Eye on Winer

What’s more pathetic — Dave Winer’s New Year’s Day dump on Robert Scoble

You can’t be on Twitter or FriendFeed and not be inundated with comments from and about Scoble. I don’t know how he does it, but it’s really annoying. I find myself relaxing when he takes a break from Twitter, for example to fly from Europe to the US. Finally I can speak without having everything one-upped by Scoble. Whatever it is, he’s done it better, or bigger, or with more important people. It’s irritating because I don’t believe it. I’d really like it if he just turned down the volume. I’d really like it if he just turned down the volume. Or if there were a way to segment the Twittersphere, I’d like to be in the part where Scoble isn’t the main topic of conversation 24-by-7.

or Scoble lapping it up like 2 Girls 1 Cup?

Interesting post and one I’ll consider! I clicked like on it in friendfeed so that all my followers could see it. I also retweeted it. I think I’ll do a video on how to get rid of Robert Scoble out of your view. It’s actually not that hard thanks to the “block” feature in friendfeed.

As James Robertson points out, there’s already a way to “segment the Twittersphere,” and it’s called the Remove button.

It turns out that Dave Winer isn’t washed up after all. His “River of News” led to the creation of both Facebook and Twitter, according to one of his recent tweets:

@Scobleizer — Matt is a mensch. R.O.N. was the prototype for what Facebook became & Twitter. Idiot programmers thought itwas abt format. 11:04 PM November 26, 2008 from web in reply to Scobleizer

For some reason this fact is missing from Winer’s Wikipedia entry. To the Davepole, Betsy Devine!

Dave Winer killed a blog post last night related to his feud with Loren Feldman, creator of a Winer puppet that mocks the shit out of him:

Shel got a reprieve

Saturday, June 28, 2008 by Dave Winer.

Well, it worked.

They let Shel Israel off the hook. He gets his name back, the puppet is retired. The mock trial they were planning for the TechCrunch summer party, that I learned of this morning, is cancelled. I don’t know what Heather and Mike were thinking, or if they were even in the loop, but people need to be a lot more careful with each others’ reputations, if we ever want to get anywhere.

Maybe after a breathing period we can resume some of our friendships.

Lately Winer has been complaining about the treatment of Israel, another butt of Feldman’s jokes who has been turned into a puppet. Winer’s comments on FriendFeed show why:

Do you think they would be doing this if Shel’s name was Kathy Sierra? Why is it funny to destroy a middle-aged Jewish guy?

It amazes me the people who just stand by and do and say nothing.

I don’t just think his Jewishness has anything to do with it, I’m sure of it.

Israel is, of course, a stand-in for Winer’s own beef with Feldman — the poor middle-aged Jewish tech blogger that the Nazi puppetmaster and his anti-Semitic thugs wants to destroy. First they came for the A listers, but I did not complain, for I was a B-lister …

The notion that anti-Semitism is at play here is deranged. As J. Michael Arrington pointed out on that FriendFeed discussion, Winer praised the puppets (including the Israel one) as recently as June 28 — Twitter messages he has since deleted.

In a discussion on Feldman’s site, Winer pleaded with Feldman to “cancel the vendetta against me”:

I just heard today what you think I said to or about your girlfriend. Loren, listen to this carefully — it never happened. Think about it. What if you got this wrong. How the fuck are you ever going to make it up.

Accusing a man of abusing women is the worst thing you can say about him. You really have fucked up here big time. And if you feel like a mensch, you should apologize, cause you really wronged me. Swear to god.

PS: I heard about it from a woman friend who knows your girlfriend. I asked her to let her know that what you said about me is absolutely untrue.

Winer has so little self-knowledge that he can’t understand how his actions might make him a rich target for mockery. In his head, the only reason Feldman could possibly be going after him is some personal slight involving Feldman’s girlfriend.

Feldman, who has to be loving Winer’s overwrought hysterics, has big plans for Puppet Dave:

Im preparing a documentary with puppets of course about Dave Winer. Please email me all Winer Incidents, all replies in strict confidence.

Now that Dave “I am a racist” Winer has settled the long-standing problem of race in America, he’s turning his attention to religious discord with a series of tweets:

Okay next subject. I find it weird that any candidate believes in a Christian god. Do they really think the world was created in 7 days? 02:20 PM April 10, 2008

When their preachers start saying that nutty shit, why don’t they walk out? 02:20 PM April 10, 2008

Come on, everyone knows that Jesus was just a random guy, not the son of god. 02:21 PM April 10, 2008

Y’all know what I’m saying. How loony toons is it for people to ask why Obama didn’t quit Wright’s church for saying nonsense about the US. 02:35 PM April 10, 2008

When (to lots of people) the whole gospel stuff is loony toons. Ignore the elephant in the room. You’re all talking about fairy tales! 02:36 PM April 10, 2008

We’ve lost our fucking minds. 02:36 PM April 10, 2008

@AndruEdwards — I’m tolerant of people with beliefs other than my own. I have to be, every candidate has to say he or she loves christ. 02:56 PM April 10, 2008 in reply to AndruEdwards

I happen to think that’s lunacy. But I look the other way. It’s time for people who don’t like Rev Wright to learn a little tolerance too. 02:57 PM April 10, 2008

You Jesus-lovers are real bullies. You need to take a look at how you push everyone else around. I, for one, am tired of it. Fed up actually 02:58 PM April 10, 2008

@chicofelipe “The bullies are the ones who call themselves Jesus-lovers in order to excercise power and control.” Amen brother. 03:07 PM April 10, 2008 in reply to chicofelipe

can say Amen. It’s not owned by Jesus Christ. The point is Rev Wright’s religion is what it is. No nuttier than your religion or mine. 03:08 PM April 10, 2008

But if the Christians make an issue of Rev Wright, I’m going to make an issue of Jesus Christ. 03:09 PM April 10, 2008

That’ll at least get all you Christians on the same fucking page. 03:09 PM April 10, 2008

For more on Winer’s contempt for Christians, read his Christmas rant fueled by a 30-minute wait at a Berkeley post office during the holiday season.

… I’m a pretty friendly guy, and that’s 365 days a year, and most of these people are bastards most of the time, but could they really be this nice for a few days a year? … Why are they so happy for one week, and so pissed off the rest of the time? And for what it’s worth, I don’t believe the happy bullshit for one second. I’ve had the privilege of being inside on a few of these Christian Christmases, with shicksa women I was dating, and let me tell you, if you haven’t had a chance to see the inside of the holiday, it’s pretty pissy and angry, you know, like people really are, not like they pretend they are.

Check out TweetScan to see how some of his followers on Twitter received the attack on their religion. Winer sees himself as friendly “365 days a year,” unlike Christians whose phony holiday cheer masks their true anger and unhappiness. Since of course, friendly people often start unprovoked arguments by mocking the religious beliefs of other people as “fairy tales.”

Dave Winer tweets:

Yes. Once the permissions are set correctly it appears in the feed. Of course when I clicked on the RSS icon I got an Atom feed. Broken.

Twitter launched a redesign yesterday that adopts Atom in preference to RSS. If you visit a user page and click the RSS autodiscovery icon in the status bar, you will see two Atom feeds as the available options. Previously, you’d see two Atom feeds and two RSS feeds offering the exact same data.

This change is, of course, an improvement.

Winer is, of course, wrong when he describes this as broken. The only breakage here is in his thinking.

Looks like Jack Michael Arrington Jr. and Dave Winer are fighting over TechMeme again. Arrington posted these comments on Twitter:

A periodic reminder that Dave Winer is just a jerk. http://snurl.com/2300s about 17 hours ago

and he wonders why i don’t respond to his emails. about 17 hours ago

A site about hot geeks, from the founder of zivity. http://sexiestgeeksalive.com/ just launched about 17 hours ago

I wonder if Dave Winer will bless it as a real blog? about 17 hours ago

It’s hilarious to see two Internet VIPS with a combined age of 90 end a friendship because of a link aggregator.

Sometimes, buried in loads of text, we get keen insights into Dave’s personality:

Don’t use the term crowdsourcing — it betrays a perspective that’s arrogant and wrong. I am not part of a crowd, I am a creative important person. Most Silicon Valley companies have this attitude. It’s a good vector for competing. Our users are sentient human beings, individuals. Important not just as a collection of people.

Emphasis mine. I can almost see him stamping his foot and clenching his fists. What did he mean? “People want to feel important.” But, as is so often the case, the actual words used belie the underlying sentiment.

Vincent Ferrari has created his own Twitter error screen in honor of Dave Winer:

Ferrari, another unsatisfied customer of Radio Luserland, rips Winer frequently on his blog. Quote: “I find him to be a pompous bore with a big ego and a sour attitude. I’ve acknowledged his accomplishments and what he’s done for blogging (RSS? Nice job!) but I can’t get past what an annoying pissant he is.”

…and he discriminates against men. Can you imagine someone telling him something he just said was stupid, and his reply being happy and smiley?

Have a look:

DaveWiner: Maybe the illegal immigrant issue is the only remaining acceptable form of racism. Business likes cheap labor and (I thought) Republicans.
AmandaChapel: with all due respect, that’s just a stupid thing to say.
DaveWiner: well, hopefully you’ll forgive me if I respectfully disagree with your statement about the stupidity of what I said.

Compare that to “complain again and I’ll block you“.

It’d be interesting to go back and see if his attitude is different with respect to women who are not attractive and/or do not appear attractive in their user pictures on twitter… my guess is that it would be.

So I’ve gotten a few emails about Tweet Scan which is nifty for a few reasons. For our purposes here, it allows unmitigated access to things people are saying about Dave. So far the biggest problem I’ve found is that I can’t seem to find a way to put an “or” operator in the search… so while it would be ideal to have a joint listing of all twits that contained either “winer” or “davewiner”, it seems that you have to pick one or the other.

At any rate, I’ve added the Tweet Scan for “davewiner” to the sidebar. There’s a lot of interesting stuff on there.