Wired? Tired? Linkbaiting? I wish

Why do you feel the need to justify yourself to those guys? It’s all pretty small beer, IMHO….

…true, but the big difference however, is that your Sunday video was sharing your personal opinion about the future of an entire industry – not a video to of a bunch of people working on their projects or their own views about the state of the world.

Idiot or not – it got people thinking.

Robert on the front on my blog (which i know is now your homepage) i have the quotation:

“Before a brilliant person begins something great, they must look foolish to the crowd.”

IMHO (and only mine) great ideas come out of these kind of random mind dumps (or “rants”) – often long before it becomes clear to the greater audience.

I follow a lot of your stuff, videos are especially good so if you have a feeling something is worth saying, then there is likely a good reason for us to take some notice.

I read “Blink” where people spontaneously start clapping in an audience completely unaware they have done it in respone to an original “clapper” near them in the audience. Good read for all i’d say.

Don’t stew over it Robert, any idiot can sit back and criticize, very few have to guts to come up with an sort of independent thought.

I didn’t watch any of the other videos you said were better or maybe more interesting. But I watched your Kyle.TV video because it was you. Raw. Unscripted. On the fly. That’s what made it interesting for me. A lot of the other videos you list cover more more serious topics. Most of the time I don’t want that. I can look to MSNBC, Fortune Magazine or Business Week if I want serious. Keeping doing what what you want. Your Kyle.TV stuff was great. Who cares what Wired thinks.

Brett: actually all my videos are me raw and unscripted. Seriously.

A lot these videos are excellent, many of them I have seen. Some of them I have pointed out to others.

Honestly, and I am being serious here, I just have a hard time believing that someone as clever as you did not know he was opening up a powder keg with that post. I really, really do. You don’t need to justify yourself to anyone but come now, the old innocent shtick is a bit much.

I respect the conversation you started. I always feel sorry when the winds of the blogosphere turn against someone who is trying to voice an opinion, but all of this notwithstanding, when you make an argument like you did — it’s hard not to expect some kind of reaction (positive and negative).

Steve: I knew an interesting conversation would get going, but I figured it was a small group. I mean, look at the video with the IBM lawyer. He said some stuff that should have gotten this kind of response, particularly when he talked about open source licenses or patent trolls or remaking the patent system. But it didn’t.

So, I figured my little video would get a few people involved, but not go super nuclear.

If I had known that, I think I would have gone for an hour!

Heh, fair enough.

Well then, I’m calling it a night. I still think it was a finely orchestrated return to the webosphere Robert, whether intentional or not. Malhalo, Facebook and Google in the same post — might as well have thrown in the iPhone for good measure.

Good night and good luck.

Ugh. The Wired blog piece is brutal. But it apparently doesn’t need to be “balanced” (in a journalistic sense) any more than the BusinessWeek blogs need to be well-researched, either.

BusinessWeek blog == Wired blog == Valleywag these days.

Brett commenting above nails it on the head. The interviews you reference are only as interesting as the people you’re talking to. And when the video is awkward (as these usually are) I’d rather it just be an honest awkward — the subject himself addressing me.

Unless there’s going to be a great interviewer and great production values (in the tradition of the best television talk shows) I prefer the raw form.

I can’t make it through the PodTech shows but I found myself unable to turn away from the madness and the markers.

Robert, I’ve got to agree with Hugh on this – why let it bother you? Does becoming a “webrity” (web-celebrity, geddit??!!) mean you are not allowed to have an opinion?

The only link bait is coming out of Wired. If everything was rosy in their garden they would be busy putting the stories out there. The fact that they are not speaks volumes.

meanguy: generally the nine shows I link to have good production values. Have you watched anything of mine recently? Doesn’t sound like it.

perhaps you should do a recap like this every month. you produce so much content — link blog, twitter, twittergrams, videos, blog posts — that it’s hard to consume it all.

however, your short-and-sweet recaps just made me want to stay up another hour or two watching these vids. alas, i will go to bed, but i’m bookmarking this post!

Oh good – makes me a complete moron then. Heh

You don’t need to justify yourself to those people. All they do is criticize other people’s work.

Your reaction would be worthy only when someone counters your opinions with his own. Bashing someone’s opinions without any argument is worthless drivel.

Robert,

You cannot please everyone, so don’t kill yourself trying.
What you’re doing is going out on the limb with every video that you make. Most people don’t have the courage to even voice their own opinions, especially in such a public way.

It’s like playing improvised music. Sometimes there are magical moments that words cannot describe. Other times are certainly not so magical. But the point is, you keep playing. The people that mock you are showing their own shortcomings.

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Mahatma Gandhi

Your Sunday videos have generated very good and insightful counter-arguments. It would be good to address those.

Most of the people aren’t against you – they are just against the theory you presented. No need to take it to a personal level.

And there’s always an option to say that “Oops, I was wrong”.

Wired is a glossy Tabloid

Robert, I always feel guilty when I don’t watch your interviews with people. I know I would learn a lot, but it feels like eating my broccoli because it’s good for me, when what I really want is a juicy burger. Your Sunday videos were an Angus burger w/ cheese. I stumbled on them late via Twitter, and stayed up past when I should have been asleep. Why? Because you were obviously thinking out loud, excited about the thesis you were shaping, passionate, and real. Your guests, by comparison, know they are being interviewed by The Scoble, so they have all shades of caution and appropriate presentation.
The aftermath of your videos makes me even more eager to watch the next time you step in it. I read all of Danny Sullivan’s stuff, which you graciously linked to, and learned lots about the history of human search by following the people who were bashing you. So it’s great.
The one thing which worries me is the cost these dustups seem to be taking on your sunny disposition. If you’re going to stay sane in the eye of the storms you create, you’re going to have to be ruthless in going offline, like you did from the blog, hold a baby, do whatever it takes for your equanimity and optimism to return. You won’t get there by going logo a logo with trolls.

Its well known that Adario Strange is a profesional curmudgeon.

Robert, IMO, the backlash you got had much more to do with you seeming to back Mahalo than you personally. Deservedly or not (I’m too new to all this to know), Jason C. is a lightning rod for criticism and scorn. From where I sit, as an observant outsider, Jason is like the character in a tv show that people love to hate. Anybody who seems to side with him is going to get zapped.

In #21, I should have written “logos a logos” for “word to word,” as opposed to “mano a mano.” Logo a logo sounds better, but this is not a case of dueling visual brands. Then again, maybe that’s what your detractors are trying to lure you into, each for the benefit of his own logo.

The Wired piece was on you, not on the more interesting people at whom you’ve pointed a camera. Complaining that they did a piece on you rather than on your pieces on others is as useless as complaining that a dog has too few USB ports.

There are reasons that people don’t link to things

The Pointit interview doesn’t offer anything to my readers, they don’t get involved in the “conversation” because as far as I know they don’t have a blog.

p.s. I think both a comment and a trackback were filtered on previous posts by Akismet