Dan Farber [No Larry Dignan] says Loosen Up on Gizmodo Stunt

[Dan Farber seeing humor in Gizmostunt. Photo by Shel)

[CORRECTION: Well, I screwed this post up entirely, as _ryan Comments below. The author is Larry Dignan, not Dan Farber, and much of this post thus makes no sense whatsoever. I can't wait to see how certain Valleywaggers have their fun with this.]

ZDNet's Dan Farber posts this morning that bloggers like his colleague Rafe Needleman and I should loosen up on the Gizmodo stunt. He says that if he had gotten his hand on the remote he might have done the same thing because it was funny. He says that if bloggers got banned from the front door of CES, the best of us would simply sneak in the back way. He says that the stunt loosened up a week in which there really wasn't any big news anyhow. He suspects that most people who heard about do not share blogosphere concerns. It was no big deal and they smiled and went on with life.

There are few people I respect more than Dan Farber. I have never known him to write anything erroneous and I've been following him more than 20 years. I sit next to him at conferences whenever I can and we've shared more than a few wisecrack jokes. Actually, I do the same with Rafe. This time two out of three of us are not laughing.

I think he's right that some of us may have raised the alarm bell a bit too far. Bloggers are too important to companies delivering CE products to market to be banned.  CEA would never be foolish enough to cut of the supply of coverage for paying exhibitors.

But from what I can see, most bloggers consider Gizmodo stunt to be classically unfunny. We are becoming mainstream and getting through the front door is important to us.  Having access to the news is important to us. Gizmodo is one of the biggest and most influential product blogs and we generally expect them to behave like professionals. And in this case, what they did seems to me to be less than that.

I've shared many a good laugh with Dan and I will again. But this time, Dan, I think you may be one of the very few in the room enjoying the humor.

Comments

[_ryan]

That post was by Larry Dignan, not Farber. A quick glance at the byline would have helped.

_r

[yndygo]

Meh. It's a mistake anyone would've made - the page shows both Farber & Dignan at the top.

Nonetheless, your point still stands. Some people found the Gizmodo stunt funny and don't understand the uproar. Some people didn't find it funny and fear the fallout.

In the end, I don't think it's possible to actually say whether "most people" land on one side or the other of the funny issue. Humor is a very subjective thing. But the concern that many bloggers have over the potential impact makes sense.

Having striven for so long to be seen as on a par with 'traditional' media, it's less than appealing to think that one juvenile prank could undo the progress that it took many people several years to achieve.

Funny or unfunny is a separate issue from that of stupid & damaging or not.