...a liberal who’s been mugged

The sheer fraudulence of reddit

2012-01-29T16:40:00.003-05:00

I just visited two sites. Reddit.com is shown on the left, and redditincident.com is shown on the right.

Reddit has been down dozens of times in the last 53 days and it was never up for anywhere near 72 days.

What a joke. What a big fraudulent joke.

Selling your soul for pageviews

2012-01-07T11:05:00.003-05:00

In reddit's latest PR BS blog entry they brag "In December 2011, reddit served 2.07 billion pageviews. Crazy."

They pose the question "In less than a year, reddit traffic has more than doubled. How did this happen?"

Good question. Let's take a look. Alexa.com shows the popular search terms for reddit. They include "teen girls", "beastiality", "incest", "upskirt", "ass", "nsfw", and "jailbait".

It "happened" because there are so many perverts on the internet and reddit has no conscience. Reddit has worked its way up to become the fourth most popular porn site in the world, just behind xhamster.com, pornhub.com and YouPorn.com.

The distortion continues, "So how do we account for the growth? Like all things reddit, the credit goes to our community".

Ah, "community". Only on a site as unscrupulous as reddit would millions of perverts googling "incest" and "teen girls" be considered a "community".

Only a site as fraudulent as reddit would give "credit" to grown men for seeking out beastiality and underage rape pornography.

It "happened" because reddit is run by fundamentally bad people who care more about pageviews than being decent human beings. It happened because reddit has no qualms about hosting forums for beating and raping women as long as it increases their pageviews.

They know exactly how it "happened". It's not "crazy" or surprising in any way. Their very strategy was to make money by filling the world with the worst imaginable smut, without regard to the adverse impact that will have on women, children, rape victims, and the world in general.

That was their goal. They succeeded. Congratulations. I hope they enjoy bragging about their pageviews in Hell.

2012 New Year's resolutions from the folks behind reddit

2011-12-31T11:21:00.011-05:00

Alexis Ohanian: To make the world suck less... by filling it with underage rape pornography.

Mike Schiraldi: To help Mr. Wonka's chocolate factory become number 1!

Erik Martin: To persuade the world that a bill that prevents stealing copyrighted material is a terrible evil.

Kristine Smith: To get paid for another year to do what a one-line script that prints "all yours :)" could do.

Conde Nast: To find more creative ways to disassociate their magazines from the sewer that is reddit.

Reddit: To spend another year tricking gullible teenagers into thinking that visiting forums for women beating, racism, and porn somehow makes the world a better place.

How you can tell when Alexis Ohanian is lying? His lips are moving.

2011-10-12T01:25:00.003-04:00

Have you ever gone to a car dealership and talked to a slimy, vile, unshaven used car salesman? If so, you'll get a familiar visceral reaction to this guy:

The thing that bothers me about him is not that he is lying, it is that he knows he is lying but he thinks you are too stupid to catch on.

Watch the video. Watch him look you square in the eye and declare "reddit does not host any of this content". That is a lie. He knows it is a lie, you know it is a lie, we all know it is a lie.

Let's take the moderators of reddit's jailbait forum as an example. When they create their user names, say I_RAPE_PEOPLE (yes, the name of one of reddit's moderators) where does that name get stored? The answer is reddit's database.

When a moderator of reddit's jailbait forum brags about having oral sex with his young stepdaughter, where are those comments stored? Again, the answer is reddit's database, and again, I didn't make that up.

Reddit does host that content and Ohanian very well knows it.

Watch the video and watch him earnestly explain how the CNN piece was just "confused journalists talking about something they didn't really understand" and how "none of them know how it works".

Now watch the actual CNN piece. Watch Anderson Cooper go into great detail about "how it works". Watch him show reddit's screens in detail - including jailbait forum screens, explain who owns reddit, how much growth they have had and how many unique visitors they get. Watch Anderson Cooper explain how things get on the reddit frontpage, how subReddits are created, and how users can be banned. Watch him show and read directly from reddit's post titles, reddit's rules, reddiquette, and reddit's corporate blog.

Now go back and watch Ohanian feign about "none of them know how it works". He is a liar and he is shameless!

Watch him look you in the eye and tell you "there is nothing we can do to effectively police reddit". Um... didn't they just shut down their jailbait forum? Wasn't THAT "something"?

Watch Ohanian bitterly complain "I wish I had been invited, Anderson". But Bob Sauerberg, the President of Conde Nast, referred CNN to Eric Martin. All Conde Nast had to do was hook CNN up with Ohanian and he would have been invited. Instead Ohanian calls it a "smear piece" and pretends that CNN didn't contact them.

The thing that bothers me most about this guy is that he has choices. There are some people in this economy who are forced to take crappy telemarketing jobs in order to put food on the table. But Ohanian has options. He could get a respectable job, but be CHOOSES to be a professional liar and child porn peddler. This is the life that he chose.

I have no respect for him. None.

Reddit has been forced to shut down its jailbait forum. Let's review what we have learned:

2011-10-10T23:21:00.002-04:00

1) Smart companies don't single out a user and poke him with a stick for a year because they don't like his religion. One pissed off user can have a big impact on your business.

2) Reddit is NOT a "free speech site"

3) Shutting down a reprehensible subReddit did not cause the earth's core to melt down.

Round 1 goes to LouF.

Round 2 will be the closing of the rape and women beating forums. One of these two things is going to happen:

    1) Reddit will have a change of heart and decide to start treating me fairly
           OR
    2) The rape and women beating forums will be featured on CNN, rendering the site valueless, and those subReddits will close by Christmas

Which option do you think reddit will choose?

What do you get when you repeatedly treat one user unfairly? This.

2011-09-30T12:27:00.001-04:00

A woman is sexually assaulted. Reddit responds with death threats... DIRECTED AT THE VICTIM!

2011-09-12T23:22:00.003-04:00

Take a look at this thread on reddit.

A woman got sexually assaulted and posted about it on reddit. Rather than helping or consoling the poor woman, the reddit community blamed the victim, telling her "someone like you deserves to be raped to death", "you got served!", and "what a c*nt".

She deleted her reddit account due to death threats.

It is hard to imagine any group of human beings behaving that way, but what else would you expect from a community that devotes entire forums to the beating and raping of women?

Look, this has gone too far. It is time for the owners of reddit, Conde Nast and Advance Publications, to be decent human beings and shut the site down.

More Reddit Misdirection

2011-09-07T10:10:00.012-04:00

Here is a pretty typical PR release out of reddit. They make a huge noise because something minor changed - in this case, a meaningless organizational tweak.

Advance Publications owns Condé Nast, which owned reddit. Now reddit will be owned by Advance Publications. Meh.

Although reddit frames this change as "the single greatest event in the course of human history", practically speaking this change means nothing whatsoever.

The change was made to create levels of abstraction. The truth is that reddit has devolved into a porn site and Conde Nast doesn't want to be associated with it any longer. Think about it: Conde Nast owns women's magazines like Self that focus on the empowerment of women. How much longer can they defend the fact that the same company also hosts forums for women beating and rape?

Instead of doing the right thing and shutting down their rape forums, they clouded the issue. They made a minor organizational tweak to make it look like reddit is owned by a different entity. Of course, no company wants to be associated with reddit, so they are doing all they can to obscure the link between Conde Nast and the disgraceful ghetto that is reddit.

In reality, not only doesn't this change move them forward, it actually sets them back. Look who they appointed to the Board! The same unkempt child who got them in this mess in the first place: Alexis Ohanian.

Worse, this clears the way for the Oompa Loompa's return. The truth is that Raldi is still unemployed and he is begging reddit to take him back. Now he will try to save face by pretending that something has changed at reddit.

But nothing has changed at reddit. You still have the same adolescents running the place that you always had. You still have a site full of underage porn, women bashing, racism and hatred. You still have admins who are committed to treating Christians unfairly. You still have subReddits where "mods" add malicious CSS to reddit's codebase.

You can re-brand a turd all day long, but it is still a turd.

Is the online media afraid of Reddit?

2011-09-04T10:35:00.007-04:00

Where have you gone?

Years ago in this country there was a thing called watchdog journalism. The media served society by holding institutions accountable for their actions.

Traditional media has gone the way of the dodo, but isn't there even one online writer today who is willing to tell the truth about what is going on over at Reddit?

If there were ever an organization that needed to be held accountable, it is Reddit. But the coverage of Reddit is almost all cheery reporting about Reddit's PR releases. It is almost all rehashed spin.

Is that because Conde Nast owns Wired Magazine, and no writer wants to cross them? Is that it? Seriously, if you are an online journalist please leave a comment. I would really like to know.

If you are an online journalist, I challenge you to take a look at what is really going on over at Reddit. Take a look at http://www.reddit.com/r/BeatingWomen and http://www.reddit.com/r/SexyAbortions.

Reddit has forums ("subReddits") called diarrhea, dollsex, PicsOfDeadJailbait, Teen_tits, exgirlfriendpictures, etc. There are literally thousands of them! Just look through the list.

How can it not be newsworthy that a major corporation like Conde Nast would be involved in that?

It would only take 5 or 10 minutes to go to those subReddits and research this. I challenge you to go there, read the posts, and look around. It is absolutely horrifying.

Reddit has received endless coverage about how wonderful and altruistic they are. While most of it has been concocted by Reddit's PR department, some of it is deserved. But the other side of Reddit - the seedy side - is large, shocking, and goes grossly underreported.

I challenge you to present both sides of the story.

Reddit admins admit "malicious CSS hacks", "raid issues" and "vote fraud" are "threatening the integrity of the site"; Could be "pretty much the end of the community"

2011-08-27T10:37:00.006-04:00

Here are some highlights of a fascinating conversation between Reddit admins "krispykrackers" and "hueypriest" and some Reddit moderators who hacked Reddit's Cascading Style Sheets to do all manner of "malicious" things to Reddit users.

The full conversation is here. Here are just some selected posts:

[10:09] <krispykrackers> and I would say "No, not normally. Obviously Erik and I have different opinions, and we're working those out at the moment."
[11:29] <krispykrackers> Like I said, CSS modifications, for the most part, are hugely beneficial to reddit as a whole
[11:30] <krispykrackers> But apparently, some of the stuff that went on in CJ was actually detrimental to the site
[11:30] <krispykrackers> don't worry about TOS
[11:31] <krispykrackers> The problem with your specific CSS hacks was that it was malicious and misleading to users.
[11:31] <krispykrackers> Such as
[11:31] <krispykrackers> someone changed certain links to subscribe people automatically to questionable subreddits
[11:33] <krispykrackers> And unfortunately, we can't tell who did it exactly. So it looks bad on everyone.
[11:34] <krispykrackers> Changing links that people think are going to take them to one place, actually taking them to another.
[11:35] <krispykrackers> Umm. I'm kind of technologically retarded. So I'll just give you a specific example.
[11:36] <krispykrackers> Let's say you click on the "permalink" button, thinking that would take you to where it's supposed to go, but it actually applied malware to your computer or something. That's malicious and unacceptable.
[11:37] <krispykrackers> Well things like that happened, whether you are aware or not.
[11:39] <thedevilsdiction> css should have an ip stamp like wikipedia does
[11:39] <krispykrackers> you're right, thedevilsdiction
[11:39] <krispykrackers> but unfortunately we don't have those types of tools
[11:39] <krispykrackers> which is another problem with reddit
[11:39] <krispykrackers> we are very, very limited in what we can and can't do
[11:40] <krispykrackers> I didn't know the whole back story, and I agreed with the argument (the f7u12 argument)
[11:40] <krispykrackers> so I unbanned you guys. then I got in trouble. and now, here we are.
[11:42] <krispykrackers> I emailed daskoon the CSS code the other week
[11:42] <krispykrackers> But the malicious stuff was probably already deleted
[11:44] <krispykrackers> trust me, he doesn't like this situation either, and admits that he could have handled it better
[11:46] <krispykrackers> Why do you think it isn't justified? Someone in your group was threatening the integrity of the site, and we don't know who it was. I'm not saying I would have made the same move Erik did, but *something* had to be done.
[11:48] <krispykrackers> There was voting cheating going on as well.
[11:50] <krispykrackers> Yes, so voting fraud was also happening
[11:52] <krispykrackers> lol daskoon... I know they're just "derps" to you, but when cheating is happening there, it can happen in other places as well
[11:55] <krispykrackers> Well and if people feel cheated as far as votes are concerned, they'll stop voting, which can lead to a spam-laden site
[11:55] <krispykrackers> and pretty much the end of the community
[11:56] <krispykrackers> prosh, the fraud was coming from mods as well, not just users
[11:56] <krispykrackers> because *sometimes* it had CSS hackery involved
[11:58] <krispykrackers> This is a really touchy situation, and I'd like to know all sides of the story. To be fair to everyone.
[11:59] <krispykrackers> Well I'm not telepathic, and like I said, he understands that he might not have made the perfect decision
[12:00] <krispykrackers> But making another knee-jerk decision might not be the best way to go about it either
[12:07] <hueypriest1> 2) we can't tell (without a lot of work) who was doing what in css
[12:08] <hueypriest1> i cant go into detail but we;re talking about cheating votes etc category of stuff
[12:08] <hueypriest1> also the karma party raids, the css link jacking on "read More"
[12:10] <hueypriest1> after various css or raid issues
[12:11] <hueypriest1> tricking users into subscribing to your reddit by making a link look like site navigation = undermining reddit
[12:11] <hueypriest1> csslink jacking to get upvotes = undermining reddit
[12:15] <hueypriest1> yeah, we don't have any special tools there
[12:16] <krispykrackers> Erik is right, our code is still very threadbare as far as moderation is concerned
[12:17] <hueypriest1> and I don't want to make a list of rules
[12:17] <krispykrackers> and it's hard to have a hard definition of "malicious"
[12:17] <hueypriest1> but the same technical tool was used to spoof reddit being down the other day.
[12:17] <hueypriest1> not cool

Reddit's attack on Christianity continues

2011-08-26T09:43:00.005-04:00

As readers of this blog know, Reddit actively and routinely persecutes Christians. And they're at it again.

My account was trolled by an atheist for a full year. My posts on Reddit were followed by insane, profanity-laced screeds for a full year. When I "report"ed and emailed Reddit admins and mods about it, they did nothing. When I re-posted the atheist troll's words in an effort to bring attention to the situation, my account was blocked and my IP address was banned, and I was unable to post on Reddit for almost a year.

Note the horns

Rather than Reddit doing the right thing and banning the atheist troll, they banned me and then, in the ultimate display of contempt for Christianity, gave the subReddits that I moderated to that very same atheist troll.

Reddit makes no bones about it. They don't like Christians and have no interest in being fair to them.

And they're at it again. Reddit admins have now taken the "Catholic" subReddit away from the Catholic mods and given it to atheist trolls.

Absolutely disgraceful.

What do you call a collection of nerdy pedophiles? Pedophiles.

2011-08-21T13:59:00.011-04:00

There is an insightful article on Death by 1000 Papercuts today. It talks about "creepy pedophiles" on Reddit hiding behind "free speech":

Question for Reddit owner, Conde Nast: What do you call a collection of nerdy pedophiles?

Answer: Pedophiles. It doesn’t matter how nerdy they are: in the end, they’re just creepy, nerdy pedophiles.

"We're not creepy at all!"

Social link aggravator sites like Digg and reddit–who pretend to have no higher value than “free speech”–soon mirror what that situation devolves into in real life: creepy little tyrannies, run by the sociopaths who have nothing better to do other than live their lives in another reality. Everything is permitted because the silly mantra “free speech trumps all” is substituted for law and judgment.

As r/jailbait demonstrated, liberty soon becomes license.

Pervs trading pix of under-aged girls don’t need the aegis of Conde Nast to get together; they can congregate at any number of forums and chat rooms operating on the underbelly of the web.

But, mainstream sites like reddit and Conde Nast do make it easier for them.

Welcome to the "underbelly", Conde Nast. You must be very proud.

Reddit closes 'jailbait', reveals its seedy side

2011-08-19T21:04:00.006-04:00


Larry Flynt: Prospective Reddit buyer?

This video tells you all you need to know about Reddit. They even used the Oompa Loompa.

Can you imagine a formerly respectable company like Conde Nast associating their brand with /r/deadkids and /r/beatingwomen? What in the world were they thinking?

As the video says, maybe they were too busy creating their own jailbait magazine issue.

What a disgrace.

An academic perspective: Reddit sucks

2011-08-14T22:30:00.002-04:00

An academian named Kelly Bergstrom recently took a look at Reddit and published this paper about what she found. It is entitled "Don’t feed the troll: Shutting down debate about community expectations on Reddit.com".

Here are some of the highlights:

being labeled as a troll is a way of silencing the transgressor, as well as shutting down debate and self–reflection amongst community members
Karma is "sometimes abused by Redditors attempting to punish or censor viewpoints that do not match their own"
there is still an expectation of truthfulness amongst some community members. Without an assumption (and expectation) of authenticity coming from the developers of Reddit themselves
Some Redditors were on a witch hunt: they made posts sharing identifying information about the puppet master behind the Grandpa Wiggly character. Pictures were posted, threats were made
Of particular interest here is the visceral reaction exhibited
I did not see any suggestions of illegal behaviour... The same cannot be said elsewhere on Reddit.
bad advice runs rampant... a young man had discovered that his girlfriend had been cheating on him... the most popular (and most upvoted) comments giving advice were juvenile and vindictive. The young man ended up acting on some of the more vindictive suggestions

She basically found that opposing viewpoints are slienced and punished, Reddit is shit because it was designed to be shit, and the users are juvenile and vindictive.

Academic conclusion? Reddit sucks.

The Great Zoltar predicts Reddit's future

2011-08-11T10:09:00.002-04:00

Readers of this blog know that RedditIncident.com used to accurately track how often Reddit goes down. (Hint: a lot!)

That was until Reddit abandoned any shred of dignity they had left, contacted the owner of the site, and told him to change his site to make Reddit appear more stable than it is.

Thanks to Reddit's arm-twisting, their recent widely-publicized downtime somehow doesn't count as "an incident" in the "days without incident", so they appear to be on the verge breaking the record for days without an incident.

You can criticize Reddit for many things: lying to their users, their house-of-cards architecture, underage porn, racism, subreddits for pictures of dead children, etc. But you can't criticize them for lack of creativity. That is definitely a novel way to break a record.

Instead of fixing their site not to crash every day that ends with "y", they devised a strategy to break their uptime record by not counting downtime.

Brilliant!

It's hard to imagine any site being less ethical than that, so I wondered what could be next for Reddit? Could the site possibly get any less stable? Could they possibly find more brazen ways to lie?

I called in an expert on this one. I have provided The Great Zoltar with coins and Zoltar has provided me with the depths of wisdom.

The Great Zoltar predicts that there will be a post on Reddit - probably made by an admin's sockpuppet - that will hold RedditIncident.com up as proof of how stable Reddit has become. Zoltar predicts that Redditors will pat themselves on the back for breaking a record that they didn't break, and that Reddit knows they didn't break.

Anybody dispute Zoltar's prediction?

Reddit goes down unexpectedly for 40 minutes, yet their "days without incident" streak goes unbroken. Wow. Just wow.

2011-08-09T21:21:00.007-04:00

Reddit Math

2011-08-03T21:34:00.001-04:00

Wow, Reddit seems to be a lot more stable these days, doesn't it? Take a look at RedditIncident.com.

Wait, what? How did the "best previous record" magically jump from 17 to 26? How did the "Reddit has worked X days without incident" counter all of a sudden get magically bumped up by so many days?

Jim Groome, the guy who runs the site, admits "Yeah, I changed it". Turns out, Reddit contacted him because they thought he might need some help deciding what "should really count".

Now, "scheduled" downtime doesn't count as downtime. When Reddit posts "Reddit is going down in one hour from now", and then they take the site down, that is considered "scheduled" and doesn't count as downtime.

Jim, a Redditor himself, says "we worked out the 'proper' outage dates and updated the site accordingly".

Lol!! That is just classic Reddit. Instead of actually fixing their site, they spend their efforts covering up its instability. They just could not possibly get any more lame.

And the "Most Stupid Post in Reddit history" award goes to...

2011-07-18T08:16:00.010-04:00

...Oompa Loompa Mike Schiraldi for posting "Obviously, the reddit gold program turned out to be a huge success." Lol!!!!

Oompa's pride and joy

Mike explains "I'm reminded of this whenever I look at my 'Inciteful Link' trophy, which I got for the post that announced it". What an ass! Apparently Mike logs in every morning to make sure his 'Inciteful Link' trophy is still okay.

"I don't want to embarrass anyone by linking directly to their comments," says the Oompa Loompa. Um, you mean other than yourself?

Lol. Here are my conclusions.

Reddit Gold was a massive blunder that cost Reddit's boss at Conde Nast her career.
Reddit Gold is a business model that Conde Nast did not choose and has no way to get out of.
It creates a legal conundrum because when the charity donors decide they want their money back they're going to have to figure out who owes who what. The whole thing will end up in court.
That makes Reddit impossible to sell, which Conde Nast tried to do and could not.
If all it took to be a successful company was to move down the hall, then all companies would move down the hall. It's not hard to do.
Conde Nast already paid for that office space and it is in the ghetto of SOMA where people get shot going to work. The space was probably available because the former occupants were murdered.
After seven years, Reddit still doesn't make money, which is why they want you to "draw conclusions" about their success instead of presenting facts.
Reddit employees are disappearing faster than Scientologists. Their "I love Reddit but I'm leaving in 10 minutes" blog posts - including Raldi's - are frequent and not a sign of a healthy company.
Casey Anthony is more stable than Reddit.

It just doesn't get any more stupid than that post. What a dumbass.

Things that didn't shut down on June 30, but should have

2011-06-30T00:27:00.007-04:00

In March, we had a contest to guess the date that Reddit will be shut down. In that thread, I said "my guess is June 30th".

Just as I predicted, they spent months looking for a sucker to sell the site to.
Just as I predicted, they couldn't find anybody that stupid.
Just as I predicted, companies didn't line up to pay good money for a site that loses money year after year.
Just as I predicted, Conde Nast will come to their senses, realize the site is worthless, and pull the plug.

But I underestimated the level of their stupidity. I underestimated the amount of time it would take them to realize how hopeless their situation is. I assumed that after seven straight years of Reddit losing money, it wouldn't take more than a few more months for Conde Nast to stop throwing good money after bad. I stand corrected.

In honor of Conde Nast's psychosis, I have compiled a list of things that didn't shut down on June 30, 2011, but should have:

Reddit
In the last year alone, half the staff either bailed out or was fired. Jeremy Edberg and Mike "Oompa Loompa" Schiraldi both (ostensibly) wrote "Reddit is awesome but I'm leaving in 10 minutes" blog posts.

David King left because there was "so much great news about reddit's future". That's not to mention their lead developer, Chris Slowe. And as a further sign of stability, the boss - Sarah Chubb - also got the ax.

They can't keep the site running, and sometimes it goes down for days on end. Yet somehow Conde Nast STILL thinks they will be able to sell that pig. Um, ya. Good luck with that.

Japan's nuclear power plants
Just as toxic and damaging as Reddit, but far more profitable.

England. Yes, the entire country.
Ah, the land of tooth decay and alcoholism. We kicked their asses a couple hundred years ago. We should have finished the job.

Tally-ho old bloke!

Their educational system produces people who think that "veangeful" and "fiercefully" are words. They say things like "Cheerio", "Chitty chitty bang bang", "I've got my laughing trousers on" and "Pip pip, what is a dentist?"

They think human evolution has been proven because the guy on the internet they were swearing at didn't "provide a better explanation". Dumbasses.

England sucks. We should give it to Scotland.

Neil Diamond's concert tour
Dude, you were popular in 1970, and you sucked even then. To make things worse, this summer Neil Diamond is coming to... you guessed it... England. Fancy that, Nigel!

That's just a quinella of suck.

Facehammer's ass cheeks
'Nuff said.

Alexis Ohanian's barbershop

Can you make me look like this?

When Alexis was 10 years old, he walked into a barbershop and handed the barber a picture. He meekly asked the barber, "can you make me look like this?"

The picture was of Bart Simpson.

That was cute when he was 10, but now that he is 30 and balding and hasn't shaved for four days, he looks like a homeless guy in SOMA defecating on himself. He is a lot like that 90 year old lady in Walmart buying those pants that say "Juicy" on the ass. That was cute when you were young, grandma, but now people are beginning to stare.

Spare some change?

When you're 10 and you gel up your spiked hair, you are edgy. When you in your 30s and still doing it, you are creepy.

There are some things that the world would be better off without. Reddit is one of those things. Even Conde Nast isn't dumb enough to pump money into that loser forever. They aren't going to let Reddit bankrupt their entire company. Make no mistake: Reddit will be gone soon enough.

Deja vu

2011-06-22T09:56:00.001-04:00

Déjà vu (literally "already seen") is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation before. In Reddit's case, over and over and over and over again before.

REDDIT HAS WORKED FOR 000 DAYS WITHOUT INCIDENT

A Riddle

2011-06-18T05:09:00.018-04:00

Q: What does Reddit have in common with the U.S. House of Representatives?

A: They both have one less Jew than they had last week.

The latest blog entry in Reddit's implosion series comes from Jedberg:

So what's next for me? Well, I don't actually have anything lined up just yet.

if you have any interesting leads on something, you could let me know. Once I do land something, there are myriad ways to keep up with me Twitter and my website, which I will finally have some time to update

Oh, you have time to update it, alright. Let's see you fanboys put a cheery spin on this one!

The good cheer is coming in from Redditors worldwide:

"And I got to be a part of all of it, keeping those servers running so that people could do all these amazing things."
more or less running. emphasis on less.

Ouch! Another Redditor commented:

Would you want to stay on forever as the oldest employee of a community known to the thinking public as a mob of angry, racist, misogynist manchildren, whose most popular pastimes include passing around found photos of underage children to jerk off to (and who blame the rest of the world for accurately identifying them as obnoxious and creepy)?

Congratulations to jedberg for finally leaving reddit, but I fear he may find the stain on his résumé a little more difficult to bleach out.

Oh snap!

The ultimate indignity: Reddit moving to SOMA

2011-06-16T00:04:00.002-04:00

I understand that Reddit doesn't make money, but seriously, how low can they go? They are moving to skid row and will work among the crack addicts, abandoned warehouses, burned out buildings and STD clinics.

One local describes SOMA this way:

It's gritty as eff. I see broken glass from car windows every day on my walk up to the muni station. Human poop on the sidewalk, humans (presumably the poop donors) passed out on the sidewalks, drug deals so brazen they have made me wait as they block the sidewalk to finish up the transaction, scumbags forming an every-sunny-day gauntlet that make being a chick totally unpleasant, jerks dumping a pickup-truck full of garbage onto the street (this was just tonight - yay), and I hear a hobo barfing his internal organs out on the sidewalk outside our place as I type this... etc... you get the idea.

Others talk about the crime and "lots of urine trails" and talk about how it is "littered with drug deals" and the "problems with vehicle theft". Reddit employees would be wise to take the last commentor's advice: "carry a gun".

Wow. It's hard to imagine them having to stoop any lower. How humiliating for them.

Reddit finds a politician they can really get behind

2011-06-13T08:08:00.007-04:00

Rep. Anthony Weiner recently did a Q&A with Reddit. Redditors and Weiner are alike in many ways: They have no morality, they are rabid hiveminded liberals, and they love tawdry internet pornography.

Reddit displayed its superior intellect and political savvy in their comments to Weiner:

Classic. Just classic.

Ever wonder what "more than 100 redditors" look like?

2011-06-07T23:25:00.005-04:00

Reddit published another ridiculous blog entry today. Perhaps one day they will get through an entire blog entry without lying, but today they couldn't even get through the first sentence.

It begins "Early in May, more than 100 /r/NYC redditors gathered". If you click the link, you will see a picture of these "more than 100 redditors". If you aren't a delusional Reddit fanboy, on the other hand, then you will see a picture of fewer than 90 people.

This proves three things:

In a city of 8 million people, Reddit couldn't even muster enough interest to attract 100 people.
They think you're stupid.
They are right.

Via Twitter: "Reddit is down again. There's a point where I feel sorry for that site."

2011-06-04T01:52:00.001-04:00

Don't worry, little guy. It's almost over

Truer words were never spoken.

I have run out of ways to say that Reddit is a house of cards built by inept children. I have to taken to Twitter for other descriptions.

Reddit stayed up for all of two and a half days. There are simply no words.

"Unreliable", "unstable", "wobbly", "unprofessional", "poorly-built" and "shoddy" are not strong enough. You can't call it "inconsistent", because it crashes all the time.

Wow. Just wow. Two and a half days.

A question for Reddit admins

2011-06-02T08:54:00.001-04:00

Here are some of Facehammer's comments from Reddit over the last day or so:

Tell us, Reddit admins, how can you look the other way on these types of comments from atheists but ban Christians for far less? What justification do you use for that?

Do you own up to the hypocrisy because it's your site and you feel it's not your job to treat people fairly? Do you pretend that it is right to allow this obvious violation somehow - but only for atheists?

Seriously, how do you justify it?

Dumbass of the week

2011-05-29T08:29:00.000-04:00

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In the case of Facehammer - or whichever one of his other 87 aliases you want to reference him by - imitation is the sincerest form of stupidity.

Here's a hint: When you start a mock blog, you aren't supposed to mock yourself.

Here he contends that:

Somebody posted a racist comment on Reddit... only once.
I wanted a poster banned for "arguing back". The fact that he stalked me for a year had nothing to do with it.
My saying that I want to get the story straight before I blog about it constitutes a "threat"
IP bans only affect one computer in your house, and I "obviously" have many other computers around because I live at the freakin' Apple Store.

You sir, are a dumbass.

A guessing game: Starting today, how many days do you think Reddit will stay up for?

2011-05-23T22:31:00.005-04:00

Reddit fanboys tell me that Reddit is now "rock-solid". RedditIncident.com says that the site has been up for 11 days. That would be a complete embarrassment for any other site, but for Reddit it is a new record!

So let's hear your guess. Starting today, how many days will this "rock-solid" site stay up for? 3,000? 10,000?

The closest guess gets bragging rights. RedditIncident.com is the official arbiter of whether the site has gone down or not. Since we are starting on May 24, 2011, the total number of days is the "days without incident" from RedditIncident.com minus 11.

Let's hear your guess!

Guess which company this stock chart is for

2011-05-16T04:06:00.001-04:00

A serious question for readers of Reddit's blog: How stupid ARE you?

2011-05-01T23:36:00.002-04:00

I am always amazed by the crap that Reddit tries to sling on their blog. Since they have published the same type of preposterous nonsense for years now, I suppose there must be people out there that are stupid enough to believe it. But how is that possible?

Seriously, how stupid are redditors?

Here is the latest blog post. They hired a programmer, so now they have two. Reddit wants you to think that is the most thrilling news since the dawn of time.

If every company that hired an employee sent out a melodramatic press release about how "terribly exciting" it is, the readers would catch on pretty quickly. But somehow redditors never figure out that they're being bullshitted, no matter how silly Reddit's propaganda gets.

According to Reddit's blog, it was good news when their old employees left, and it's good news now that fewer, less experienced employees have replaced them.

It is stupid. Absolutely stupid. You people can't see that?

Reddit was just down for 36 straight hours and now they say they are "very happy", "inspired and grateful" and they now say with a straight face that "Reddit's future is limitless".

How stupid would you have to be not to see through that?

I predicted "another ridiculous public relations propaganda piece announcing some wonderful news". And what luck, now they magically think they have "good news" and are "very excited". Well gee whiz, "let's build some amazing communities together" John-Boy!

I'm going to let you redditors in on a little secret: I'm not really a fortune teller. It's just that you are retarded and I'm not. You believe Reddit's bullshit PR releases because you aren't smart enough to notice that they get caught lying over and over again. You don't notice that they keep putting a PR happy face on bad news over and over again. They publish the same shit month after month yet somehow you never catch on.

"we're in a very good place right now"
"there's so much great news about reddit's future coming in"
"our massive engineering expansion is going really well"
"the best is yet to come for reddit"
"reddit's future is limitless"

You honestly don't understand that they are bullshitting you? How can that be? If you are really that stupid, how does your brain control your breathing?

Their last blog post was ridiculous even by their standards.

The best part was about hueypriest, their "esteemed Community Manager". Um... esteemed by whom?

Reddit is trying to tell you that this guy whose job - until yesterday - was to delete posts with the word "nigger" in them, has been promoted to General Manager today.

Oh, but one other thing: he'll still be handling "the community manager duties", which is the same thing he did in his old job, but this is "terribly exciting". Got that?

Here's the other part I love about Reddit's last blog entry: Remember Alexis Ohanian? He's the guy who somehow convinced Conde Nast to pay him (and a couple of other dufuses) millions for Reddit. He sold them a bill of goods and then took the money and ran. He left Conde Nast with a worthless site that has never made a dime of profit. He screwed Conde Nast over bad, and he should be ashamed of himself.

So now who does Conde Nast bring back as "an advisor"? The very same con man!

The Great LouF feels another prediction coming on: After a long, expensive investigation, Ohanian's "advice" will involve Conde Nast paying him millions once again - which the dumbasses will do.

Reddit is a chain of stupid. Every link in the chain is somehow dumber than the next.

And you, Mr. Redditor, are the very dumbest of the dumb.

LouF smacks down the Oompa Loompa one last time for old time sake

2011-04-26T20:15:00.000-04:00

Here and here. He couldn't even fake a response. There's nothing more pathetic than a bloodied midget.

Reddit is down again.It must be a day that ends in 'y'.

2011-04-21T07:30:00.005-04:00

as usual

Reddit architected their site with no redundancy, putting all their eggs in one basket, then they didn't QA the site. Instead they spent their resources on this cool "reddit is down" screen.

Well at least it's getting lots of use.

Over a month ago, Reddit blamed Amazon for their downtime. Since then, Reddit hasn't changed a thing about their architecture... but they still blame Amazon for their problems.

A month from now, they still will not have made any changes, the site will go down, and they will still be blaming Amazon.

At what point does it become Reddit's fault?

Never?

How much revenue did Reddit make over the last 24 hours? This has got to be impressing those prospective buyers, don't you think?

The Great LouF foresees PR BS coming out of Reddit's doomed piehole

2011-04-14T23:48:00.006-04:00

The Great LouF knows all, tells all

Readers of this blog know that I have been spot on predicting each step of Reddit's downfall. The Great LouF will now gaze into his crystal ball and make another prediction:

Before April is over, Reddit will publish another ridiculous public relations propaganda piece announcing some wonderful news. Like all of Reddit's PR, it will be completely false yet dumbass Reddit fanboys will buy it hook, line, and sinker.

Here is one of my favorite examples of these silly PR propaganda spots from a couple of months ago. This one trumpets the news that "Reddit is doubling the size of its programming team".

Lol. How'd that work out?

Get ready. It's coming in April.

Then there was the one about how Reddit came up with the idea for Comedy Central's rally (which was a lie) and the one about how Reddit raised $500,000 for charity (which was also a lie).

Dumbass fanboys will read the upcoming fictional "wonderful news" PR piece and take it as gospel. Then they will continue to embarrass themselves by posting comments on this blog like "oh yeah, what about the 'major round of hiring' that Reddit announced on their blog?" and "Reddit's boss at Conde Nast was fired for not investing in Reddit and replaced with someone who would".

Oh, if only stupidity were an Olympic sport...

By the end of this month, I predict that the readers of Reddit's blog will once again need hipboots.

The Great LouF has spoken!

Reddit Trivia

2011-03-31T22:48:00.002-04:00

How well do you know Reddit? Take this short quiz and find out:

1) When 2/3 of Reddit's programmers left in one week, leaving just one programmer to handle everything, did Reddit:

a) quickly move to hire people who they already knew.
b) quickly install a team of temps and consultants.
c) do nothing since the site is being shut down anyway.

2) Before Oompa Loompa Mike Schiraldi left Reddit, he:

a) gave two weeks notice, but Reddit lied when they said "our massive engineering expansion is going really well" knowing full well that the Oompa Loompa was on his way out the door.
b) was abruptly fired and told to never ever return.

3) Now that the Oompa Loompa says he's been at Google for a week, He:

a) is explaining "more about this adventure as it unfolds"
b) still mysteriously can't tell anybody what his title is, or what he does there.

Good luck on the quiz!

Announcing the "Guess the date that Reddit goes belly up" contest

2011-03-22T23:47:00.004-04:00

First Prize

Announcing the "Guess the date that Reddit goes belly up" contest. First prize comes directly from Mike Schiraldi's personal wardrobe. It is this lovely Oompa Loompa shirt. Thank you, Mike, for donating the prize.

The Rules:

The user who most closely guesses the date that Reddit will be shut down wins.
Guesses must be posted on this blog by 4/1/11. If Conde Nast shitcans Reddit before 4/1/11, the contest ends and the earliest guess wins.
Once the winner is determined, he or she will email me their mailing address and shirt size and I will mail the prize out to them.
Anonymous posts will not be counted because I cannot verify the identity of the winner. You need to identify yourself in some way (email address, reddit username, blogger account, etc.). Or you can post a second time identifying yourself and I won't publish that post.
In the case of a tie, one winner will be randomly selected.
The prize will be awarded at the sole discretion of Lou (i.e., if you cheat I'm not sending out a second shirt).
A twist: If Reddit goes down for one full week, whether intentionally or not, it will be considered "shutdown" and the first date it went down will be considered the shutdown date.
The closest date is determined by the number of days between the user's guess and Reddit's shutdown date. (You don't necessarily lose if your guess is prior to Reddit's shutdown date.)

So post your guess here and good luck!

The Oompa Loompa has now chimed in on Conde Nast dumping Reddit.

2011-03-21T23:57:00.002-04:00

Mike Schiraldi: Dumbass

In an alarmingly clueless blog entry, Mike Schiraldi continues to show how much business acumen he has: absolutely none.

It's not enough that Conde Nast artificially propped up Reddit - a failing website - for years, but now he's pissed because they didn't "pay airfare and hotels for programming candidates".

Pay with what? The site doesn't make money!

Schiraldi worked as a code monkey for Reddit for only two years. Where exactly does this entitlement mentality come from?

At its core, business is really very simple: if you want hotels and airfare and SSD hard drives then make some money to pay for it with. Until then, STFU. It's really that simple.

Schiraldi's incompetence cost Sarah Chubb her career. Now he feels it necessary to publically twist the knife a little more. Very classy.

Not only is he an idiot for not understanding her position, but he isn't doing his career any favors. He is a short-timer who didn't work well with others, and now he's documenting his contempt for the boss in writing for all his potential future employers to see.

What an unmitigated dumbass.

His feeble-minded rant continues, "selling Reddit is the last thing you should do". Dude, selling Reddit is the last thing they CAN do! You drove it into the ground! It is worthless.

Who is going to buy a site that doesn't make money?

He honestly doesn't understand that most companies would have pulled the plug on Reddit years ago. In Raldi's mind, if it wasn't for mean old Conde Nast's failure to endlessly shell out good money after bad, he would still be there saying "Gee the 'employee equity' on this website that has never made a dime of profit is really motivating me today".

To call him a dumbass is really an insult to dumbasses. He would need to work his way up to "dumbass".

Reddit continues to implode. The Oompa Loompa is out.

2011-03-16T21:28:00.003-04:00

Tell me again how Reddit's future looks so bright. Now that the boss has been fired and the employees are frantically heading for the exits (two in one week!), tell me how I have been wrong all along and there's nothing to see here.

A couple of points regarding his goodbye cruel world post:

He didn't write it. A Conde Nast PR person did

A departing employee wouldn't stress how the site survived on "Conde Nast's love". The post was written by Conde Nast's PR department.

Departing employees say goodbye. They don't try to sell you on how wonderful the place that they are leaving is. They don't stress how the new employees (that don't exist yet) "should have a huge impact on speed, stability, and features". They don't try to sell you on how "traffic is skyrocketing" on the website they are leaving. They don't say "I'm so proud of what our scrappy, brilliant skeleton crew has been able to accomplish, and I know that the best is yet to come".

That is salesmanship, not a goodbye. If you think "the best is yet to come" was written by a departing employee, you are an idiot.

He was fired

Today was his last day. No two-week notice. For those of you who have never worked in business, that means he was fired.

Karma is a real force in the world

He was a dick, and karma (via good ole LouF and others) came back and bit him in the ass for it.

Reddit employee leaves because "there's so much great news about reddit's future"

2011-03-12T10:10:00.001-05:00

I've met some gullible people in my life, but anybody who buys that excuse needs to pay me $1 for a gullibility test.

Let's review what we have learned from that particular blog entry:

One of their employees will be at a conference... representing another company. LOL!
The employees are frantically fleeing, but that's good news because it means Reddit will "be hiring even more people than previously anticipated".
The latest fleeing employee left the company because "there's so much great news about reddit's future" and it has nothing to do with the boss getting fired or the site being shut down.
Weeks after announcing a so-called "massive engineering expansion" - which is definitely real and not just PR - they are "just now wrapping up the initial review process and will be requesting resumes soon".

While we're being gullible, who wants to be the first to put a mirthful spin on why Hipmunk is hiring all of Reddit's employees but refuses to hire Raldi?

Reddit admin: After six years "we're focusing on keeping the site from constantly crashing"

2011-03-11T08:09:00.004-05:00

Here's an interesting post from a certain pudgy midget Reddit administrator: "We had to shut down features"... "Right now we're focusing on keeping the site from constantly crashing."

Here's a career management hint: After you have been operating a website for six years, if you're still "focusing on keeping the site from constantly crashing", it's time to throw in the towel. It's time to admit this isn't working out for you and it's time for you to start looking into tractor trailer schools.

I'm sure the senior executive at AOL is considering buying websites right now, saying "Reddit is constantly crashing?!? I've got to get me some of that!"

Why Reddit went broke and is being shut down - continued.

2011-03-05T21:21:00.003-05:00

The Ultimate in Karma: Reddit goes broke

I was asked to make another thread to continue the post-mortem on Reddit.

Reddit has done so many horrible things that it required a whole new blog entry. From lying to the police to shutting down a woman's cancer fund raising site to lying repeatedly about their "community" and "accomplishments" to distributing underage pornography to women bashing to misogyny to blatant racism, the last thread became too big and unwieldy.

Digital Chief of Conde Nast "quits". Goodbye Reddit.

2011-02-08T09:55:00.001-05:00

Sarah Chubb, a 20 year veteran of Conde Nast and head of its digital media for 15 years, is leaving to "explore other opportunities". The writing is on the wall now.

Good riddance, Reddit. The world will be far better without you.

Reddit "goons" shut down fund-raising site for children with cancer

2011-02-05T00:02:00.001-05:00

Readers of this blog know what a truly horrible community Reddit is. They know about the underage pornography, misogyny, racism, and hate speech that goes on there. They know how the admins play favorites, banning conservative users while looking the other way for liberals users. They know about the lies that Reddit's PR machine routinely spouts. They know how Reddit users have attacked reporters when they didn't like what was being reported.

But who could have guessed that Reddit would ever stoop so low as this.

Reddit "goons", objecting to a woman running a fundraiser for children with cancer, fed the police and the FBI bad information and got her fund-raising site shut down.

There are simply no words.

Reddit latest lie: pageviews

2011-02-03T22:54:00.000-05:00

Reddit's latest PR lie was posted today by Chief Oompa Loompa Mike Schiraldi (apparently because he is the only developer left - the taller developers were able to land jobs elsewhere).

The blog says "There are only about 100 sites on the entire Internet that get a billion pageviews in a single month, and now reddit can put on its smoking jacket and join that exclusive club."

It doesn't take much research to debunk that lie. Here is an independent list of the most popular 1,000 websites from December. Reddit's name is nowhere on the list. Are you telling me that in one month Reddit went from not even on the list of 1,000 to the top 100?

An obvious lie. Nice suspenders, though.

The Reddit PR machine gets caught lying again: "Rally To Restore Sanity" conceived by Comedy Central months ahead of "viral demand" on Reddit

2011-01-13T03:40:00.002-05:00

From The Huffington Post:

Here's the original post on Reddit that supposedly inspired the whole shebang; it was posted on August 31st, three days after Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally. If [Daily Show writer Dan] Radosh's timing is accurate, Stewart had already been planning the rally for a while at that point.

For months, the online media has been repeating Reddit's claim that they conceived the idea for the rally, but - after being lied to time and time again - they are finally starting to question Reddit's PR machine. Jason Linkins from the Huffington Post concedes "to say that the initial idea was theirs doesn't seem to be the case".

Despite disheveled blowhard Alexis Ohanian calling it the "Reddit Rally", despite the "Official Reddit Rally T-shirts", and despite the dozens of online media outlets that blindly repeated Reddit's lies, this was Comedy Central's rally.

Like most of the good deeds that Reddit claims credit for, they had very little to do with it.

When you donate to DonorsChoose.org, who does it REALLY help?

2010-11-16T20:23:00.000-05:00

I just ran some numbers on the supposed $500,000 donation to buy classroom materials. By my calculations, less than $300,000 of the $500,000 actually went to buying classroom materials for children.

Check my numbers. For the sake of discussion, let's assume there was indeed a donation of $500,000 raised by Facebook, Comedy Central, et al in the first place. According to DonorChoose.org's website, $202,000 (40.4%) goes to things other than "classroom projects materials". Only $298,000 of the $500,000 goes to actually buying classroom materials, which of course was the point of the fundraiser.

For a donation of $500,000:
    $43,500 (8.7%) goes to "general administrative" and "fundraising"
    $71,000 (14.2%) goes to "classroom projects processing"
    $87,500 (17.5%) goes to "classroom projects advocacy"

That totals $202,000 of overhead, leaving only $298,000 for actual "classroom projects materials". If my math is right, not even $300,000 of the $500,000 donation went to buying classroom materials for the kids!

Wouldn't it be interesting to find out exactly where the missing $202,000 went?

Reddit did NOT raise $500,000 for charity. Stop saying it. It's a lie.

2010-11-13T05:50:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, Reddit admin and habitual liar Mike Schiraldi posted this blog entry saying "Stephen Colbert said he would let reddit interview him if you could raise $500,000 before the rally, and, naturally, you totally did."

No Mike, Reddit totally didn't. And you know it.

As Schiraldi very well knows, Reddit was a very small part of a coalition that raised $500,000. That is very different. The large majority of that money was raised due to the popularity of Comedy Central, Facebook, and Twitter. The Donors Choice page mentions Reddit, and - oh, by the way, a little-known site called Facebook.

When Schiraldi says "Crack open a cold one, reddit. You've earned this one" it really means we were a tiny part of something good so that justifies our continued misogyny, hypocrisy and hatred. Now continue to post porn to the jail bait subreddit without any guilt because we are now taking credit for the good works of others.

Ever wonder why nobody on Reddit can think for themself?

2010-09-10T20:59:00.003-04:00

A liberal atheist has stalked me - and others - for a full year on Reddit. I have been "report"ing these posts, and PM'ing the moderators and admins, who refused to help in any way. Then I, a conservative Christian, trying to bring some awareness to the situation, posted the very same text - verbatim - after the posts of a couple of admins. The result? I was banned.

You heard right. A liberal atheist posts this crap for a full year and the admins do nothing, but a conservative Christian posts that very same text half a dozen times and immediately gets banned.

Reddit is a cirlejerk because the admins - Raldi in particular - deliberately make it so.

The site is filled with hiveminded morons because THEY are hiveminded morons.

Here's why 90% of Atheists are Atheists

2010-05-10T00:12:00.002-04:00

How many tools do you think there are for understanding the world around you? Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?

No, the answer - according to every atheist I have ever talked to - is one. Just one. The one and only valid tool for understanding the world, as it turns out, is science. All other tools, according to the atheist, are null and void.

Having a problem with your tax return? Forget about finance. Run some scientific experiments instead.

Doing some interior decorating? Don't consider aesthetics, just look around the yard for some fossils to carbon date.

Want to learn Spanish? Screw that pesky linguistics nonsense, get the test tubes out instead.

The atheist doesn't understand - nay, cannot understand - that science, while great in its place, is just one piece of the puzzle. It is just one tool in the toolbox. Sometimes it is the right tool, but - here's the key point - sometimes it is not.

This atheist on Reddit explains that "science is the only tool by which we can build a working knowledge of anything" and that "application of the scientific method is the only useful way to explain anything that matters".

I don't mean to pick on that one guy because that is a very common - albeit absurd - position for atheists to take. They post that same sentiment over and over again.

In their minds, God cannot exist because if God existed, it would have been on the cover of their science journal this month.

I have spoken to hundreds of atheists on Reddit, and I have come to understand why 90% of atheists are atheists.

The answer is that they are one-dimensional thinkers.

They are not capable of thinking on multiple levels. The reach an erroneous conclusion because they aren't capable of using the array of tools at their disposal. They judge all things through the lens of science and science alone. They ignore their senses - what they experience, see, smell, hear, and feel - because they are only able to single-process. They can't apply Science and Ethics or Economics or Christianity to a problem because they aren't capable of thinking on multiple levels.

Ironically, science could be used to explore this phenomenon more deeply. If you were to examine the brains of 100 atheists, I am convinced that you would find an abnormality in the brains of 90 of them that prevents them from approaching problems in a complex way, seeing things through more than one lens.

That explains why 90% of atheists are atheists. The other 10% are just a hodgepodge of people rebelling against their parents, looking for attention, affected by peer pressure, rationalizing their sins, etc.

Hey TBS. Ronald McDonald called. He wants his costume back.

2009-10-18T23:28:00.002-04:00

There's nothing more exciting then watching a major league baseball game end in dramatic fashion. I love it when a game - especially a playoff game - ends in an extra innings walk-off homer.

Except when the game is on TBS.

When the game is on TBS, they invariably send out jackass field reporter Craig Sager to do the post-game field interview with the hero of the game. He comes out in a velvet jacket, a yellow suit, or purple shoes to once again make an ass of himself. He's got everything except the squirting lapel flower.

Note to TBS: Just stop. The fans are interested in the game. Stop putting this clown on TV just because he dresses wacky. It's not clever, anybody can do it, and it's lame. Just stop.

Uncle Jamie's Disgrace

2008-07-19T09:32:00.000-04:00

Recently I stumbled upon a very disturbing blog entry written by a librarian trying to justify the placement of homosexual propaganda in the children's section of the library.

At issue is the disgraceful book entitled Uncle Bobby's Wedding. A young mother using the library objected to the book on the grounds that "the book is specifically designed to normalize gay marriage and is targeted toward the 2-7 year old age group." This is clearly the case. But the librarian dismissed the woman's objections in his 874 page letter (apparently believing that more words equals more wisdom).

The book is pure indoctrination. Amazon reviews indicate that the book is about a little guinea pig girl named Chloe whose uncle is "marrying" another man. What could possibly be the problem, you say? The problem is that Chloe has doesn't want to relinquish Uncle Bobby's attention to his "partner" Jamie. But in the end - and this is a direct quote from an Amazon review - "having two uncles turns out to be a fine idea", and Chloe "thinks Uncle Bobby's wedding was the best ever".

Well I'm sorry to interrupt the self-congratulatory backslapping, but having your uncle "marry" a man is not a fine idea. It is wrong. Despite what some 60 year old hippy librarian tells you, men are supposed to marry women.

But here's the worst part: The librarian, in his 917 page response, admits that the book is propaganda!:

First, you believe that "the book is specifically designed to normalize gay marriage and is targeted toward the 2-7 year old age group."
...
I think you're right that the purpose of the book is to show a central event, the wedding of two male characters, as no big thing
...
yes, Sarah Brannen [the author] clearly was trying to portray gay marriage as normal

So, given that, on what planet is it acceptable to have the book in the children's section of a public library? It is positively alarming that the people who make decisions about what materials children are exposed to don't have the sense to make those decisions!

The "Friendly Atheist"

2007-10-07T07:25:00.001-04:00

Separated at Birth

2007-10-04T21:14:00.001-04:00

Question: Which of these is a small pig with a generally timid disposition who sometimes conquers his fears and wants to be brave?

Has anybody noticed that Bill Clinton looks like a corpse?

2007-07-20T04:10:00.000-04:00

Politics aside, the man does not look well.

The next President of the United States will be...

2007-02-23T22:43:00.000-05:00

There has been a lot of buzz about Hillary and Obama, but neither one of them can win. The next President of the United States will be... (drum roll please)... Mitt Romney. And the main reason is... (another drum roll please)... homosexual "marriage".

The country's hot button issue is no longer abortion. It is "gay marriage". The large majority of the voters are deeply opposed to it.

Romney will win the Republican primary because he is the most socially conservative of the field. Rudy Giuliani would have been a viable candidate, but he is on the wrong side of the "gay marriage" issue. He'll never make it past the primary.

As usual the Democrats will put up another anemic candidate with high negatives in the general election - probably Hillary - and the Republican candidate will once again skate into office.

The winner is Romney. You heard it here first.

Air America in Boston being replaced by Spanish programming

2006-12-14T00:13:00.000-05:00

Air America, currently heard on WKOX-AM (1200) and WXKS-AM (1430) in Boston, is being dropped in favor of Spanish-language programming at the beginning of next year. A fitting end for the liberals who argued for open borders and drivers licenses for illegal aliens. Hasta la vista, baby.

Sticks and Stones

2006-11-22T01:09:00.000-05:00

I remember one day when I was 5 or 6 years old some of the kids in the neighborhood were calling me names. I remember crying to my mother, who calmly explained to me “sticks and stones can break your bones but names can never hurt you”. People do tease each other and call each other all sorts of nasty names, but my mother’s advice - to ignore them – was right on the mark.

That was a revelation at the time, but as I grew older I just assumed that everybody had learned that lesson when they were little too.

Not so, as it turns out. Take the case of Michael Richards’ recent standup comedy incident. Richards is in hot water for calling a disruptive heckler a “nigger” and making references to lynching. Press reports say that this could be career-ending for Richards.

Think about that. A guy in the audience interrupts a comedy show, and when the comedian calls him names he is surprised and gets indignant. Richards, now being called a racist, apologizes on Letterman and denies that he is a racist.

As a public service to anyone who somehow missed it when they were five years old, I repeat my mother’s words of wisdom: “sticks and stones can break your bones but names can never hurt you”. Words only have power if you give them power.

If somebody calls you a “dummy head”, as I was called when I was a little kid, ignore it. It’s not worth getting upset about. If somebody calls you a “nigger” what good does it do you to have an aneurysm about it? It’s a word. If somebody accuses you of being a “racist”, don’t go on Letterman and make it worse – let it go.

One thing you’ll notice about all of those insults is that they don’t mean anything. What does “nigger” actually mean? Does it make sense to argue about whether somebody is a “nigger” or not? (“am not” – “am too” – “am not” – “am too”). What does “racist” actually mean? If the person being accused of being a racist disagrees, is there a set of objective criteria that can be used to determine if they are a racist? Of course not. It is nothing but a childish insult.

Sometimes in life people will tease you and call you names. Ignore them.

The Trouble with Web 2.0

2006-11-13T22:31:00.000-05:00

There has been a lot of buzz about Web 2.0 lately. The Web 2.0 Summit was held last week in San Francisco and all the industry leaders were there.

Depending upon who you talk to, Web 2.0 is either the wave of the future or utter bullshit. I'm in the second camp.

At some point in your life somebody has tried to sell you on how wonderful something is, but couldn't clearly describe why it's so wonderful. Maybe it was an insurance salesman or a politician or some shill on an infomercial. Have you noticed that 99% of the time these people are lying?

Since nobody seems to be able to clearly define what Web 2.0 actually means, they provide examples of "Web 1.0" vs. "Web 2.0":

Web 1.0	Web 2.0
DoubleClick	Google AdSense
Ofoto	Flickr
Akamai	BitTorrent
mp3.com	Napster
Britannica Online	Wikipedia

Did you catch that last one? Did they just compare Wikipedia to Britannica Online? Let me get this straight. An example of Web 1.0 is Britannica Online - one of the world's most trusted sources of information. An example of Web 2.0 is Wikipedia - A chaotic repository of bias, misinformation, obscenities, and flame wars. And their point is that Web 2.0 is better than "Web 1.0"? Anybody who is persuaded by that particular example hasn't paid a visit to Wikipedia lately.

The emperor has no clothes. Web 2.0 is hype - and it's not even convincing hype.

Speaker Pelosi? Not so fast.

2006-10-23T01:59:00.000-04:00

Think the Dems are a shoo-in to regain control of congress? Barron's doesn't think so. Don't pop that champagne cork yet, Teddy.

Air America is bankrupt, and not just morally

2006-10-13T21:50:00.000-04:00

Air America Radio Network filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today. They have lost $40.9 million since May 2004.

Frankly, I never understood the concept behind Air America to begin with. I guess they were thinking that if the Rush Limbaughs and Bill O'Reillys of the world could get rich doing political radio that they could too. But conservative talk show hosts have a compelling message that people want to listen to, Air America doesn't. It took $40.9 million dollars, but Al Franken is starting to figure that out.

Foleygate

2006-10-03T23:01:00.000-04:00

Disgraced former Congressman Mark Foley has checked himself into alcohol rehabilitation program. The only problem is that he's not an alcoholic; he's a freak.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow tried to downplay Foleygate as "simply naughty e-mails", but that is outrageous. Foley pretended to be a Republican, abused his position, and disregarded the welfare of at least one teenager. He should be dealt with harshly.

My guess is that by the end of the week Dennis Hastert will no longer be the Speaker of the House. And that's a shame. Hastert is an honest man who was put in a no-win situation.

Hastert apparently knew that Foley was a freak and was sending emails and IMs, but if Hastert had taken action he would have been accused of gay bashing. And that, my friends, is the underlying problem. Society has decided, for whatever reason, that political correctness is more important than the safety and well-being of children.

How many 52 year old men have to abuse 16 year old boys before you wake up? How many homosexuals do you have to see hanging around in front of highway rest stop bathrooms before you realize that this is not normal behavior? These people have a far higher rate of abusing children, and until it becomes OK to say that, we won't be able to protect our kids.

I'm with Dubya

2006-09-27T21:58:00.002-04:00

On September 11, 2001 the

United States of America

was attacked by terrorists. It was a scary time. Who can forget the horrible images of innocent people jumping off that tower to their death. I remember the days that followed and how many funerals I drove past and how many obituaries I read. I will never forget that. I can’t even imagine how the families felt.

I also remember the day that President Bush grabbed that megaphone and shouted "I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." And I knew that he meant it.

Bush’s predecessor, Clinton, had spent his entire presidency making decisions based on polls. But even back then, I knew that Bush was different. I knew that Bush was a man of conviction. And I'll tell you how I knew.

In 1998 George W. Bush, then the Governor of Texas, denied clemency for Karla Faye Tucker. Tucker was a brutal murderer who boasted at her trial that she had an orgasm each time she plunged the ax down upon her victims. She struck one of her victims with a three-foot ax more than 20 times in order to stop the gurgling sound he was making. But now, facing the death penalty, she claimed that she should be spared because she had found Jesus while in jail.

There were pleas for clemency from Newt Gingrich, Pat Robertson and several world leaders including the Pope. Bush ignored them all and signed her death warrant. On February 3, 1998, Karla Faye Tucker was executed by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:45 p.m.

That, my friends, is what it means to be a man of conviction. The woman was a freakin’ ax murderer so it was pretty clear what had to be done, but how many of you would have had the stones to stick to your guns under that kind of pressure? How many of you could have turned down the Pope?

So on that fateful September 2001 day when Bush stood at Ground Zero with that megaphone, I knew that he would retaliate with that same unwavering determination. And he did. The last thing I wanted was a timid liberal pussyfooting around worrying about encroaching on the terrorists’ civil liberties. We had been attacked and we needed decisive action. And we got it.

On September 12, 2001 if I had told you that there wouldn’t be another terrorist attack on US soil within the next five years, would you have believed me? I’ll bet not. That is an incredible accomplishment. We can’t have planes flying into our buildings in this country. We simply can’t have it.

Bush is a lot like Truman: both great men and both great presidents. Bush’s approval ratings are low now, as were Truman’s during his term. And like Truman, history will recognize Bush’s greatness years after his presidency is over.

When I was a boy, adults would encourage kids by saying “you could be president some day”. That would make kids feel special and proud. After the Clinton legacy of blue stained dresses and cigars, I thought that the days of kids looking up to the president were gone for good. I hoped that, if nothing else, Bush would keep his pants on and not disgrace the nation the way his predecessor did. But I got much more than I had hoped for. We all got more. We got a good decent man in a day when they are hard to find.

I’m with Dubya, and if you are smart you will be too.

Thanks Jennifer

2006-09-25T00:11:00.000-04:00

Thanks for the idea of creating a blog. More to come...