A Restatement of Purpose
February 7th, 2008 by EyeOnWinerRecently we’ve gotten a bit of push-back from some of our readers with regards to a few posts linking to interesting stories about Dave’s personal life. Here are two comments from the most recent post.
Yaggafla: Yeah, I think going after his personal life is a little lame. I think this blog works best when it critiques and pokes holes in his authoritative posts, but not when you go after his social life.
jay lerner: yeah, i kinda agree with yaggla on this one, eye. for the record, i think you do a swell job. but as dispicable as i find winer’s web bullying, let’s just leave the guy’s personal life out of it. if he wants to get down in the gutter and pick a fight, that’s on him.
I agree: “going after” Dave’s personal life would be lame. Fortunately, that’s not what we’ve done. The posts highlighted a facet of Dave’s personality by way of his interviews and his own writings. Nevertheless, at the urging of another blogger here at EOW, I’m going to try to clear up why Eye On Winer exists:
As has been noted here on countless occasions, Dave does not tolerate honest criticism. He can barely stomach disagreement. He squelches and censors what he can and when someone says something he can’t keep quiet, he berates them, ridicules them, and tacitly encourages his supporters to teach the person some manners.
People keep their criticisms of Dave to themselves because they don’t have a forum, because they’re afraid of what he’ll do to their reputation, or because they just don’t want to deal with the hassle.
Eye On Winer began as a platform from which to criticize and disagree with Dave without being subjected to personal retaliation. Since that time, it’s turned into something a little more. All of the original elements still remain, but there are a few more now.
EOW has grown into something of a character study. We try to figure out what makes Dave tick. Not satisfied with simply pointing out Dave’s hypocrisies and logical missteps, we’ve started trying to figure out why he makes them. What motivates him? What’s he really thinking? To answer these questions it is necessary that we take a look at Dave’s comments in the context of who he is as a person. Sometimes that requires discussions about Dave as a person, and Dave’s thoughts about himself (and the ways he advertises those to prospective mates) are certainly relevant.
There’s also some general commentary on different technologies that Dave is actively involved in, but that’s not only much less common but also much less controversial.
Unlike Dave, however, we still welcome your comments, suggestions, and criticisms. We all need some checks and balances, and responding to your critiques allows us to refine our focus and ensure that we’re headed in the direction we want to be heading, even if it’s not the one that some of our readers would choose.
February 7th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
“EyeOnWiner” exists because we can’t talk with Dave Winer so we must settle for talking about him. And to document his interesting “gestures”.
Many will head off in the morning to a local coffeeshop to join a group of regulars and discuss world events. “EyeOnWiner” is one of those groupings… we may have little in common except a persistent desire to see Dave Winer act differently.
We may never get that wish and EOW will always serve the purpose of having somewhere we can complain about not getting what we really want.
Today’s news: Dave takes another short at JC on twitter. Something to do with JC saying Dave disses Ev (of Twitter/Odeo/ex-Blogger fame)
Dave thinks the Obama/Clinton “tie” is creating a 3 party system. Say what?
Steve Gillmor’s podcast today has a “Republican giving a filibuster” and Dave had to hang up. Need to see exactly how much conservative philosophy makes him wretch.
See… we watch and try to figure out what’s behind these random spurts of passionate outrage. (Whew… that’s more image then I wanted to generate).
February 8th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
PS> Most of us comment on Wner’s nickle using pseudonyms. Like this political snippit:
I was disappointed that we didn’t have a more transformational choice for President this year: a black male, raised as a catholic that converted to Islam and changed gender to be a female. Something that challenges people to look at their prejudices carefully. I voted for a black female in 1972. It felt great. I also knew that Nixon had “selected” McGovern and my vote was symbolic. There was a great book and movie that came out of the series of events.
And the star of Deep Throat ran for office too. What a country.
Notice, I didn’t attack Dave. But my “alias” is now suspect and I’ll need to get creative.