Joel Johnson has outed the whole tech blogging industry and especially his former parent and current freelance employer Gizmodo for shoveling "crap" down the throats of a tech-obsessed audience. Man, this guy has stones. What a hero. He told everyone how we're all out there whoring for CE and techs companies, delivering pabulum to an audience that doesn't know s _ _ t from Shinola.
What an idiot. I guess Johnson forgot who reads these blogs. They're not written for or by your average Joes. These are designed by and for tech and consumer electronics enthusiast who live to know about the latest new thing. Who consider it a badge of honor to try things out first, to suffer through bad design and ill-thought out products. All so they can tell friends family co workers, and especially the companies that make these products how crummy n--or great-- they really are.
What this really is an exercise in self loathing. Johnson hates what he's done and is now taking it out on Gizmodo, its contributors and everyone who reads it. Johnson says he "gave" up two years of his life writing for Gizmodo. Poor Joel. The site made his name and now he's mad at the way it did it.
MORE AFTER THE JUMP
Here's a healthy sample of Johnson's lunacy. Some advice for Gizmodo readers:
"Wait a year until the reviews come out and the other suckers too addicted to having the very latest and greatest buy it, put up a review, and have moved on to something else. Stop buying broken products and then shrugging your shoulders when it doesn't do what it is supposed to. Stop buying products that serve any other master than you.. Complaining online about this stuff helps, but really, just stop buying it."
So now someone whose job it is to talk about new gadgets is encouraging his readers not to buy gadgets. Great idea, Joel. Maybe next you can get a job at McDonalds's drive-through and tell costumers to stop eating fast food.
Johnson takes issue with the words Gizmodo uses like "unleashed." Hyperbolistic? Sure, but the key for any good blog (really any Web site) is to pinpoint the drama. If there's isn't drama, then highlight the unbelievable utility of the story. In other words find something interesting to say about the product or no one will read the post.
Isn't, Joel, that half the point? Writing in a vacuum of virtue (and, for you, self-loathing) is pretty useless if no one's reading. The great thing about being online is that we do get instant reaction. Audiences come to our sites and we actually know they are there. Things like clear, dynamic headlines and pithy, even sarcastic, prose help bring people to the blogs. This is a good thing,
Johnson accuses Gizmodo readers of ignoring stories about technology making a difference in favor of reading about "new chromed robot turd to put in your pocket and impress your friends." What sort of cave has Johnson been living in? Virtually any kind of technology can be life altering. The iPod has altered our technological and social landscape, it; also happens to be mighty shiny and some models have a chrome back. The super-hyped iPhone could do the same--or it might not. Either way, blogs have to write about it.
Johnson also forgets that gadget blog readers do not simply visit one site and take what's said there at face value. Instead, they trip from, Gizmodo to Engadget to Gearlog to Slashdot to CNet, PCMag and beyond. They read blogs to get the tease and the flavor of the new thing and review sites like PCMag and deep tech sites like Slashdot to get the meat. The consume it all and form their own opinions.
Are consumer electronics companies "the enemy" as Johnson characterizes them? No. It, like any industry, should be approached with skepticism. Some think we should take the attitude of "crap until proven useful." Maybe, but I love technology and can't help but get excited when I hear about a new gadget plan or prototype. My excitement remains and likely peaks when I finally get a chance to do some hands on-testing, Why not take readers along for that heady ride? Sure, it can all crash and burn in testing, and I'll tell that story too. It's all part of the service that gadget and tech blogs and sites provide.
Joel thinks we should "Only buy new stuff from companies that have proven themselves good servants of their customers in the past." Good servants? Since when is any business a good servant? I think these companies want to build good products, and they're not looking to mislead, but they are businesses, Joel. They exist to make a profit. Being "servants" is not part of the business plan.
Truth is, not only is Johnson's argument full of crap, he may be, too. The whole time I was reading this screed, I had the creeping suspicion that it was all a big show. Johnson didn't even believe what he was writing. He just wanted to make a big, splashy return and ensure people read his next column.
That has to be the case. No one could be that ridiculous, right?
I can hardly wait to read Joel's next soul-baring column.
Read Joel Johnson's column here.
Mixx It
Digg It
Stumble
More...
February 16, 2007 6:21 PM
You hit the nail right on the head, Lance: that was one of the most poorly-written and hypocritical pieces of crap I've ever seen published on the net - and that's saying a lot. Joel is little more than an attention whore who bounces from site to site because no one can stand to put up with his holier-than-though attitude and hateful rhetoric.
February 16, 2007 10:26 PM
I have to admit that this comment from his post seems to hit the nail right on the head:
"Golly, you're sure an elitist little turd for someone that did this for what, 75 years before the new crew? Gorsh. Maybe your next post should be about where to buy that sweet pedestal. I hope it comes in glossy electricities because I'm an idiot!"
I know he was just ranting, and I know he got a little too personal, but to be honest, he should have saved it for his personal blog than for public consumption. He laid himself out like some Eminem-style whiner who shouts "I hate my public and I don't care if you listen to what I have to say!" and then laps up the fruits of that same public's attention with an underhanded "read my column" in the same way pop stars lambaste you for listening and then plead you to buy their album. I'm tired of it. You can have a change of heart, you can have your personal opinion, but masquerading like you know it all about any industry just because you've been knee deep in it just exposes how long it took you to sink knee deep in your own little circle of muck, not your breadth of knowledge.
He, and anyone who's like minded (myself included to a large part) would do well to allow people's imaginations and passions to be inspired and flared by technology, technological progress, and the continual march and advance of both consumer and industrial technologies by reporting on them...and at the same time explaining; as most credible and ethical journalists do; that the next best thing might be coming along in just a little while, so don't buy now, or don't buy that new shiny, it's not as new or shiny as the box says it is, and so on.
I don't see a problem here, and I certainly don't think the tech journalism or blogging community is dangling the geek carrot in front of anyone's nose. If anything, they're the responsible barrier between an uneducated and eager consumer with a few free bucks on their credit card and the eager, hungry waiting arms of Best Buys, CompUSAs, Frys, and their plethora of at-cost Samsung phones, LG televisions, HP "the computer is personal again" laptops, and everyone else who wants a piece of our credit card statements.
Wow. That turned out nicely. I might have to reblog that. ;)
February 16, 2007 10:36 PM
Joel Johnson.... hating on Gizmodo cause it's not half as bad as when he ran it. Now, he bounces to CrunchGear, while little does arrington know how horrid he'll make that thing.
Johnson + Vince Venziani make for a woeful paring.
February 19, 2007 9:27 PM
Here, lets quote the meaty point of the article:
"Get it together: every single one of these consumer electronics companies should be approached as the enemy. They work for us. Hold their feet to the fire when they say their product is going to change even a small part of our lives. Circle back again in six months when they're shilling the incremental upgrade and ask them why the last version didn't cut the mustard. Step out of your blogging trench and ask yourself what your responsibility is to the tens of thousands of idiots who are reading this site right now to determine what they should spend their next paycheck on."
So his point is that gadget blogs should be doing more to evaluate the actual usefulness and worth of the devices they're reviewing, and less marketing for the companies who make the latest gadget. And that's a bad idea why? You reference the Ipod. So does Joel. He references how gadget blogs need to stop raving about every new MP3 playing device like its an IPod killer, and actually evaluate them in a rational manner.
He is criticizing an entire style of blogging. Its the corporate apologist style, where supposedly independent bloggers act exactly like the PR flaks they're supposed to be REPLACING.
Wise up! If you want people to take blogs seriously, then they better actually act like the "new media" instead of the "new marketers." Otherwise they'll be another flash-in-the-pan, a temporary occurance that is barely remembered in 20 years.
You want a personal media? You have to start acting like media, instead of a circle-jerk. And people like you who mock anyone who dares question the groupthink are not helping things. You want to see the biggest threat to bloggers? Look in the mirror. Its people who attack anyone for doing the simple, necessary task of REVIEWING OTHER PEOPLE'S WRITING!
February 20, 2007 2:40 PM
"So now someone whose job it is to talk about new gadgets is encouraging his readers not to buy gadgets. Great idea, Joel. Maybe next you can get a job at McDonalds's drive-through and tell costumers to stop eating fast food."
This is a revealing paragraph. Since when does the duty to "talk" about gadgets equate to encouraging people to buy them? Why on earth do you regard your and Joel's roles as the same kind of position as a McDonald's drive-through clerk?
That you see your job as a fry-shoveler for the latest in hyped-up gadgetry is pretty depressing.
February 20, 2007 9:48 PM
@Rob: I don't think he's saying that; he's obviously trying to draw an allegory that apparently went over a few people's heads. He's trying to point out that not reviewing and being excited and passionate about technology yet being a technology reviewer is kind of contradictory. I think anyone would acknowledge that.
@TString: "Question the groupthink?" What groupthink? Where was the outrage that "oh noes! bloggers are just shills!" before people like Joel brought it up, and before people like Joel made them so on sites like Engadget and Gizmodo, and now CrunchGear, all sites that he and his style of "journalism" helped build. You reveal yourself by taking the old curmudgeon argument that blogs are "new media" and are just a "flash in the pan" and no one "takes them seriously." These are the same whining growing pains that newspaper columnists decried that when people everywhere were able to read the news that journalists just wouldn't be able to separate agendas from reporting, and that didn't turn out to be true. When computer magazines started hitting bookstore shelves, we went through this then as well. Joel's point is absolutely valid, that technology reviewers should try to assess the usefulness and viability of the technology that they review, but sadly it's only Joel's little circle that apparently seems to fail at doing just that.
Long standing publications like PCMag, PCWorld, MacWorld, ComputerWorld, Computer Builder, and so on have never seemed to have this problem. It's in the age of snarky non-reporting a-la Gizmodo and the types of stories that somehow make the front page of Digg every day that this is even remotely a problem. No one's "questioning" the mythical "groupthink," but everyone's taking offense that Joel is now hating on what he is and made and subsequently pointing the finger at everyone ELSE while looking in the mirror. His point is old, old, sad news, but I'd love to know where he got that shiny new high horse from.
The only thing evident here is that what you call the "new media" everyone else (including the extant technology media) calls the "useless media," and there's a difference between blogs and sites that actually review instead of republishing press releases and unboxing photos. That's the part that poor Joel just doesn't seem to understand.