Gizmodo’s prank, Civil Disobedience??
I like Gizmodo a lot - Google Reader Trends tells me so. But their prank at CES, was, in my opinion in poor taste and I felt that the banning of one member was a reasonable and measured response. And then I kinda forgot about it… but now Gizmodo has put up there post in defense of their action equating their prank to Civil Disobedience.
Are they serious? Do they really think that anyone interpreted this as a stance against the bloggers “kowtowing to corporations and tradeshows and playing nice”. Anyone? That this in any way reflects Gizmodo’s attempt to earn respect by “fact finding, reporting, having untouchable integrity, provocative coverage and gaining readers through your reputation for those things”?
Does the prank of turning off TV’s in the middle of someone’s presentation pay any form of homage to real examples of meaningful civil disobedience like Gandhi or Thoreau? It was a college level prank, that garnered a few chuckles at best. To try and peddle it into something more meaningful is ridiculous and disrespectful to the very thing who’s footsteps they claim to follow.
Would Gizmodo laugh at the prank of someone hacking into their website and randomly putting articles on hold? It’d be simple for them to republish the article but I still kinda don’t think they’d reward that “civil disobedience” with any sort of love.
I agree with the problems they mention in their post but this prank had nothing to do with it. It was a trick meant to garner some notoriety and a few more page views with the video and now with a linkbait article. Really annoying, it’s why a little more of me dies every time I add a gawker property to the RSS feed (but dammit, I still do, I still do…)
January 14th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
A Collage prank is even giving it too much credit. Collage pranks tend to use if not more brainpower, more time. For instance the stacking of a lot of things to piss someone off, like filling a car with empty cans, or a more robust gag like gluing everything in a persons room to their ceiling. Don’t get sucked into deeming this a collage level prank because it involves technology. The kids in school today don’t look at technology (specifically electronics) as anything all that special. They are not dazzled by the 45 inch monitor because they did not grow up with transistor radios under their pillows or Atari like we did. In essence this prank involves pressing a button. Unless this button produces clean air or makes gravy your still just pressing a button. Middle school prank at best. And if they are considering this civil disobedience I bet there are a lot of people who marched for civil rights that would take massive offense to that. I guess one persons civil disobedience is another persons “shut the hell up you juvenile morons who don’t want to work and want to ride this stupid prank out for the rest of your lives but it’s not going to work because you piss people off and if you piss enough people off the karma police will get you and you will wind up in hell which will be YOU in front of a giant screen playing a porno of the hottest woman you have ever seen and every time she is about to expose herself the screen shuts off and you are forced to stare at your own lust ridden reflection.”
January 14th, 2008 at 4:12 pm
LOL - I hope you’re right, but I suspect you’re wrong. Turns out the Karma Police tend to sleep on the job (like this cop) and bringing it to light tends not to do very much, accept maybe get you arrested. :)
I’m sure already that Gizmodo’s page views are way, way up on this stuff. Sigh.