Some things need to change

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/28/some-things-need-to-change/

by zhyder • 17 years ago

287 191 17 years ago

zhyder4• 17 years ago

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.

axod3• 17 years ago

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 false.

I think they do a great job in the main though.

jaspertheghost2• 17 years ago

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.

litewulf4• 17 years ago

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.

zhyder4• 17 years ago

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.

tlrobinson2• 17 years ago

This is true. If you don't get far more traffic from other sources than TechCrunch, I think you're doing it wrong.

robfitz• 17 years ago

if you want users, techcrunch is not much help. if you want adventurous corporate clients or investor awareness, it's top notch.

webwright• 17 years ago

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.

tdavis• 17 years ago

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.

biohacker42• 17 years ago

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.

xenophanes6• 17 years ago

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?

zhyder4• 17 years ago

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?

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

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.)

mattmaroon3• 17 years ago

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.

xenophanes6• 17 years ago

Yeah. Health speculation doesn't even really fit on this list:

  0) speculation that isn't mean
  1) insults and mean rumors
  2) spitting
  3) death threats

zhyder4• 17 years ago

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.

rbanffy• 17 years ago

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 ;-) ?

JacobAldridge• 17 years ago

"That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3".

Spitting is a long way past that point. Not cool.

joe_the_user• 17 years ago

Wow!

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?

froo8• 17 years ago

I guess the person who spat on Michael really showed his level of integrity.

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.

geuis• 17 years ago

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.

catch404• 17 years ago

"I write about technology startups and news. In any sane world that shouldn’t make me someone who has to deal with death threats and being spat on."

Something definitely needs to change.

babul• 17 years ago

Hopefully Michael doesn't shutter Techcrunch

Given how much money it makes, I doubt it will happen.

jpcx01• 17 years ago

Spitter was probably from a PR firm. Remember this post? http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/17/death-to-the-embargo/

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.

tlrobinson2• 17 years ago

Or a disgruntled European entrepreneur who didn't like the opinions he expressed at Le Web... http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/961885

jaspertheghost2• 17 years ago

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.

ghshephard• 17 years ago

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.

hk7• 17 years ago

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.

dbrush4• 17 years ago

"He's relentlessly promoted himself..."

How is that?

hk7• 17 years ago

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.

sh1mmer• 17 years ago

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.

cardboardbox• 17 years ago

It's funny, I think Arrington totally deserves to get punched in the face. But reading about him being spit on had me disgusted on his behalf.

puzzle-out2• 17 years ago

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.

pclark5• 17 years ago

Why does he deserve to be punched?

dcminter2• 17 years ago

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.

hk7• 17 years ago

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.

shiranaihito2• 17 years ago

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).

Xichekolas• 17 years ago

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.

dantheman• 17 years ago

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.

jsdalton4• 17 years ago

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.

Scriptor• 17 years ago

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."

zupatol• 17 years ago

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.

and also:

Godard was very pleased at being pied.

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

bmelton2• 17 years ago

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.

yters4• 17 years ago

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

kailashbadu• 17 years ago

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.

anuraggoel• 17 years ago

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.

maxniederhofer• 17 years ago

easy VC money

i expect you've never tried to raise vc?

Prrometheus• 17 years ago

He's just a journalist, dude, doing what journalists do.

pg• 17 years ago

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.

ojbyrne• 17 years ago

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.

j2d2• 17 years ago

holy crap well said

redrobot50502• 17 years ago

Also, "Web 2.0 Greed Culture"...really?

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.

abstractwater• 17 years ago

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.

hollerith• 17 years ago

Would you still be delighted if the person had spit into the cream pie before throwing it?

pavelludiq• 17 years ago

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.

jdvolz• 17 years ago

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).

brandnewlow2• 17 years ago

The spitting sounds more like a lack of social skills than anything else...

axod3• 17 years ago

For all we know it could have just been someone from Wales...

"Never ask for place-names in Wales, Baldric. You'll be washing the spit out of your hair for weeks". (Blackadder)

geedee77• 17 years ago

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).

Thanks for reading.

unalone2• 17 years ago

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.

dbrush4• 17 years ago

"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.

bdfh42• 17 years ago

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.

jupiter• 17 years ago

I always thought people attending a conference like this are civilized but no matter if you like MA or not, this is below all standards

g__g• 17 years ago

Isn't this becoming the norm now? Whether related to technology or anything otherwise, expressing opinions is becoming increasingly dangerous.

sounddust3• 17 years ago

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.

blasdel2• 17 years ago

Michael Arrington is one of those people.

sounddust3• 17 years ago

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.

jyothi• 17 years ago

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.

mnemonicsloth• 17 years ago

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.

[2] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/a-tale-of-two-tradeoff...

vaksel• 17 years ago

stuff like this is why you need to keep your personal life and your business life separate.

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.

_b8r0• 17 years ago

I hope he stops writing. I really do. If you're reading this, Michael Arrington, please go away and never touch the Internet again.

fallentimes• 17 years ago

Like him or not, Techcrunch has helped tons of startups out.

okeumeni• 17 years ago

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.

trickjarrett• 17 years ago

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.

nihilocrat• 17 years ago

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.

Harkins2• 17 years ago

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.)

smhinsey2• 17 years ago

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.

jcapote• 17 years ago

Pics or it didn't happen.

medianama2• 17 years ago

I feel bad about the fact that I liked whatever happened....

manmanic3• 17 years ago

Disgusting as it clearly is, I feel the spitting incident is a bit of a red herring.

If this had happened 2 years ago during the rapid growth in Web 2.0 investment, I think Mike would have soldiered on.

Instead, he has a nasty experience while his business and kingdom are shrinking. Deep down, I suspect he wanted out already.

In his situation I would.

froo8• 17 years ago

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.

manmanic3• 17 years ago

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.

medianama2• 17 years ago

I believe he just made that up to grab attention and a few more pageviews

Goladus• 17 years ago

I'm not a part of the startup community, and have no hatred of Arrington. I haven't heard any of the rumors and don't know any of the drama that wasn't in the linked article. I've been a casual reader of Techcrunch for 1-2 years.

I have found Techcrunch articles to be of inconsistent quality at best. My impression from reading Hacker News for the past two years is that TC articles are often poorly written, poorly researched, and sensationalistic. 'Integrity' isn't the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Techcrunch. It is perhaps more candid than say, MSNBC, but that isn't saying much.

If I were Arrington, I'd try to stay focused on improving that image. Venting personal frustrations on the front page of the site doesn't strike me as helping all that much.

TweedHeads• 17 years ago

Using lies and manipulation to attack some companies you dislike (or get paid to do so) is not the same as reporting on startups, once you threaten others' way of life, yours will be threatened back too.

Focus on startups as you say, and stop mudslinging with a hidden agenda.

simonk• 17 years ago

Oh come on! Very few of his posts are negative and mostly those are when the company closes up shop. Paid to do so, you have any poof of that?

quellhorst• 17 years ago

I don't like Michael Arrington because of the way he acts. His latest post backs up my dislike. He needs to grow a backbone and not cower behind security. If you are in California its much harder to have a gun to protect yourself. You could always move to Texas (Austin is nice). :)

Also, if this guy is a felon how does he have a gun and Arrington knows this is a fact? When you buy a gun they do a FBI check to make sure you don't have such a conviction.

Your startup will succeed regardless of its inclusion in TC. Worry about the product not some silly blog.

alain94040• 17 years ago

This is unacceptable. I'll venture to guess that it's coming from a european entrepreneur who didn't get the bad jokes that Mike was putting out in his fake fight with Loic.

But (you know there's a "but" coming). But actually, no, it's unexcusable, no matter what.

To you the spitter: no matter your issues, you made the wrong choice and deserver zero respect.

jderick• 17 years ago

And I hope that my peers who tend to sit on the sideline while others attack will start to take a stand against it.

And I hope people take this literally. IE, grab the jerk and call the police. Don't just let him walk away.

edw519• 17 years ago

I always assumed that our work and integrity would speak for itself.

It does.

Unfortunately, in your business, just like ours, you have to account for outliers. When we miss them, computers mess up. When you do, ever worse things can happen. Sorry to hear about it.

Have a nice month off, Michael. Looking forward to having you back in March for the 99% of us who really do care about your (and your family's) well being.

adrianwaj3• 17 years ago

Arrington has spat in the face of many startups and blogs, metaphorically speaking, and the most successful business people in general are ruthless. This doesn't excuse the literal spitting behaviour, but Techcrunch is a blog with way too much power, for better or worse depending on the way you look at it.

pclark5• 17 years ago

why does everyone think startups are doomed if they get a bad TC review?

There's a perfect example of this THIS WEEK! Arrington has been ripping into Cha Cha for years, and they just got a massive funding round.

adrianwaj3• 17 years ago

"why does everyone think startups are doomed if they get a bad TC review?"

Who says they're not!

When's the last time TC linked to another blog in a post. Hat tips etc.?

froo8• 17 years ago

Just because ChaCha got funding, doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.

I've never used it before, so I decided to give both it, Google, Yahoo, Live Search and Ask.com the same search phrase in response to this comment and see what the results are.

What is the speed of light? - I felt a simple enough question.

  Google took just 0.11 seconds to give me an exact answer.
  Yahoo took 0.28 seconds
  Live Search has no timer, but it was much less than 1 second, I assume around the same speed as Yahoo
  Ask.com no timer, but same perceived speed as both Yahoo and Live Search

Finally, I tried asking the question to ChaCha, I asked it around 4:16pm, it asked me to sign up, so I did, went through the signup process, confirmed my email address - now its sending me through an SMS to confirm my mobile..

EDIT - it's now 4:25pm, still no SMS on my mobile phone from ChaCha.. I think its fair to say that comparing 10 minutes to 0.11 seconds is a pretty clear indicator why human search isn't a good idea.

Even if you take out the signup stage, human reaction time can't even compete with 0.11 seconds and that doesn't begin to factor in things like time it takes to read the question.

EDIT #2 - 5:06pm, still no SMS...

darkhorse• 17 years ago

let this be a reminder that actions have consequences, and none of us lives in our own isolated bubble.

treat others as you'd like to be treated - and that applies both to Arrington and to the spitter.

tptacek2• 17 years ago

Maybe there wouldn't be so much Arrington animus if TechCrunch would stop doing things like republishing the Twitter streams of disgruntled data entry employees as retaliation for a management team that refused to comment about that employee.

Maybe there wouldn't have been so much animus if Arrington hadn't done things like single out the lead dev for his favorite web service and run story after story about his purported incompetance.

Nobody should spit on Arrington --- at least, nonconsensually --- but it's not like this is Bill Moyers we're talking about here.

braindead_in• 17 years ago

Why not fight back? If people are saying negative things about him, spreading rumors then he should be countering them. Maybe start a personal blog. Rebut them. Make your point be heard loud and clear. Not tough for a person who's in media already.

mattmaroon3• 17 years ago

"Before TechCrunch I assumed most people were essentially good, and assumed that an individual was trustworthy until proven otherwise. Today, its exactly the opposite."

Most people are trustworthy until there's a large amount of money on the line, as in startups. Then you really never know who is. You think "oh, we've been friends/coworkers/brothers for years, he'd never screw me". Then 6 or 7 figures become and you find out what people are really made of.

wallflower• 17 years ago

> Then 6 or 7 figures become and you find out what people are really made of.

Like alcohol can sometimes do temporarily, extreme money will magnify your personality and who you really are.

old-gregg• 17 years ago

Spitting to me is pretty violent behavior, and while Michael suggests that it's borderline with something "far more violent" I personally can't imagine what could be worse. I'll take a good punch attempt over a spit any day.

"Before TechCrunch I assumed most people were essentially good, and assumed that an individual was trustworthy until proven otherwise. Today, its exactly the opposite."

I think any history buff would disagree with this assumption. People tend to be "essentially good" when there are plenty of resources and nothing to fight about. Numerous societies collapsed and some even resorted to cannibalism when resources became scarce.

Also I don't really get people who hate Arrington or love Angelina Jolie or want to kick Brad Pitt's ass. They don't know these people personally, they only can see an artificially engineered media-projection of them. Arrington didn't cover our startup, but hey - we haven't done anything for him either so I never felt bad about it. However, I had a chance to chat with the guy once and even though he looked tired and overwhelmed with attention, he still managed to give me a few very useful suggestions, far better than an average "wow that's nice" doublespeak you'd hear from people who aren't interested but just trying to be polite.

shimi• 17 years ago

I don't like TechCrunch, and I don't like Michael Arrington. I can write a book on why, but this is not place.

Death threats and spitting are way over the top!!! It's a shameful behaviour that needs to be outcast. TechCrunch help lots of businesses and in the process killed some. That's life, suck it mate!!!

OoTheNigerian• 17 years ago

I think any violent action is condemned! If you do not like what he writes, then do not read it! You can discuss it here on seesmic. http://seesmic.com/videos/gEfLwq4pqG

ensignavenger• 17 years ago

Personally, I commend Micheal on not punching the guy that spit upon him in the face. I;m certain it took a great deal of self restraint. I would have likely taken it as an immediate threat of harm, and beat the tar out of the guy. (I have learned to control my temper much better over the years, but there are some things that are intolerable.)

I would also recommend he go to Front Sight and get the training to protect himself and his family (from the death threats, not the spitter).

giles_bowkett3• 17 years ago

I think this is awesome and terrible at the same time. Awesome because I wanted to do it myself, and you knew it was only just a matter of time. Terrible because even though Arrington deserved it, Kathy Sierra didn't. Attacking people because you disagree with them, that's a really awful trend.

For Arrington to be surprised that this happened, though, jesus. That's ridiculous. Go to my blog and google "Arrington." Got at least five links to him spitting in people's faces online. Probably many more than five. And that's not even going anywhere near the politics, power-playing, manipulation, or his claim that promoting his own companies means "journalism is evolving." He's a horrible human being.

I'm against the idea of randomly attacking bloggers, but if you had to pick a blogger to randomly attack, you couldn't find somebody who deserved it more. And if this incident shuts down TechCrunch, we should find the spitter and give him a medal for helping the tech community scrape that thing off our shoes.

bocalogic• 17 years ago

This reminds me of "kenneth whats the frequency"

Spitting on someone is wrong and cowardice. However, I would not lose sleep over it.

giles_bowkett3• 17 years ago

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.

ryanwaggoner• 17 years ago

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?

froo8• 17 years ago

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

petercooper• 17 years ago

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.

giles_bowkett3• 17 years ago

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.

mojonixon• 17 years ago

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?

arjunb• 17 years ago

I do agree that this is over the line.

But I'm also slightly conflicted - why did I laugh when the Arabic reporter threw his shoe at Bush a few months ago? In retrospect, that event should have been just as inexcusable. What if Georgey wrote up a similar blog post about his experience? How would I have felt then?

menloparkbum• 17 years ago

Universally across human cultures, throwing a shoe is considered hilarious whereas spitting is considered is rude and gross.

brandnewlow2• 17 years ago

Ok. Here comes another opinion.

Maybe Arrington should not work from his home to save money. He can't secure it. It's unsafe.

Maybe it's ok if Arrington has to hire security for his workplace. Every newspaper in the country does this because they publish things that would get people shot, maimed, kidnapped or worse. Arrington's stuff runs in the Washington Post and is very influential in a major industry sector. Why is he surprised that people would come after him? He's got money and can make or break people's careers.

Is the spitting lame? Sure. But welcome to the big leagues dude. If you want to call yourself a news organization and play hardball, there's a price that comes with it.

Perhaps this is more about bloggers coming up against the problems that face traditional news organizations rather than a new problem in the industry.

finebanana• 17 years ago

Mike, If you ever read this, may be it's time to shutdown TC!. As you mentioned, you've got a template for farewell letter from T-Shirt Hell ;)

No, don't. Just kidding. Be careful out there.

rivo• 17 years ago

Doing something like TechCrunch in an ever-growing Internet startup world, Arrington is (wrongly) perceived as a deciding factor to success, as a God to some, maybe even. Although it's wrong, I'm not surprised this happened.

Some things need to change

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