PR Firm Unwisely Tangles With Penny Arcade
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"The reality is that once I had posted the emails I didn’t have the power anymore. The Internet had it now and nothing I said or did was going to change that."
Everything he says is true, BUT... he posted the email addresses. Claiming that it's out of his hands (and implicitly NOT HIS FAULT what happens now) is like handing a bunch of firebugs some gasoline and strike-anywhere matches and claiming you're powerless to prevent the ensuing Devil's Night reenactment.
Those email addresses would have been dug up via the internet by enterprising individuals sooner or later. It seems a bit smug to revel in the very destruction you laid the groundwork for.
Other than that, I am all for exposure of hideous customer service/PR entities. This is precisely why anyone in these fields, in this day and age, should be doing everything they can to take care of their paying customers. You sure as hell don't want the loosely confederated wrath of the internet turned against you.
My schadenfreude is of course piqued, but I think blowing this up in quite so public a way is quite the right way to deal with it.
Thought this might be an interesting case study in what not to do w/r to PR and/or responding to bad PR firms.
I definitely think Ocean is in the wrong here, but I'm not sure the PA response was correct also.