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.
"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 don't think it's TC own doing. It might be a result of mismanaging TC's community, but I think it's largely disgruntled entrepreneurs that don't get press coverage.
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.
Completely agree, something I was involved in was on wired last year (twice) and I must admit it was a good feeling, but thats about it.
If anyone sees getting on TechCrunch as the goal of their startup rather than using it as a tool that can help them reach your goal, they have probably already failed - they just don't know it yet.
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.
If I had to guess, sites targeted at the early-adopter-techy crowd probably do far better after being reported on TechCrunch than things targeted at say recent parents (or your niche market of choice).
In any case, yes, threats and violence are not cool in any way. I was just commenting on the effect that TechCrunch has on the community as a whole, which I don't think is all that huge. Its more a place to read about startup news, and can be solved by simply subscribing to something else in your RSS reader of choice.
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.
No TC coverage is not on the top of the list of things I'm desperate for either. I'm just generally desperate for a lot of things ever since I started up.
not for us. while TC coverage doesn't provide the "instant success" many hope for, it's been by far the largest traffic driver for us compared to any other online press sources, aside from newsweek.com and time.com
I think it has very little to do with the industry and a lot to do with human nature when provided with the Internet. It's a terrible thing, though completely heard of and quite predictable once someone reaches a certain level of fame.
Sure, TC just covers start-ups, but actors just make movies and musicians just make music and people have been spitting on them and giving death threats forever. You just need considerably less fame to attract crazy people online because there are so many more of them.
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 Arrington, but I'm guessing not by much.
Crazy people by definition do not behave rationally.
I'm not sure there is a solution to that beyond, make sure you keep as much of your life as you can secret.
The name of the young actress who was killed by her stalker some years ago escapes me, but I think he was able to get her address form the DMV.
Arrington can either quit, or keep paying for security, or find a way to keep his office and his home secret.
I don't see why police couldn't do anything about the dangerous guy intimidating and threatening him. Is serious intimidation really not a crime of any sort?
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.
(Honestly, it seems the kind of circumstance where I can't really think of anything the police should be able to do to anyone who seems dangerous or "suspicious", because both are very much judgement calls.)
So suppose the cops arrest him. He is unlikely (statistically speaking) to be held without bail, so he's out in a day or two. Then you have a trial. Suppose you have people like me on the jury -- I know that morons threaten to kill each other all the time on the internet, in person, and on CB radio and via snail mail and every other means of communication man has invented. I would likely acquit unless you can present some serious evidence of actual intent, and owning a gun having a previous a felony would not cut it.
So now what ? Is the situation better or worse ? It better be LOT better, because society is collectively out of quite a bit of money by the time all that is said and done.
I don't think Arrington is necessarily over reacting to the threat, either. Without knowing the details it's impossible to tell, and even if you knew the details you might be uncertain. There is a very wide zone between something that will justify society's all-out response and what makes you feel creepy.
There is probably no way for society to make everyone feel warm and comfy about all their interactions with each other. Think about if we had a general policy of jailing people based on a definition of "threatens physical harm" that was that lose. Think back over every bad relationship you ever had . . . are you absolutely sure that some disasterous former manager or former employee could not have gotten you jailed ? Absolutely sure ?
Why can't you have a very brief trial where you explain the definition of assault and present the uncontroversial evidence of the assault, and that's that?
Not trying to argue. Just don't see why that wouldn't work. the jury should just be like "well, it's a crime, and he did it" instead of saying it's common so we'll ignore it.
Honestly, I don't want trials to ever be quick. If you're talking about putting someone in jail, you better be really freaking sure the guy is a threat to society and not just having a really bad week.
I have threatened bloody murder to many a bad library author, and the last thing I need is to get jailed because of that ;)
> Why can't you have a very brief trial where you explain the definition of assault and present the uncontroversial evidence of the assault, and that's that?
The reason I've heard that assault charges aren't always filed is that there has to be, and I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember the exact wording, "sufficient reason " to believe that the accuser can and will carry out his/her thread in order to make it assault.
The situation often cited for this is a 90 lb weakling gets drunk and threatens to beat up someone who fights in MMA for a living. Since the thread isn't credible this technically isn't assault.
On the other hand, if I shove a gun in your face and threaten to kill you then that very much is assault as my threat is very credible.
Some where in between is the line between assault and just being a dick, which isn't a crime.
This is often why many verbal assault cases aren't tried.
The other, unfortunate, reason is that court time is very finite. Prosecutors can only take so many cases to court and prosecutors know that people will often make these types of threats for a short period of time and then just leave that person's life.
If that's the case then the situation often resolves itself and they don't have to take up their valuable court space with this case.
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.)
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?
If they were made over the internet, it might take a Federal Law Enforcement Officer (FBI or U.S. Marshal) to make the arrest or get the arrest warrant. I believe interstate death treats become a federal manner.
And with all due respect to TC and Mike, it often takes "pull" to get Federal law enforcement involved. They handle all the "big fish". For example, if your start up was hacked, they would be the ones to call, but they won't move on anything less than $50,000 or $500,0000 worth of damages.
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 industry is special, that we're less likely to do crazy things in general. We're trained in science and reasoning after all. How many techies do you know that are rabid fans of celebrities?
I meant that as a complement. I think an "entertainer" is not just a random actor, singer, or blogger, but someone who does those things and makes real money from it. To do that generally takes leveraging popularity. Granted you can make a living as a backup dancer, but I think he has separated himself from the herd.
"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".
How can wanting someone dead ever be logical? I understand not liking someone, or disagreeing with their policies, but wanting them dead seems a bit extreme.
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.)
I see nothing at all morally wrong with speculating over Steve's health (though it's often not very useful). Remember that every AAPL owner is a part owner of the company. It's not at all untoward for an investor in the company to want to know what health the CEO is in, especially one thought to be as influential as him, and Jobs has been opaque about it since the beginning. A lot of people have, collectively, over $80b tied up in the company, and they have no idea if the guy running it will live another year or two.
When your company goes public, a decision Steve himself made long ago, you know that from then on, what you disclose to owners of the company you effectively disclose to everyone. He knew what he was getting.
Speculating as to his health doesn't worsen it or harm him in any way. If anything is immoral, it's Steve's purposely hiding it and even, this year, lying about it.
Worrying about his health if you own stock in AAPL is understandable. But there was just something tabloid-like about _how_ people approached it; just didn't feel right.
How they approached it was due to his blatantly lying about it, in the rare instances in which he addressed it at all. He chose to make it tabloid-like. He could have ended it at any point by simply being upfront. Remember when John McCain had a team of Mayo Clinic doctors examine him and publicly announce the results? It was because he knew that if he were elected, his health was our business. People may have joked about his health, but there wasn't the tabloid-like obsession with digging up dirt.
Instead he treated AAPL owners largely with contempt (pretty much the way he treats everyone from the sound of it) by not speaking about it, or saying one day that he's well and a week later that he's not, while 10s of billions of dollars are on the line.
Not only that. Think about those who have MSFT stock. Where will MSFT copy stuff from if APPL ceases to innovate due to the health of its main driving force ;-) ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't really know how to respond to that in less than a thousand words, so let's just say:
1. because he obviously has
2. I consider this to be generally accepted as truthful
3. if you don't agree then we are probably not going to agree on anything, ever
and leave it at that. This is probably breaching some law of argument ("Fallacy of Call to Common Sense" or something?) but hey, who has the time.
Surely that's not a bad thing. Humility isn't a bad thing in a person but in business it's not a helpful attribute. At least when TC started he was the business, so self-promotion was a must.
Being punched in the face is a more honest action than spitting. Remember the kids at school that used to bite people - little weasels then, little assholes now.
I think the commentator is making a point about the difference in thinking he deserves a punch and actually punching (well spitting on) him.
A lot of people dislike the guy (I dont care for his attitude myslef but I respect his influence) and probably waould say "he deserves a punch" without meaning it literally :)
I dislike techcrunch and I dislike his writing, but I'm full of sympathy for the man. He should take the matter to the police and with any luck the contemptible coward who spat in his face will get a criminal record for their trouble.
Huh? You think that spitting on someone should be illegal!?
I don't understand what you mean, anyway. You don't like his business, you don't like his writing, but you have all sorts of cares for him? Er .. why? What would he have to do to make you finally relinquish your sympathy?
In my book, a man is but the sum of his actions. I can't stand Arrington's actions, therefore I can't stand him, ergo I have no sympathy for the hatred his actions have engendered amongst sum.
And one more thing - the man who spat in his face may be contemptible, but it doesn't doesn't fit my model of how "cowards" behave either. The coward would be writing spiteful comments anonymously on blogs. Walking up to someone and spitting in their face takes balls, IMO. Not exactly my preferred means of communication but it certainly got the point across.
How about that, it is illegal, at least in the US and some other places. I had no idea. I disagree, too; it's highly distasteful but shouldn't actually be criminal - but that's getting off topic.
Assault is punished by law according to physical consequence. If you break someone's jaw, you go to jail. If you break their heart by verbal assault, you don't.
There are no physical consequences to being spat on by a healthy person (if they are sick and do so knowingly to infect you, that is completely different). It is an insult, a grotesque one, but an insult none the less, and should be treated as such by law.
The fighting words doctrine, in United States constitutional law, is a limitation to freedom of speech as granted in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In its 9-0 decision, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942), the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine and held that "insulting or 'fighting words,' those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace" are among the "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech [which] the prevention and punishment of...have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem."
I am not a lawyer, but I believe this doctrine has essentially not been enforced in recent memory. The subsequent paragraph to the one you quoted steadily showed it being rejected by those who attempted to bring it before the court in the US.
If someone with an infectious disease knowingly infects another, whether it be by unprotected sex without disclosure or by spitting, then that is malicious intent to harm and is already well covered by law.
And what if they didn't know they had a disease? It doesn't matter - forcing someone to share your bodily fluids in such an aggressive manner should be a crime. And of course the punishment should fit the crime, but at a minimum, spitting is equal to minor physical assault.
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 does any good, and it makes boring reading."
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.
It is somewhat unfortunate that this isn't in the guidelines, but it is a natural tendency and would be impossible to try to clean up by enforcement. Eventually, you will get used to the general group mentality. Some things can be said in a very few words and will be understood and accepted because they follow the way that most of us think. Other things have to be laid out logically so that a debate on your thinking can follow.
In defense of the site though, your initial downmodded comment was rather condescending and showed a lack of knowledge of the area. Responding to someones idea with "Huh? You really think that?" isn't very respectful and it shows a certain amount of arrogance. Arrogance is frowned upon pretty heavily here. It doesn't add anything to the discussion when you are correct and is just plain obnoxious when you are wrong. Be humble about what you know, ask questions about what you don't, and provide logical arguments for what you think. That's a big part of what sets this site apart from a lot of the other sites like it.
Yeah, I guess I'm more used to slashdot. I'll take some time to get used to the culture of the site before poking the nest with a stick again.
I assume you're a moderator - although they're much appreciated by myself, these well-written tips will just get lost in the noise here. You might consider adding them to the FAQ yourself : )
I'm not a moderator. I haven't even been using the site for that long. I'm just aware that sometimes the system here can be a little hard on newer users who aren't used to how things work.
Just to chime in, it's generally counter-productive to meta-post about being downmodded, unless your meta-post is clarifying something that might be misinterpreted into a downmod.
For example, saying: "I can't believe you people are downmodding me." will most likely just cause people to pile on and punish you.
But saying: "To those downmodding me, if you think I meant this, I really meant that." or "Just to clarify, I meant it this way." will often defuse a misunderstanding and cause people to at least put you back up to 1.
Really the key is to be civil. It's rare that someone gets dogpiled just for dissenting. However, if you dissent in a rude manner, people are tempted to see how negative one comment can get.
Also amusing that someone who seems to be fine with spitting on someone as legitimate communication, getting up in arms about a down arrow on a web page.
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 or calling them names should not be a crime, and that spitting on someone shouldn't be considered an "assault" (with the provisions you mentioned).
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.
I disagree that the issue was "something that should be common sense". Every manner of trivial insults being criminalised in modern society is a huge, profound and controversial topic.
Spot on about the expedient solution to seeing something you don't like, though.
"You think that spitting on someone should be illegal!?"
As noted it is illegal in most countries.
"I don't understand what you mean, anyway. [...] What would he have to do to make you finally relinquish your sympathy?"
Something a great deal worse than writing articles that do not much interest me. I find it incomprehensible that someone could find a matter of mere taste to be sufficient justification for a crime.
"And one more thing - the man who spat in his face may be contemptible, but it doesn't doesn't fit my model of how "cowards" behave either."
Your definition of bravery is not one I have any respect for then.
Not "most" countries. I am not sure it is even "many" countries. And whether something is illegal is not an argument for whether it should be illegal - see Saudi Arabia.
I don't remember defining bravery anywhere? I simply said that in my opinion, most "cowards" don't consummate their cowardice by walking up to big guys (Arrington is a big guy) and spitting on them.
Anyone motivated enough to take an "extreme" action against someone else (eg spitting on them) could be argued that they are not necessarily in a right frame of mind and more or less going to do it regardless of circumstances.
Exhibit A - the guy who threw shoes at then President Bush.. there were secret service all over that place.
Without knowing who did it, or for what reason, I'd be fairly confident in betting that at no point did Michael's size come into the equation.
I remember a thread on HN where PG asked us whether articles from TC should be banned.
Maybe we should re-evaluate that.
Many, if not most of the TC articles posted here do seem to be sensationalist in nature, so it's easy to believe Arrington's just after ad-money (as some people say).
pg asked about valleywag.com. Some other user asked about banning techcrunch.
From a business standpoint, it would be silly for pg to ban a site that helps promote YC startups, not to mention TC is nowhere near as wonky/gossipy as valleywag.
Attacking someone because you don't like what they say is wrong. If you disagree with what they say then you should try to convince them logically, not through intimidation/harrasment. If you pie someone that is your friend in a jovial way then of course that is different, but attacking someone because you disagree with them any in sort of physical way is wrong and should not be encouraged.
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.
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."
I had the same reaction as you. And to add to what you wrote, I interpreted it as, "I disagree with you and don't like what you write about, so you must be an asshole, and my only problem with what happened is that it was a bit over the top."
I might be in the minority on this, but I was unhappy with the whole discussion from the past about banning/censoring Valleywag and Techcrunch. Though the arguments against Valleywag had slightly more merit, the whole thing smacked of intolerance toward people and ideas we disagree with, which see its logical culmination in acts like this spitting incident.
Makes me think John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" should be required reading here.
"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.]
At least in the french-speaking world, celebrities have gotten used to this.
Pieing is the act of throwing a pie at an authority figure, as a means of protesting against a perceived flaw (arrogance, hubris) in the target's character.
Ok, that's definitely something we need to inherit from the French. How awesome would it be to regularly see a pie fight break out during a movie opening? That would be totally sweet!
It's a knee-jerk comparison, and certainly not one that I believe, but when you said "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," the retort that came to my mind was "All Hitler did was sign papers and speak at a podium."
The point is that despite just writing articles and speaking at conferences, the content of his messages have far more meat than his enactment of them.
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.
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.
Yuck! No matter how much you abhor a person, you don’t have a right to harm or intimidate the person. Intolerance seemingly is at it’s peak. I just hope the frustrated, overworked yet underperforming, and morally debauched ‘European entrepreneur’ doesn’t typifies our usual web entrepreneur. To me he seems like just another desperate chap who was hoping to be another run-away hit in the web without a lot of hard work. The declining economy, tighter markets, fierce competition, and resulting desperation could be blamed for the depravity.
Because you seem to be new here, I will resist the urge to down-mod you without explanation. I don't think the down-mods are for the logic of your arguments. They're for the attitude reflected in your comments (except the top level comment, which seemed to be in good spirit, but 'good-riddance' is a bit negative to me personally). Unlike most other web communities, 'fuck you'-flavored comments are not well tolerated at HN. That, I think, is the most appealing part of this community. If you do intend to stay here and prosper, it would be a good idea to disagree in a more civil fashion. No personal attacks, no arrogance, no being a jerk. Maybe a little sarcasm, but sprinkled with humor. Also, most HN readers can identify disguised attacks fairly well. So, lighten up my friend!
In the interest of full-disclosure, I did down-mod the comment that you just deleted.
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.
There are a lot of faster, easier ways to make money if you're greedy. Before the crash, I'd say go into finance and become an i-banker.
Web 2.0 start ups -- especially one seeking seed money and boot strapping -- are seeking more responsibility than they are wealth. It still has that "selling t-shirts on the internet" feeling: a) Everyone is doing it. b)It feels like a good idea. c) Its not really known if people can make money from doing it.
He is a blogger who obsessively writes about startups. He never promoted himself for anything else. People (used to) break into his home to pitch their startups and he actually listens to them. How is this arrogance? Would you listen to someone breaking into your home?
I don't know Arrington, but to me he always sounded like a humble, down-to-earth guy, very passionate about his job.
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.
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).
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).
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I was hoping someone would mention this. It's not acceptable to spit or threaten someone with bodily harm, but I can understand how otherwise decent people can be driven to violence due to rejection. When someone or some company you look up to rejects you, it can make you feel like you're one of those "other" people, the untouchables who are bringing everyone else down and who aren't worth the air they breathe.
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-... is totally uncool.
(I'm not speaking here about my coworkers, or my employer, or my employer's content-sharing agreement with TC.)
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.
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.
208 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadI 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.
"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.
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.
Completely agree, something I was involved in was on wired last year (twice) and I must admit it was a good feeling, but thats about it.
If anyone sees getting on TechCrunch as the goal of their startup rather than using it as a tool that can help them reach your goal, they have probably already failed - they just don't know it yet.
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.
In any case, yes, threats and violence are not cool in any way. I was just commenting on the effect that TechCrunch has on the community as a whole, which I don't think is all that huge. Its more a place to read about startup news, and can be solved by simply subscribing to something else in your RSS reader of choice.
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.
If fundraising is in your future, it's valuable.
If credibility is important, it probably helps a touch, too.
Sure, TC just covers start-ups, but actors just make movies and musicians just make music and people have been spitting on them and giving death threats forever. You just need considerably less fame to attract crazy people online because there are so many more of them.
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 Arrington, but I'm guessing not by much. Crazy people by definition do not behave rationally.
I'm not sure there is a solution to that beyond, make sure you keep as much of your life as you can secret.
The name of the young actress who was killed by her stalker some years ago escapes me, but I think he was able to get her address form the DMV.
Arrington can either quit, or keep paying for security, or find a way to keep his office and his home secret.
(Honestly, it seems the kind of circumstance where I can't really think of anything the police should be able to do to anyone who seems dangerous or "suspicious", because both are very much judgement calls.)
Assault: (Law) an act, criminal or tortious, that threatens physical harm to a person, whether or not actual harm is done
So now what ? Is the situation better or worse ? It better be LOT better, because society is collectively out of quite a bit of money by the time all that is said and done.
I don't think Arrington is necessarily over reacting to the threat, either. Without knowing the details it's impossible to tell, and even if you knew the details you might be uncertain. There is a very wide zone between something that will justify society's all-out response and what makes you feel creepy.
There is probably no way for society to make everyone feel warm and comfy about all their interactions with each other. Think about if we had a general policy of jailing people based on a definition of "threatens physical harm" that was that lose. Think back over every bad relationship you ever had . . . are you absolutely sure that some disasterous former manager or former employee could not have gotten you jailed ? Absolutely sure ?
Not trying to argue. Just don't see why that wouldn't work. the jury should just be like "well, it's a crime, and he did it" instead of saying it's common so we'll ignore it.
I have threatened bloody murder to many a bad library author, and the last thing I need is to get jailed because of that ;)
The reason I've heard that assault charges aren't always filed is that there has to be, and I'm paraphrasing because I don't remember the exact wording, "sufficient reason " to believe that the accuser can and will carry out his/her thread in order to make it assault.
The situation often cited for this is a 90 lb weakling gets drunk and threatens to beat up someone who fights in MMA for a living. Since the thread isn't credible this technically isn't assault.
On the other hand, if I shove a gun in your face and threaten to kill you then that very much is assault as my threat is very credible.
Some where in between is the line between assault and just being a dick, which isn't a crime.
This is often why many verbal assault cases aren't tried.
The other, unfortunate, reason is that court time is very finite. Prosecutors can only take so many cases to court and prosecutors know that people will often make these types of threats for a short period of time and then just leave that person's life.
If that's the case then the situation often resolves itself and they don't have to take up their valuable court space with this case.
It sucks but that's the way things are:(.
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.)
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?
And with all due respect to TC and Mike, it often takes "pull" to get Federal law enforcement involved. They handle all the "big fish". For example, if your start up was hacked, they would be the ones to call, but they won't move on anything less than $50,000 or $500,0000 worth of damages.
Disclaimer: IANAL and IANALEO.
You must be new here...
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. How many techies do you know that are rabid fans of celebrities?
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".
As an astronaut, I have the same hope for my industry. Puts on diaper
Do you believe there are any cases where one could justifiably kill in self-defense, or are you a pure pacifist?
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.)
When your company goes public, a decision Steve himself made long ago, you know that from then on, what you disclose to owners of the company you effectively disclose to everyone. He knew what he was getting.
Speculating as to his health doesn't worsen it or harm him in any way. If anything is immoral, it's Steve's purposely hiding it and even, this year, lying about it.
Instead he treated AAPL owners largely with contempt (pretty much the way he treats everyone from the sound of it) by not speaking about it, or saying one day that he's well and a week later that he's not, while 10s of billions of dollars are on the line.
Spitting is a long way past that point. Not cool.
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?
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.
Something definitely needs to change.
Given how much money it makes, I doubt it will happen.
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.
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.
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.
How is that?
1. because he obviously has 2. I consider this to be generally accepted as truthful 3. if you don't agree then we are probably not going to agree on anything, ever
and leave it at that. This is probably breaching some law of argument ("Fallacy of Call to Common Sense" or something?) but hey, who has the time.
A lot of people dislike the guy (I dont care for his attitude myslef but I respect his influence) and probably waould say "he deserves a punch" without meaning it literally :)
I was taking your comment as a cue too :D
(alsio known as hitting the wrong reply button)
I don't understand what you mean, anyway. You don't like his business, you don't like his writing, but you have all sorts of cares for him? Er .. why? What would he have to do to make you finally relinquish your sympathy?
In my book, a man is but the sum of his actions. I can't stand Arrington's actions, therefore I can't stand him, ergo I have no sympathy for the hatred his actions have engendered amongst sum.
And one more thing - the man who spat in his face may be contemptible, but it doesn't doesn't fit my model of how "cowards" behave either. The coward would be writing spiteful comments anonymously on blogs. Walking up to someone and spitting in their face takes balls, IMO. Not exactly my preferred means of communication but it certainly got the point across.
Yes, spitting on someone is illegal.
Fun game: stand on a busy street corner and spit on everyone who walks by. If you're arrested before you're crippled, you win.
Anyway I stand corrected.
There are no physical consequences to being spat on by a healthy person (if they are sick and do so knowingly to infect you, that is completely different). It is an insult, a grotesque one, but an insult none the less, and should be treated as such by law.
That is not necessarily true. Commission of verbal assault can land a person in jail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_words_doctrine#United_...
The fighting words doctrine, in United States constitutional law, is a limitation to freedom of speech as granted in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In its 9-0 decision, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942), the U.S. Supreme Court established the doctrine and held that "insulting or 'fighting words,' those that by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace" are among the "well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech [which] the prevention and punishment of...have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem."
the test for battery is that you harmfully or offensively touched someone or something on them
i think spitting would fall under both for most juries..
From the HN guidelines:
"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."
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.
In defense of the site though, your initial downmodded comment was rather condescending and showed a lack of knowledge of the area. Responding to someones idea with "Huh? You really think that?" isn't very respectful and it shows a certain amount of arrogance. Arrogance is frowned upon pretty heavily here. It doesn't add anything to the discussion when you are correct and is just plain obnoxious when you are wrong. Be humble about what you know, ask questions about what you don't, and provide logical arguments for what you think. That's a big part of what sets this site apart from a lot of the other sites like it.
I assume you're a moderator - although they're much appreciated by myself, these well-written tips will just get lost in the noise here. You might consider adding them to the FAQ yourself : )
For example, saying: "I can't believe you people are downmodding me." will most likely just cause people to pile on and punish you.
But saying: "To those downmodding me, if you think I meant this, I really meant that." or "Just to clarify, I meant it this way." will often defuse a misunderstanding and cause people to at least put you back up to 1.
Really the key is to be civil. It's rare that someone gets dogpiled just for dissenting. However, if you dissent in a rude manner, people are tempted to see how negative one comment can get.
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
Would you prefer to be spat on instead?
I'm beginning to suspect my writing style is prone to misunderstanding, though. C'est la vie.
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 or calling them names should not be a crime, and that spitting on someone shouldn't be considered an "assault" (with the provisions you mentioned).
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.
Spot on about the expedient solution to seeing something you don't like, though.
As noted it is illegal in most countries.
"I don't understand what you mean, anyway. [...] What would he have to do to make you finally relinquish your sympathy?"
Something a great deal worse than writing articles that do not much interest me. I find it incomprehensible that someone could find a matter of mere taste to be sufficient justification for a crime.
"And one more thing - the man who spat in his face may be contemptible, but it doesn't doesn't fit my model of how "cowards" behave either."
Your definition of bravery is not one I have any respect for then.
I don't remember defining bravery anywhere? I simply said that in my opinion, most "cowards" don't consummate their cowardice by walking up to big guys (Arrington is a big guy) and spitting on them.
Anyone motivated enough to take an "extreme" action against someone else (eg spitting on them) could be argued that they are not necessarily in a right frame of mind and more or less going to do it regardless of circumstances.
Exhibit A - the guy who threw shoes at then President Bush.. there were secret service all over that place.
Without knowing who did it, or for what reason, I'd be fairly confident in betting that at no point did Michael's size come into the equation.
Maybe we should re-evaluate that.
Many, if not most of the TC articles posted here do seem to be sensationalist in nature, so it's easy to believe Arrington's just after ad-money (as some people say).
From a business standpoint, it would be silly for pg to ban a site that helps promote YC startups, not to mention TC is nowhere near as wonky/gossipy as valleywag.
Right. PG banning it would be different from people just not posting any TC stories though. No need for PG to incur Arrington's wrath.
From what I've seen, TC contains so much gossip and mildly nauseating posts that we'd be better off without it.
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.
I might be in the minority on this, but I was unhappy with the whole discussion from the past about banning/censoring Valleywag and Techcrunch. Though the arguments against Valleywag had slightly more merit, the whole thing smacked of intolerance toward people and ideas we disagree with, which see its logical culmination in acts like this spitting incident.
Makes me think John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" should be required reading here.
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.]
Pieing is the act of throwing a pie at an authority figure, as a means of protesting against a perceived flaw (arrogance, hubris) in the target's character.
and also:
Godard was very pleased at being pied.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieing
The point is that despite just writing articles and speaking at conferences, the content of his messages have far more meat than his enactment of them.
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.
In the interest of full-disclosure, I did down-mod the comment that you just deleted.
i expect you've never tried to raise vc?
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.
There are a lot of faster, easier ways to make money if you're greedy. Before the crash, I'd say go into finance and become an i-banker.
Web 2.0 start ups -- especially one seeking seed money and boot strapping -- are seeking more responsibility than they are wealth. It still has that "selling t-shirts on the internet" feeling: a) Everyone is doing it. b)It feels like a good idea. c) Its not really known if people can make money from doing it.
I don't know Arrington, but to me he always sounded like a humble, down-to-earth guy, very passionate about his job.
Joseph <a href=http://www.drug-intervention.com/purpose.html>Drug Intervention</a>
"Never ask for place-names in Wales, Baldric. You'll be washing the spit out of your hair for weeks". (Blackadder)
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.
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.
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.
That said, this is the exception. I can't think of many more online groups that are this adult.
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.
However, death threats and randomly spitting in someone's face are unambigiously crossing those social boundaries by a wide margin.
I'm not remotely surprised that he's pissed off other crazy people enough for them to get retaliatory.
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.
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...
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.
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.
(I'm not speaking here about my coworkers, or my employer, or my employer's content-sharing agreement with TC.)