How I got Censored from Techcrunch: L’Arroseur Arrosé
bitsandbuzz.com
bitsandbuzz.com
Initially I stopped visiting techcrunch because of the ignnorance and hatred in the comments for a post Arrington made about a T-shirt company that sold intentionally offensive and incendiary products. I revisited a few months later (after I read they reshuffled and hired more reporters). Things were a little better for a while but Arrington seems to have returned to his aggressive and argumentative self. I didn't see discussion of it here but yesterday he went off on the Times and attacked their journalistic integrity for reporting techcrunch's dubious recent history (see last.fm).
Laporte is right, though, Arrington is a troll. He picks fights with anyone he can. "What are you gonna do about it" seems to be his attitude about everything, and when people disagree, he censors their comments from his Bully pulpit. This is no different from what people like O'Reilly and other right wing radio hosts do when they cut the microphone of people they do not agree with.
I prefer http://venturebeat.com/ these days
I think this is true, but rather depressing. When you excessively (as in: more than is warranted) exaggerate to get attention, you might succeed in the short term but ultimately you just breed cynicism. You also desensitise your readership - think of it as crying wolf. If your emotion (anger, enthusiasm, whatever) is always dialed up to 11, what do you do when something actually important happens?
While the odd rant and rave can be entertaining, I find the cumulative effect rather draining. When a blog goes that way, I just stop reading it. The more emotional noise I find, the more I appreciate quite mature reflection.
Also, to comment on the experiment - that blog post should have been more along the lines of "Arrington is a censoring Nazi" to really investigate whether excessive exaggeration gets more hits. It was really too reasonable to prove the point :-)
link: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/the_top_ten_stu.html
HN could be the one but it needs to leave the YC nest first.
Or fork...
Thanks for the tip.