Arrington is now officially an asshole

Posted by Karoli in Uncategorized October 30th, 2006

[Apologies in advance to those offended by language and others who couldn't give a rip about this issue]

Dear Mike Arrington,

Will you please pay attention at least long enough to get your facts straight?

If you had gone all the way through the disclosure.org screens, you’d have seen the final result, which would have included the invitation to:

a) Tweak any language so that it honestly represented your blog; and b)Join the conversation.

Instead of bothering, you just posted a big slam.

Big Bad Techcrunch Man is throwing his weight around like a schoolyard bully. It’s becoming more and more obvious to me that there’s a backstory here, a history, some reason that you’re so against this that goes beyond your supposed ‘love of the blogosphere’. You’re not interested in any conversation that wasn’t your idea, and if you gave a damn about the blogosphere and its integrity you would be jumping up and down about the shilling that happens on the so-called ‘legitimate’ blogs.

Comparing this to big tobacco funding just proves you’re an asshole again and again. People like you write with the express intention of raising emotions (and buzz for your own blog) while stifling rational thought and conversation. In other words, you’re shrill and hysterical. But not to worry, I’m sure you’ll have Jason championing your cause. And to think that I once had respect (and said so publicly more than once) for both of you.

Obviously you’re more interested in throwing your weight around than you are with having any kind of conversation, and so you get my Asshole of the Week award, and my dropped subscription from all of your various blogs AND a conscious effort to boycott any company that you recommend or have an interest in. In fact, I had planned to use CarsDirect but have decided against it and will choose another option for my car purchase.

Update #1:

Matthew Ingram thinks Arrington is letting his hatred of PPP get the better of him. Teresa Valdez Klein thinks there’s room to develop best practices around PayPerPost. Over at Blogher, Jeneane Sessum doesn’t think we need the Transparency Police. Shane Ede (thatedeguy) agrees.

Update #2

Kudos to Robert Scoble for actually going through the DisclosurePolicy.org screens and posting the result. He has some good feedback about the input screens that’s worth considering.

Shelley Powers points out that Arrington’s Techcrunch parties are undisclosed revenue streams, and observes:

For all of this, Michael makes a lot of money, yet I haven’t seen Michael put up a disclosure that says:

I am throwing this party because I just bought a new gas guzzling SUV–in black, I am so cool–and I have to pay for it. I don’t really want to meet you all, but I want you to want to meet me so I continue making a lot of money from desperate startups burning through their first round of funding. You can come for free, but you’re going to run a gauntlet of people wanting to sell you something, and most likely being disappointed when they find out you’re not really a somebody. And if you approach me, you better be worth my time.

Finally, commenter Bill posted this link to a recent Valleywag article (I found this on digg tonight, too) about a Techcrunch article which appears to be edited to remove disclosure about Arrington’s relationship with Maya’s Mom, a startup that recently received VC funding.

Update #3

This post was dugg yesterday and linked over at Valleywag, too, so welcome and thank you to visitors from those two sites. The Digg folks actually had a fair point — that Digg is not really intended for posts like this one that’s clearly a rant, but I do hope that the folks who landed here read the more reasonable and intelligent posts I linked in the updates.


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