This is a long and very entertaining read. If you want to skip to the main accusation of hypocrisy, it is:<p><pre><code> Speaking of facts: While presenting itself as the champion
of the working classes, the fact is Dentons Gawker empire is
guilty of almost every crime it accuses the tech industry of
committing, and several it doesnt. Denton, who now
encourages others to sneer at Silicon Valleys elite social
clubs, made his own millions as co-founder of First Tuesday,
an elite social club which spanned Europe during the first
dot com boom. While crying foul at the off-shore tax dodging
of San Francisco tech companies, Gawker Media is registered
in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying US taxes, an
arrangement which the New Yorker described as like an
international money-laundering operation. As Valleywag howls
that Google interns earn more than you, Gawker Media is
currently the subject of a class action lawsuit over its
earlier refusal to pay its own interns a dime for their
labour. And how about Valleywags mockery of lavish Silicon
Valley workplaces? Why not ask Denton about that when you
visit his steampunk office, featuring a lounge area that
looks like its straight out of the blue pill/red pill scene
in The Matrix, an office surfboard and a rooftop party deck?
Business Insider claims its one of the 15 coolest offices in
tech. And while youre there, make sure to also ask him about
Gawkers Privilege Tournament, a smug little contest in which
Gawker readers were invited to vote on which underprivileged
group (choices include: black, blind, transgender, people
with AIDS, the homeless, overeducated, and fat) should win
by virtue of its sweet, sweet moral superiority or as
Salons Katrina Richardson called the tournament: a
shamefully racist, sexist, homophobic and classist attempt
to silence large swaths of people.</code></pre>
Jesus, this is scathing.<p>I think in an abstract and idealized sense, stuff like Valleywag serves the tech industry by providing the role of watchman and magnifying glass. But on a post-by-post basis -- and if you think Paul Carr cherry-picked his examples, go on Valleywag, they're pretty much all just awful posts of out-of-context tweets -- it fails that goal tremendously. Just like Gawker itself, there are occasionally very well-put posts and actual newsbreaking -- they broke the Uber financial data a couple weeks back -- but it's hard to hold them in high esteem.<p>On a semi-related note: incredibly glad that HN auto-kills Valleywag links.
Oh hey look, Pando (well, Paul Carr) has decided to go after Valleywag's "class warfare" posts. I'm actually surprised it's taken this long. I think Valleywag has actually made some excellent points over the past few months, but has also managed to undercut their position by posting a bunch of irrelevant crap that doesn't matter.<p>If Sam Biddle actually cares about this stuff, I'd love to see him leave Gawker and strike out on his own. SV needs someone talking about this topic regularly.<p>Pando, being a de facto mouthpiece for today's top tier VCs, doesn't really carry much credibility on this subject, even though I do like Paul Carr.
The craziest thing to think about is that because a few kids at Instagram were dicks or because one or two of the thousands of Twitter employees did something bad, we extrapolate those behaviors to every tech startup worker.<p>My fiancee and I both work very hard, live in a modest house in the east bay and volunteer in our community quite a bit. I left San Francisco 2 years ago after being priced out of affordable living and I have no resentment to anyone working at a company that provides a lot of perks. So why am I lumped in with some guy at Instagram driving his Lambo to his mansion? We could not be any more different, beside the fact that both of the companies we work for are funded by VCs.
For the people who read the HN comments before reading the article: This is like 3000 words from one shitty technology website talking shit about another shitty technology website. Don't waste your time.
This is really sad because there is real inequality in this country but its between the bottom 40% who combined have less wealth then the heirs of Walmart.<p>These protestors been have duped into fighting amongst ourselves instead of focusing on the real problem. Thats why "we are the 99%" was such a powerful slogan, solidarity is the only way were going to fix the problems in this country.
It's not as hard as it sounds to report on Silicon Valley from NYC. It turns out, you just have to copy and paste tweets, add a bit of snark, and then contact the tweeter's employer for comment. It probably adds 10k pageviews if you get someone fired.<p>It helps that you don't have to be accurate. For example, take this juxtaposition:<p>"Anti-Foreigner VC Also Supports Hiring Discrimination" by Sam Biddle[1]<p>"Y Combinator reaches farther beyond Silicon Valley" - including startups from <i>22</i> different countries in the latest batch[2]<p>[1] <a href="http://valleywag.gawker.com/anti-foreigner-vc-also-supports-hiring-discrimination-1215372055" rel="nofollow">http://valleywag.gawker.com/anti-foreigner-vc-also-supports-...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-24/y-combinator-reaches-farther-beyond-silicon-valley.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-24/y-combinator-reache...</a>
Controversy drives page views. That's all you need to know about Gawker/Valleywag.<p>Stop worrying about every troll. Just ignoring them is the best revenge.
Yeah, getting kind of sick of residents of the home our two most evil industries (media and finance) talking shit about SV tech firms. New Yorkers drove our economy off a cliff but would rather bitch about fucking Google Glasses. Please.
Some background: Over the past year, Valleywag has been taking shots at Pando and its editor, Sarah Lacy. Pando decided to return the favor.<p><a href="http://valleywag.gawker.com/search?q=pandodaily" rel="nofollow">http://valleywag.gawker.com/search?q=pandodaily</a>
Blaming Biddle for rape or murder threats against Justine Sacco is a big stretch when he only posted about the tweet. I don't see anyone blaming buzzfeed for the same thing.<p>This article makes some good points but lumps them in along with several ad hominem and other pointless attacks (who his father is does not change the validity of any of Biddle's points). Farhad Manjoo's critique was much more fair.<p>Besides how can anyone read Valleywag and not see how desperate and reaching most of it's articles are? Why should anyone even take them seriously?
As I was reading this article, I found myself wanting to click the links he was posting (to get context), but didn't want to give Valleywag my pageviews.<p>So I wrote a chrome extension that solves this problem. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6969487" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6969487</a>
Not sure about the Gawker drama, but $155k for the train operator pay is quite remarkable. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average train operator salary in the US is $46k: <a href="http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/train-engineers-and-operators.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/tr...</a>
I actually read the whole thing :) loved every minute. Long long ago I enjoyed an occasional Valleywag article, can't say I've visited the site now for a few years.
I always wonder where people learned the notion that hypocrisy instantly invalidates any argument in a puff of smug smoke. Yes, Valleywag are pots to the Silicon Valley kettle. It's still funny, and still shines a good light on the idiotic self-important traipsing of the tech scene.
I agree with they accusations regarding Gawker. I didn't in the past. IMO, Back when Huffington Post and Gawker were relevant anti-establishment media outlets, they played a critical role in getting the message out about the corporate and political madness of the greed-obsessed right wing. Unfortunately, they both fell to the greed virus and became what they so vehemently claim they are not.