Ironically, many of the successful assassins either did not, or had nothing like a logical reason.

* Booth's assassination of Lincoln is... complicated but had to do with the Civil War. Call it rational-ish.

* Garfield was assassinated by a nutcase who thought Garfield owed him after the assassin's few hundred printed pamphlets putatively got him elected. Not rational.

* McKinley's assassin had a head full of anarchism. Call it rational if you like, but it certainly wasn't because of anything about McKinley himself.

* Kennedy's assassin's motives are unclear, but it looks like he generally just hated the US and wanted to take down Kennedy and thereby become a "great man".

I'm not arguing with anything you said, just find it interesting that of all the people who, like you say, may have some reason to want to pull this off, it's the crazies who succeed. Call it HN's goal of "interesting things".

Re: Some things need to change

#166

Post by xenophanes »

jerf wrote: post #163
xenophanes wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant why couldn't the police do something effective that would make him safe? isn't that their job?

No, it's not their job. Police respond to things, but they are basically not allowed to be proactive, barring a riot. There's a ton of reasons for this, including that without an actual law broken tailing this guy could be construed as police harassment, would likely involve a violation of some Constitutional right or other, and, of course, the real reason, that they simply don't have time for that sort of thing. Whe…

But making death threats is not a right. It's a crime.

I really don't understand all the apologizing for law enforcement that refuses to enforce the law in this case. The victim was harmed a lot, and still no one wants to see the crook stopped?

Re: Some things need to change

#167

Post by 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.

Re: Some things need to change

#168

Post by ojbyrne »

pg wrote: post #124
hk wrote: post #15

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 m…

I know Arrington, and he's much nicer than you sound. Can you give an example where he's said anything even half as nasty about anyone as you've just said about him? From the way you describe your beef with him, it sounds as if you're making up a personality for him-- that you're projecting onto him your bitterness about "Web 2.0 greed culture." You're wrong about that too, incidentally.

Having had one personal interaction with him, I'd have to agree - he's a nice enough guy. It seems some people prefer the unthinking cheerleaders that are as thick as flies in Norcal. Techcrunch's articles might be uninformed sometimes, but they are generally fair.

Re: Some things need to change

#169

Post by 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.

Re: Some things need to change

#170

Post by webwright »

axod wrote: post #8
zhyder wrote: post #2

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…

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…

If SEO is anywhere in your strategy, getting a link from TC and the dozens of secondary blogs that parrot their posts is golden. Bloggers read TC.

If fundraising is in your future, it's valuable.

If credibility is important, it probably helps a touch, too.

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