Gizmodon’t
I hate it when popular sites decide to be unprofessional douchebags for no reason. The Internet, for all its strengths, still has to prove itself to the the old guard and that requires professionalism. Bloggers get the bitchslap as amateur journalists even though they may do as much work if not more so than any writer for a print or television magazine. It’s not fair, but so it goes. The new kid at the table has to prove he’s mature enough to sit at the table, or else he goes back to the kiddie table.
Popular gadget Gizmodo needs to go back to the kiddie table. Their behavior continues to be unacceptable for such a high-traffic site. Back in November, Editor-in-Chief Briam Lam made the world’s most callous swag/press package unboxing as he tossed around Halo 3 merch. It’s his stuff and he’s free to do with it what he wants but why not use half-a-brain and realize that you’re already making people envious so why add insult to injury? I’m not sure whether or not Lam is a dick or just incompetent but when he made a video responding to people who called him on his behavior, he continued to be a dick/incompetent by giving away the ending to Halo 3 (at this point, Halo 3 had been out for a day). You just don’t act that smug towards your readership. It’s poor judgment.
But apparently Gizmodo has more than enough poor judgment as seen by what they thought was a totally hilarious prank. You see, at the Consumer Electronics Show this past week, they decided to turn off TVs there using a remote control! Isn’t that funny! You can almost hear the adolescent giggling. I’m not against pranks or irreverence. But aside from this prank being unfunny, it’s also a slap in the face to every electronics manufacturer there. They thought it was mostly harmless but if you’re trying to market your product, having it turn off suddenly and inexplicably makes it look unreliable. Again, with Gizmodo, you don’t know if they’re just being dicks or if they’re really that stupid.
The final nail in the coffin is Brian Lam’s comment on the story over at Valleywag (it’s the seventh post down). Rather than apologize and say “Yeah, we probably shouldn’t have done that and we want folks to know that we’re taking full responsibility and encouraging CES to not judge other sites based on our behavior,” Lam basically says that silly pranks are just how they roll and that they got a really good interview with Bill Gates so step-off!
Gizmodo has been banned from CES (and rightly so) but they need to be banned from the Internet. I like most of Gawker Media’s websites (I visit Kotaku multiple times a day), but either they need to change out their staff (especially Lam) or drop the site. There’s just no room for “professional bloggers” like these numbskulls ruining it for everyone else.
