Gizmodo and CES: What’s the big deal?

by Mathew on January 10, 2008 · Comments

Lots of sturm und drang in the blogosphere today over what Gizmodo pulled at CES: as editor Brian Lam confesses on the blog, they wandered around the giant tribute to commercialism and technological excess with a TV-B-Gone remote TV killer in their hands and had some fun with it. Plenty of people are claiming that they have ruined things for other bloggers — despite the fact that, as Valleywag points out, Gizmodo weren’t there as bloggers, but on regular old media passes — and Jason Calacanis in particular has been twittering about how this is a new low for Denton and gang.

Puh-leeze. Not surprisingly, Denton is unapologetic (although Lam says he’s sorry about disrupting the poor Motorola guy so many times during his presentation). Most of the events in the video are completely harmless, with TVs winking out as people are staring at them in the big hall — so what? I find it hard to get too excited about the whole thing, and much like Nick I find it refreshing that someone is standing apart from the slack-jawed and drooling coverage that CES gets in other places.

Was it childish? Sure. Sophomoric even? Undoubtedly. But it was still pretty hilarious, and Nick makes a good point: it shows a lot more life than anything CNET has ever done/said/written. It’s not as though the Gizmodo team was smashing TVs with hammers, for pete’s sake. This response is completely over the top. And John Biggs’ long post on the topic is kind of sanctimonious but has a point in there somewhere — just for the record, I am not in favour of puking on sales people, although some of them probably deserve it.

Share:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • E-mail this story to a friend!
  • Ma.gnolia
  • NewsVine
  • SphereIt
  • StumbleUpon

Tagged as: , ,

  • Mathew, your "what's the big deal?" posts are always begging for a response. You take a topic that is obviously a big deal for plenty of others in the Techmeme crowd and then attempt to explain why there's nothing to worry about... I love it.
  • Thanks, Bob.
  • agree completely. it was very immature and absolutely hilarious as far as I'm concerned.
  • as someone who spent much of the past FIVE MONTHS planning CES for my clients, I don't find it funny in any way. Their actions didn't impact my booths, but if it had, I'd be out for blood personally...
  • Jeremy, let's keep things in perspective shall we? A couple of presentations were disrupted for a minute or two -- and I already said that part was unfortunate. But in the grand scheme of things it amounts to a blip. Dave Winer has caused more disruption at conferences, and no one gets as upset as people are getting about this little prank.
  • Not sure about that, Mathew - I seem to remember quite a storm when Dave did his thing in Jason Calacanis' presentation on Mahalo.. :)

    Which is ironic, given that Dave is one of the people calling for public lynchings of Giz writers!
  • Stan_Schroeder
    You should see the article I've written about the whole deal. But I'm afraid I'm not going to publish it, someone might get offended (;.
  • Jeremy, really? It seems to me the companies affected just got a lot of free press, particularly motorola.
  • Having just come from about 50 hours worth of doing demos at booths, yes, I'd be extremely mad. It's easy to look back afterwards/from a distance, but that moment when things are going wrong can be devastating. What if they were demoing to big-time buyers (the *actual* purpose of the show, btw), or to some other company they were trying to do a deal with. Not that this would truly put it at risk, but at the end of the day, who gives a crap? They are doing their jobs, and working hard, and are tired, and having some kids come mess with their game just isn't cool.

    Would you find it funny to have someone turning off your Internet connection while you were trying to blog some important news? I don't think so. Even if it was just a prank and got you free press after!
  • I've had people use VNC or something similar to move my mouse around and do other things to my computer while I'm trying to do something, and you know what? I thought it was hilarious.

    I've already said that I thought it was juvenile, and I thought doing it to the Motorola guy was a little offside -- just trying to keep things in perspective, that's all.
  • Mathew - did it happen while you were trying to do something in front of a large audience? Perhaps at an event you had planned for months?

    Maybe it would have been funny in a private briefing, but not in public, and not on video.

    Again, to those who think 'its just a joke' you should apply this to something in YOUR WORK. I don't care if you think "its just motorola" - it's also some individual whose job was to demo as best they could, in an already difficult environment.
  • I'm only going to say this one more time: I already said that I
    thought messing with the Motorola guy's presentation was over the top.
    The rest of it was frankly hilarious -- and I think some of the
    reaction to the event, such as accusing Gizmodo of doing it just for
    page views, or accusing them of a criminal act, as Dave Winer and
    Kevin Burton have in the comments on Kevin's post, is flat out
    cracked. Everyone needs to put down the shotguns and the crack pipes
    and move on.
  • Trade shows are shitty places to work at the best of times. By the last day, you're fried. The last thing you need is someone making it more difficult to do your job, pissing you off, and then going and getting a lot of page views (and thus, in the New Gawker Regime, money) off the back of it.

    I suppose there are two issues. First, it was immature and stupid, but everyone does something immature and stupid at times. Second, though, is the fact that it was immature, and stupid, and pissed people off (some seriously) and they're going to make quite a bit of money off it. The message that sends is that it's ok to do something cruel but funny and make cash off it by videoing it and putting it up on the net.

    Is that a message that we really to send?
  • If Gawker starts doing stuff like that regularly then I think your point is a good one, Ian. But it seems to me this was a one-time lapse in judgment, and Brian Lam effectively said so. I'm sure they were all running low on sleep (and brain power) as well. They made a mistake and apologized. The blogosphere lynch mob needs to move on to better targets.
  • Brian hardly seems to be apologising, looking at his comments, and the "apology" at the bottom of the post doesn't exactly come off as sincere. Nick Denton certainly isn't apologising, looking at his comments.

    And it's not exactly the first time Gizmodo "editors" have pulled a dubious stunt - don't forget the time that one of decided "for the lulz" to post the infamous tubgirl image on Kotaku (all Gawker editors can post to all Gawker sites, or could at that point). Kotaku apologised - but no one from Giz did.

    If Brian was serious about apologising, he'd pull the post. But that would mean losing the traffic, and if it comes to dollars and traffic versus actually having some integrity, it seems obvious which way Gizmodo will jump.

    Yes, of course, this being the internet the lynch mob is overplaying it. If I was Nick Denton, I'd be having a few strong words with Brian - but no one would be getting fired, let alone sued. But while Gawker continues to profit from the Gizmodo "prank", I can't believe that Nick is doing anything but encouraging his guys in this sort of behaviour, and that's not acceptable.
  • Sulemaan
    Having set up trade shows and booths in a previous life, I don't find this funny. Immature more than anything like you said Mat.

    Cutting off a person in the middle of a presentation (by blanking screens) can completely throw a presenter off. That's just not cool. And I don't buy the 'they got lots of publicity' from this gag argument so it's kosher.

    Shutting off tv's in the main hall may not be that big of an issue but I also know how support staff are running around frantic at these things. Dealing with non-existent issues when they could be dealing with more pertinent stuff.

    Let's call a spade a spade. If it's not happening to you, you can say it's funny and much ado about nothing. If something like this happened to Gizmodo, what would their response be? Gee, I wonder...
  • Mathew,

    If I could push a button and change your DNS record so that your readers couldn't access this blog...now that would be a riot wouldn't it?

    I mean it would not really hurting your blog...just disrupting your clients and your message. So you wouldn't mind would you?

    Sure, you'd be there laughing with the rest of us.
  • You know what? If you did it for just a few seconds and then later apologized for it, we would probably both have a good laugh about it. I already said that I thought it was sophomoric, and that I thought doing it to the Motorola guy while he was doing a big presentation was offside -- I'm just trying to keep things in perspective. No one died, no one lost their job. Let's move on.
  • Indie
    Oh well if Arrington thinks it's ok and just a laugh. I'll be happy to play the same light-hearted prank at the crunchies. Let's then see the famous Arrington sense of humour brush it a-side.

    Had anyone done it to the precious techmeme A-listers they would all cry about how evil it was. Maybe I'll write a denial of service attack on TC and this site for a few mins each day just because I can and "its funny". Then I'll see what the Arrington and Ingram reaction is?
  • See my comment above.
  • i think the comment about messing with me while trying to post is a closer analogy.

    Every time I express an opinion on this blog I get trashed. Now some dipshit is threatening to break the law to get at me. I think I'll move on. You sure do have touchy readers, Mathew.
  • Welcome to the Internets, Mike :-)
  • Matt (and Mike) you are missing the point. It's not about the little prank which of course is a trivial event in the scheme of things. It's about the diversion of attention from blogs offering something worthwhile to simply offering junky stunts.

    This CES offered a chance for regular and industry folks to see blogging as legitimate commentary. Thanks to this stunt regular folks, CES, and company hacks will have more reason to diminish bloggers and blogging. For me, that's not part of the fun.
    Also - this was not a random little stunt. It was linkbait to attract traffic and viewers at the expense of other people getting their say.
  • I get the point, Joe -- honest, I do. I just don't see it as being
    that big a deal, that's all. Is this going to cast a stain on all
    bloggers? I doubt it. And even if it does, anyone who decides that
    all bloggers are useless based on one juvenile prank by one
    hyperactive blogger (who was there on a traditional media pass) isn't
    going to be reasonable about anything to begin with. Linkbait?
    Maybe. Welcome to the Internet.
  • Yeah, I get the point too, Joe. I just disagree. What pisses me off is that you fucknuts think I have to be taken out back and shot or something just because I have a different opinion.
  • Michael:

    I think the folks that are demanding your head are overreacting, and out of line. That being said, I also think that defending what the Gizmodo folks did shows a lack of sympathy for the folks this affected.

    Don't get me wrong; I think the idea was pretty amusing. I do, however, think that the choice of venue and the victimization of hard-working folks was out of line. Demoing at CES is expensive. If it hadn't been discovered that this was a Gizmodo prank, it would have cost people their jobs and cost companies a lot of business. I wouldn't want to do business with a company that didn't appear to have their act together. Just because there was no lasting damage doesn't mean there couldn't have been - and doesn't mean there won't be the next time someone wants to pull a prank like this.

    And actually, there HAS been damaging fallout from this. The reputation of bloggers as serious journalists has been set back due to a juvenile prank. It remains to be seen how this will play out. I dare say that serious news bloggers may find themselves shut out in the near future.
  • Matthew, I'm not following you at all. Does someone's assessment that CES isn't interesting enough justify an ostensible "journalist" (over on Dave Pogue's blog, Richard is claiming that, rather than that, he's an "artist"...) making the news (and then reporting on the "news" he made)....?

    Does it not occur to you that the response of the audience during a presentation which was disrupted by the Gizmodo kiddies that the company in charge there is a) incompetent or b) makes unreliable products....? It's certain that no one would immediately think, "Hey, I bet someone's fooling around with a TV-B-Gone!"

    This is another low for Denton's ill-behaved children. I guess we should be grateful that no one gave Richard an irresistable portable projector so he could throw images of "Tubgirl" on people's screens. Oh, wait: he couldn't have done that anonymously!

    A very bold guy. Hm.
blog comments powered by Disqus

Older post:

Newer post: