Ryan j Budke

I don’t like Gizmodo, I think they’re a bunch of immature spoiled brats who really represent the term blogger in it’s worst form. They have an immense audience, and are therefore invited to participate in a lot of events and products by companies that are trying to get their word out. Gizmodo obviously doesn’t care what either their audience or peers think however, since they have a history of shitting on both crowds. A few months ago, Microsoft sent Gizmodo editor Brian Lam a copy of Halo 3 complete with all swag before it was released to the public. Now, obviously, Microsoft wanted to reach out to the piece of Gizmodo’s audience that was interested in Halo 3, since it was an early exclusive however, Gizmodo stood to draw a huge crowd, increase pageviews, increase adsales, thus, increasing how much they earn. After treating the press stuff like garbage, Brian got hung out to dry by the Halo fans in the comments. He responded by doing this. Literally throwing the gifts out the window and spoiling the game’s ending. This is a touchy subject though. Just because Microsoft sent Gizmodo the package early, doesn’t and should never mean that it gets them a favorable review. It’s just a courtesy, something that Gizmodo has never shown towards anyone.

These past couple of days during CES, Gizmodo had apparently thought it funny to pull a little “prank” on those presenting there. You can read all about it here, but a quick summary is this: They had a device that can turn off any television set, so they went around turning off all the sets they could; demo units, sale items, and even those being used in presentations. Now, it’s become pretty glamorized, but CES is still a trade show. That means there are companies there who depend on being there and looking good to current and potential clients. The instance getting the most notice is when Motorola’s presentation kept flickering off. Motorola, and most of the other companies in their video, are not small companies that are going to crumble to pieces because of this, but I’m sure somewhere on that show floor, there was some small company that was just getting off the ground, had scraped and saved to buy it’s way onto the floor, and their display did go off during an inopportune time.

I’m all for mischief, I’m all for people not taking themselves too seriously, but this is messing with a LOT of average folks’ livelihoods. The shots in the video of the guys scrambling to get the sets back on, those are the guys that caught hell. Those are the guys who worked for days on setting those systems up, who woke up and prayed “Just please don’t let anything go wrong today.” And because of a few self-serving jackasses, it did. I somehow doubt Gizmodo would think it was funny if their site started going up and down next week during Steve Jobs’ keynote presentation, or anytime really.

The sad fact is that this is how Gawker (Gizmodo’s parent company) runs most of their sites. Jalopnik, with some regularity, breaks embargoes with unreleased press shots of cars. Gawker Stalker has been held to task numerous times on its shady celebrity tracking. It’s sensationalist crap that may drive up pages views, but drives down respect.

I wasn’t going to write anything about this actually, and just link to Loren Feldman’s video because I think it sums it up pretty nicely, but I had a couple of emails this morning asking me what was going on. While I’m for all intents and purposes a nobody, and I don’t have any auto maker or tech pundits read this blog, there are a few people in the media high enough up to make a difference. So for those of you that do, I’d challenge you to stop dealing with any Gawker blogs until they can make some changes. As a disclaimer, I do work for the company that owns Engadget, but that doesn’t come into my feelings about this at all. I know way too many people who have worked insanely hard to make internet journalism both respectable and high caliber for a bunch of jokers who represent the smallest vocal minority of jackasses tear it all down.

Gizmodo, you guys are pricks. Karma’s a bitch.