More thoughts on PandoDaily's rage eruption: "[N]o one is 'shocked.' People are actually just saying, 'can you believe what a prick this guy is?' That inability to discern between puritanical umbrage at a teller-of-bold-truths and the normal reaction to a repellent personality is just one of the blind spots you develop when you imagine yourself swaggering about in 'the major leagues.'”
Whoa...Ronen is a "PUA"? That's fucking disgusting and it's disturbing that Gawker would take his side in anything. Period. Gross.
For what it's worth, here's a 2000 interview with Carr's staffer Mark Ames, who is currently having a Twitter-kibitz with Carr about their mutual disgust that Pareene would support a PUA:
“They’ll go back home with you and say, ‘No, no, no,’ and if you’re an American, you’ve been trained to respect the ‘No,’ because you’re afraid of sexual harassment or date rape, and so you fail over and over. But it took me a while to learn you really have to force Russian girls, and that’s what they want, it’s like a mock rape. And then you come back here and you’re really freaked out–because you don’t know if that actually exists deep in all women’s psyches, that that’s what they all want. All relations between guys and girls is basically violent, I think. It’s all war.”
I don't know anything about Carr, Ames or their relationship, but it seems the most you can say is that Carr employed or employs a misogynistic creep who behaves hypocritically on twitter.
If one of the correspondents in this CrossCampus/Pando email spat had founded a racist website or franchise, would Gawker take his side without even flagging same? (Especially if, to extend analogy, the racist's adversary in the email spat happened to be a person of color)? I understand that misogyny, unlike racism,is not a big deal or a social issue or anything, but still.
Now, maybe that PUA smear is inappropriate — maybe this mackwhatever site is not so bad, or maybe Olshansky's ties to it are being overstated by Carr/Ames/et al. But *if* Olshansky *is* one of these "PUA" shitheads, then Gawker's handling is...yuck.
edit: that said, I appreciate your point — that Carr can't be so much better than Olshansky if he employs PUA ilk. IMO, the "employs someone who once made a misogynistic comment" connection is not as strong or incriminating as the "founded an enterprise devoted to misogyny" connection, but we can probably agree that all involved here are scum.
Can we please discuss Paul Carr's meltdown, part 2? I mean, come ON:
When you read my email to Ronen it helps to understand that context: this little fucking punk — this guy who runs a site for pickup artists and steals from renters of his venue — threatened to set "Persian Jews" on one of the two people who saved my life. In hindsight, I'm amazed my response was so measured. Perhaps the only thing that held me back was knowing that he'd almost certainly leak it to some gossip blog one day. He's that kind of guy.
This is the other side of the coin with the brawling manly men of the Internet—when they're not snarling threats at strangers, they're misting up over their very Serious Lives and getting upset that people don't respect the depth of their feelings.
The last sentence of the Salon article is fucking priceless:
You’re not a big dog, you’re not in the major leagues, no one gives a fuck who you are.
This goes so well in many aspects of life, but fits perfectly when it comes to internet douches. Awesome.
You guys, stop being so not understanding about Paul Carr's rage emails — I just read his response, and it turns out he's a former alcoholic and hopes you don't buy his book about it, or read through it for compelling details about his interesting and uplifting personal story in which he portrays himself as a hero. Really, you guys, Gawker editors in particular, don't check out his self-described brilliant book, it's not relevant to this situation, but he totally susepcts you might try and make this awesome book he wrote very relevant to this.
