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Some things need to change

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Re: Some things need to change

#171

Post by anewaccountname »

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 somehow I hope our industry is special, that we're less likely to do crazy things in general. We're trained in science and reasoning after all.

As an astronaut, I have the same hope for my industry. Puts on diaper

Re: Some things need to change

#172

Post by mechanical_fish »

biohacker42 wrote: post #89
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…

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…

The actress you're thinking of is probably Rebecca Schaeffer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Schaeffer

I read about her in Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear, which incidentally is a pretty good book about such things. (de Becker is apparently the guy you call if you're a Hollywood star who gets a death threat -- protecting famous people is his company's business. And his published opinion is pretty much the same as yours: All famous people will get threats once they become famous enough, and the most famous people you can name have probably got dozens of stalkers of one sort or another.)

Re: Some things need to change

#173

Post by yters »

jsdalton wrote: post #161
yters wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

So how is that different from saying "Arrington just speaks at conferences and writes blog posts. Why do people hate him?"

Re: Some things need to change

#174

Post by ryanwaggoner »

giles_bowkett wrote: post #162

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…

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?

Re: Some things need to change

#175

Post by yters »

Retric wrote: post #148
zhyder wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He is an entertainer in that he leverages popularity to make money.

What company doesn't require popularity to make money? That's an exceedingly broad use of "entertainer."

Re: Some things need to change

#176

Post by 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?

Re: Some things need to change

#177

Post by pg »

hk wrote: post #77
jncraton wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't personally know why you got downmodded, but karma isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. Honestly, it doesn't add anything to the conversation to add meta conversation about people not liking your comment. It happens sometimes, and it isn't any fun, but things work a lot better for all of us when we all just move on. From the HN guidelines: "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never doe…

Fair enough, I hadn't read those guidelines - thanks for the tip. Won't do it again. I do wish those guidelines had something about why to mod up or down, though. Modding something down or up simply because you happen to agree, regardless of the quality or validity of the argument presented, will also lead to boring reading - the majority view, endlessly repeated, since it's the only "safe" thing to post.

Won't do it again.

To the trusting souls who upvoted this show of sincerity: what he did next was write a program to spam the site with 545 identical comments.

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Arrington

Re: Some things need to change

#178

Post by jsdalton »

yters wrote: post #173
jsdalton wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

So how is that different from saying "Arrington just speaks at conferences and writes blog posts. Why do people hate him?"

Speaking and writing as a journalist is what Michael Arrington does. That's a very specific type of speech -- so specific in fact that it's actually explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution. There is simply no relationship whatsoever between an article Michael writes and, for example, a President's order to bomb another country, except that the two are in some way shape or form molded out of words.

Re: Some things need to change

#179

Post by froo »

manmanic wrote: post #101
froo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Some things need to change

#180

Post by froo »

giles_bowkett wrote: post #162

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…

In Australia, we have a phrase for this kind of attitude.

It's called "Tall Poppy Syndrome"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome

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