Dear Internet Tough Guys: Cut it out
The plague of ridiculous "do you know who I am" threats has to stop
Topics: Alec Baldwin, Bullying, Editor's Picks, Internet Culture, Media, Paul Carr, Media News
One corner of the Internet was atwitter yesterday over this Valleywag post, which reprints some emails PandoDaily founder Sarah Lacy and writer/publisher Paul Carr sent to employees employees and cofounders of an event space in Los Angeles. If you don’t know who those people are, then congratulations. The only thing you need to know about them is that they think they are Very Big Players in their little world, which in this case is writing very boosterish things about tech companies. And they are indeed both quite well-known in that sphere. As these emails showed, they are also both raging assholes, drunk on entitlement.
The problem was, PandoDaily had an event at this space, and Lacy got upset about the event space putting its logo up somewhere, and also maybe some other random inconvenience of the sort that reasonable people get annoyed with but do not usually end up threatening extortion over. Lacy said this person could either “work off the $20k you stole from us” by giving PandoDaily free use of the space for eight additional events — no one “stole” $20 thousand from anyone, that is just what PandoDaily claims to charge for “brand sponsorship,” which is to say, putting a sign up in your own space with your logo on it — or else Lacy would “let people know why when they ask and we’ll reference it in our next post about our next LA event,” which means she will use her very large platform to disparage this event space. In short: Give us free things or we trash you.
The event space’s CEO pointed out that this sounded a bit extortiony. Then Paul Carr, a writer who used to work with Lacy and who is somehow affiliated with PandoDaily, jumped into the conversation, unbeckoned, to unleash what I am very sure he thought was a very righteous smackdown on these jerks who “threatened” his friend. Please read the entire thing at Valleywag. Here are some excerpts:
I don’t like it when my friends are threatened. Actually it’s my least favorite thing in the world. So let me be absolutely clear, as someone with no legal or financial ties to PandoDaily, that from today, I will not rest until every man, woman and child knows the unvarnished truth about how fucking appalling CrossCampus is to work with.
By this I mean that if, on any given day, the tiniest company in the entrepreneurship community so much as makes a sideways glance as they walk past your venue and does not immediately recall my views on the place, I will know my work is incomplete. There’s no extortion here — no “unless, or but” — I don’t want *anything* from you. In fact, PandoDaily is the first company that I’ll be urging to walk away from you clowns. Whether they take my advice is down to them. But please know, if they don’t, at the next event I’ll spend my introduction ripping you a new one from the stage.
Very Brave, Very Tough. Paul Carr will insult you at a future event. Carr goes on, feeling, I’m sure, quite proud of this next bit:
As for your threats of retribution against anyone who tells the truth about you. Bring them the fuck on, but against me, not PandoDaily. Bring your lawyers and your apparently ethnically relevant backers. Bring them with lawsuits and writs and injunctions and whatever dark threats of baseball bats and dark alleys really lay behind your email. But first, do me a favor: Google me. Read a few of my columns in the Guardian, the Times, the Wall Street Journal or on blogs like TechCrunch and — of course — PandoDaily. Or pick up one of my books. Read what *always* happens when someone starts a public fight with me, or attempts to shake down one of my friends. I don’t use lawyers or pathetic fratboy threats. I simply tell the truth, again and again and again and again until when people hear the words “CrossCampus” their face becomes contorted into an involuntary grimace, and maybe they throw up a little in their mouths.
Instead, here’s what I suggest you do next Ronen. I suggest — and it’s not really a suggestion — you fuck off and stop trying to play with the big leagues. You’re barely ready for pre-school, let alone a pathetic “our lawyers are bigger than your lawyers” dance.
Emphasis mine, because while most people I know spent yesterday mocking the “Google me” bit (I mean, “Google me,” come on), it is actually that second paragraph that amuses me the most.
Let’s propose a voluntary rule, for every English-speaking person on this earth: Unless you are actually a professional baseball player, currently on the roster of a major league team — we’ll be generous here and say the expanded roster, even though many of those men are actually playing in the minor leagues — you should never, ever claim to be associated with “the big leagues.” Because you sound ridiculous. Paul Carr is in the “big leagues” of … writing about shit on the Internet? The big leagues of over-the-top emails sent to people who did not actually email him to begin with? The big leagues of hyperbole? I don’t know. It’s just a very silly thing men say when they are trying to sound cool and sort of intimidate people. On message boards, it is sometimes called “hardman” talk.
