Hey Cortex aka Josh Millard, Jessamyn West, Matt Haughey, Paul Bausch, others,
It’s not that long of a story. But I guess it’s easier to claim I was being a pain than for you all to admit you were thin-skinned censors.
Here’s the story as I recall. I created a site called Metaflippant, endorsed by Cortex, and posted it on the Metafilter Projects wall. I believe he even claimed it was funny. Matt didn’t like it so much.
All broke down when a Metafilter “poweruser” sent me an unsolicited direct message saying the same thing which is basically being repeated by some in your current thread, (which is what alerted me to it. For the record, I’m not the twitter user everyone’s whining about.)
I featured the poweruser’s initials (initials that stand for a screenname of one of tens of thousands of MF users, rather than a real name) on the Metaflippant site, along with a half sentence from her quote. Jessamyn and I knew of each other prior because we share a profession and some national attention for different reasons. We later met in person at a Metafilter event in Portland, so I was surprised she took the link down to Metaflippant without any discussion. As a fellow librarian, I found her action deeply troubling.
It soon came out that she and Cortex are friends and/or bandmates of the poweruser. So both opted to side with her. I assume Matt and Paul are buddies with her too. I’d met and even shared a few meals with them and once gave Matt a $50 gift certificate he didn’t acknowledge. Paul chose a Metafilter event to make a friend I brought feel unwelcome by approaching him, laughing with an Iphone displaying a Metafilter thread in which one of his poweruser buddies physically threatened my friend for allegedly paying the $5 to join and attend for free beer. Ha ha. My friend, btw, was a VP at Akamai when they went public. I talked him into attending the MeFi meetup because he was looking for “talent” for his then-new company. As you might imagine, he doesn’t need handouts.
Anyway, back to my story. I chatted with Jessamyn and it quickly devolved into a righteous speech from her and a declaration to take it to whatever the board is called where Metafilter mediation supposedly takes place. That was a joke. Paul was the first to post, preaching that I’d posted contents of a private email. Nevermind that it was unsolicited and there was about 0% chance of knowing who sent it as I posted it with initials accompanying a pseudonym. He set the tone for a pile-on.
Eventually Matt canceled my membership at Metafilter. As it’s something that one pays for and he was unappreciative of my gift to him, and because I don’t want him to earn advertising revenue from my posts and comments, I told him he would have to remove them all or I would get a lawyer. Cortex can call that being a pain all he wants.
Incidentally, the poweruser who essentially ended my relationship with Metafilter had marked one of my posts as best answer. A colleague of mine is her next door neighbor and tells me the house is constantly filled with smoke. Perhaps it’s time for a little less weed and paranoia? Perhaps it’s time for thick skin and transparency too.
I don’t wish ill will on any of them, but I do wish I had a bigger venue for telling the true story. In fact, I saw Matt and shook his hand on opening night of Conan’s tour. As usual, it seemed like he had no idea who I was. I was just glad he was attempting to have a sense of humor.
Happy New Year everyone!
