Rafe Needleman has posted some linkbait on a CNET site nominating the five most hated people on the Internet. The contenders to the title are Dave Winer, Michael Arrington, Jason Calacanis, Loren Feldman and Owen Thomas, a list he creates by narrowing the criteria to “technology personalities who are active contributors of original content.” From the piece:
Dave Winer He was a big contributor to the inventions of blogging, RSS, and other key Web technologies. But to call him prickly when it comes to his place in the tech firmament is an understatement. Typical story: I wrote a how-to piece on RSS but neglected to mention his contribution, and then Winer posted a blog item in which he equated me to Dan Rather on 60 Minutes during the GM exploding fuel tank story. When I at first contacted him privately in an e-mail, he publicly demanded an apology. Winer’s secret: Be smart, and then be abusive. See also: The Winer Number. Where to find him: Scripting News. Twitter: DaveWiner.
The piece, like Winer’s pitiful blog post this weekend fishing for compliments, is built on a ludicrous premise. Winer isn’t well-known enough to be considered one of the Internet’s most hated people. He’s a middle-aged software developer years beyond his last significant accomplishment who’s sinking into obscurity with piddly little hobby projects like FlickrFan and NewsJunk. His fame exists entirely within a clusterfuck of blogging early adopters and hack journalists. Like Calacanis and Arrington and Robert Scoble, he manages to attention-whore very capably inside his bubble, but it’s a tiny community. Most people even inside the tech world wouldn’t know who the hell he is. Steve Jobs could crap out a celebrity bigger than any of those dopes.
Even if you took at face value every one of Winer’s overstated accomplishments — the inventor of RSS, father of blogging, originator of teabagging, and so forth — how many comparable accomplishments would make someone famous? Are the lead authors of the Atom format famous? The creator of FTP? The developer of JSON?
Winer’s a childish and abusive asshole, and I can’t blame Needleman for seizing the opportunity to point that out. But one of the most hated people on the Internet? Are you fucking kidding me, dude? Chris Crocker and Numa Numa Guy and the 2 Girls with the 1 Cup are famous on the Internet. Plug any of them in alongside “Dave Winer” in Google Trends and tell me again that Winer’s famous enough to be among the net’s most-hated.
And yet we continue to track his every move. What passion drives such enthusiasm? Are we early blogging enthusiasts or hack journalists? I have no idea why I check in on his web site on such a regular basis – more out of habit and probably because every other week or so he or does says something crazy (like your old crazy uncle Mel, crazy). It’s like watching a hamster in a glass aquarium and watching the unusual things he does in the tunnels of the Habitrail.
I’m spending less time following Winer’s imbecility, because he’s more of a danger to his own reputation than anything we could write here. But when he attacks some random schnook for speaking critically of him, like Jonas Luster, it’s nice to have a place to call him out.
Winer simply wanted attention. He’s gotten more press out of this than a thousand useless applications (flickrfan?) that no one cares about.
Classic narcissist.
winer’s pitiful blog? I think we have a neologism here: plog.