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[The Technomancer]

So no private information was posted anywhere, you just don't think that people should have collated the public information they googled up. I don't think that's a reasonable standard at all. Think about the dating test here: if this dude had gone out on a date with someone and they wanted to check his history out before committing to a second, would they have been able to find this info? Nobody knew what exactly they were going to find when they googled the guy in the first place, and expecting people to actively hide these things once they came up is unrealistic.

You're completely neglecting intent. Can you tell me why, in this situation, the information that they gathered on him held any relevance to the circumstances at hand? Because right now what I've seen is an attitude of "hey lets see how much we can fuck up this dude's day, lets go grab info off of his Facebook and parade it around for the mob"

And again, I don't think this has necessarily been one of the worse cases I've seen on the internet. But it still seems...petty.

How would you, Technomancer, liked to have seen this situation go down?

PennyArcade outs him, the internet descends, calls him a douche, ruins his reputation, costs him his job, and justice has been done. As far as "investigative reporting" goes, thats it. The job is done. He's been ruined. Mission accomplished. At this point what purpose is there to harassing him further other then the animal pleasure of forming a circle around something and throwing rocks at it?

 

[RoninChaos]

Posting pictures from his FB account and digging into his personal history, regardless of whether or not this information is readily accessible, is completely unnecessary. It's just irrelevant to the situation at hand.

Again, my point is that this story had enough legs on it's own to bring him down completely. It doesn't need anything else.



Yes, and he'll lose his job without question. Doesn't change the fact that the rest of this garbage is completely unnecessary.

What garbage is that? People reacting to this guy being a douche? What's wrong with that?

We live in a connected world now. This is how it's going to be going forward. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube at this point. As I stated in my last post to Technomancer, years ago people would have written letters to the business, made phone calls, or come by. Now they get on twitter, post on facebook, etc.

 

[marrec]

...well yes, I think part of human nature includes the "asshole" behavior. That's no reason not to call them out on it.

I think that's the wrong asshole to focus on though. That's not an extraordinary asshole, like Paul.

Paul is like a rare butterfly, you capture and pin it under glass because you hardly see one like it. The other assholes flying around are expected.

 

[Maxim726X]

So no private information was posted anywhere, you just don't think that people should have collated the public information they googled up. I don't think that's a reasonable standard at all. Think about the dating test here: if this dude had gone out on a date with someone and they wanted to check his history out before committing to a second, would they have been able to find this info? Nobody knew what exactly they were going to find when they googled the guy in the first place, and expecting people to actively hide these things once they came up is unrealistic.

You are calling on every single person who's participated in this drama in any way to self-edit to an extraordinarily conservative level, and presumably for curators of communities where it's been discussed to shut down and delete discussion (again, of publicly available info found through google searches of someone's public name and email) to prevent the spread of this information. That's completely implausible and not particularly reasonable.

It goes beyond a simple Google search- Unless I'm doing it wrong. People had to actively search for that information... Information that really has no bearing on this entire drama. It's just another example, in my view, of someone trying to outdo someone else. To find the dirt that no one else has just yet, to post the picture that will become a meme, to find the Youtube video he made, to find the story on his alleged steroid use... Again, none of that has any bearing on what transpired a few days ago.

And I'm not asking anyone to self-edit. Clearly you can post whatever you want. I was asking a rhetorical question: When is enough enough?

 

[wondermega]

before gaf, no one cared

/thread

 

[R_thanatos]

http://ingame.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2...endor-price-of-rudeness#.TvrI7UHo24c.facebook

i missed this part .. so he lost the original creator support too ( expected ) so now people in need of this device would be able to get it ..

I hope people would be able to make the difference between the product and the "bully" once this settle down ..

 

[Roto13]

Wait, what's this steroid stuff? I missed that part.

 

[Cruzader]

Sadly Paul can't lye Dow out of this mess.

Those defending him..good lord people. This Guy has commited alot of shady shit and can't be exposed? Also stuff that's publicly out in the internet is fair game like twitter/Facebook and that public court thing. He put himself out there with his fake persona, then that will be used to showcase how great of a dick he is. Crazy that he has alot of shit against him from early in the year by customers he insulted and belittled but now put in front of everyone to see what extent he has gone through to shit on honest people buying a product.

 

[mik83kuu]

Crocodile Tears.

 

[Kosh]

PennyArcade outs him, the internet descends, calls him a douche, ruins his reputation, costs him his job, and justice has been done. As far as "investigative reporting" goes, thats it. The job is done. He's been ruined. Mission accomplished. At this point what purpose is there to harassing him further other then the animal pleasure of forming a circle around something and throwing rocks at it?

Or, Penny Arcade could have contacted N-Control. They could have forwarded the emails to show how N-Control's PR firm was treating their customers. If nothing came of that, they could have then gone public with it. Maybe they did that, but that information isn't out there and I didn't see any of the emails addressed to N-Control.

Of course, that wouldn't bring any attention to Penny Arcade or satiate Mike's lust to feel the power of unleashing the internet.

 

[la flama blanca]

Remember guys, his wife and baby are now dead thanks to us.

 

[androvsky]

Or, Penny Arcade could have contacted N-Control. They could have forwarded the emails to show how N-Control's PR firm was treating their customers. If nothing came of that, they could have then gone public with it. Maybe they did that, but that information isn't out there and I didn't see any of the emails addressed to N-Control.

Of course, that wouldn't bring any attention to Penny Arcade or satiate Mike's lust to feel the power of unleashing the internet.

If Mike had taken care of this quietly, without the public shaming, Ocean Marketing would simply move on to the next unsuspecting business and pull the shame shit with their customers.

 

[Roto13]

Remember guys, his wife and baby are now dead thanks to us.

His phone rang so much it fell off the table and onto the head of his brand new baby who was just born minutes before this story broke. So tragic.

 

[SouthernDragon]

It goes beyond a simple Google search- Unless I'm doing it wrong.

You are. For someone who was a purported "social media expert" he clearly didn't know how powerful a tool Google is for finding out information about someone, nevermind the ability to parse information within Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, et all.

I found my mother's long lost sister and her sons through Google, and she purposefully tried to cover her tracks. (Led to a happy reunion later on) There's information out there, and it's posted voluntarily.

Paul put himself AND his family up to this by acting the way he did. This is not some innocent man that was randomly singled out; this was someone acting in a grossly incompetent and belligerent manner, issuing threats (however empty) and generally bullying paying customers of a product.

And he did it all on the net. He should have known better, he didn't, and now he's paying the price.

 

[la flama blanca]

That whole "I was bullied as a kid" thing from Gabe's update is just awkward.....I was bullied too, but you wouldn't catch me sounding like someone with a chip on their shoulder.

 

[SYNTAX182]

It goes beyond a simple Google search- Unless I'm doing it wrong. People had to actively search for that information... Information that really has no bearing on this entire drama. It's just another example, in my view, of someone trying to outdo someone else. To find the dirt that no one else has just yet, to post the picture that will become a meme, to find the Youtube video he made, to find the story on his alleged steroid use... Again, none of that has any bearing on what transpired a few days ago.

And I'm not asking anyone to self-edit. Clearly you can post whatever you want. I was asking a rhetorical question: When is enough enough?

The stories brought up have a bearing on what type of character he is. People are curious and they wanted to find out. Nothing wrong with that at all.

 

[The Technomancer]

If Mike had taken care of this quietly, without the public shaming, Ocean Marketing would simply move on to the next unsuspecting business and pull the shame shit with their customers.

Yeah, I agree that a public exposure was in order.

 

[Grecco]

Or, Penny Arcade could have contacted N-Control. They could have forwarded the emails to show how N-Control's PR firm was treating their customers. If nothing came of that, they could have then gone public with it. Maybe they did that, but that information isn't out there and I didn't see any of the emails addressed to N-Control.

Of course, that wouldn't bring any attention to Penny Arcade or satiate Mike's lust to feel the power of unleashing the internet.

Nothing would have been solved had he gone to NControl. When you recieve utterly garbage service you want people to know about it.

 

[br0ken_shad0w]

Speaking of investigative reporting,

http://www.examiner.com/video-game-industry-in-national/ocean-marketing-gaming-pr-rep-to-avoid-at-all-cost

Update 15 and 16....

David Kotkin and N-Control has some explaining to do.

 

[Kosh]

If Mike had taken care of this quietly, without the public shaming, Ocean Marketing would simply move on to the next unsuspecting business and pull the shame shit with their customers.

Like others have said, this is going to happen anyway. It may not be in the video gaming industry, but in some other industry.

 

[spirity]

I can't believe the "leave paul alone" crew. You guys know he's laughing his ass off, right? No apologies from him, he's gone into hiding hoping that people will just forget about it. And they will. A couple of days and this will have all blown over.

In the meantime, people are responding to him being a douche. He deserves it. If I did what he did, I'd deserve it to. As would anyone. Its really quite simple - don't act like a douche. I hope he learns his lesson from all this, but I suspect he's just thinking "bunch of assholes" and digging his feet in.

Honestly, the people defending this loser deserves to be his customers. See how you feel when you're treated like shit and then told to "put your big boy hat on".

 

[narcosis219]

I can't believe the "leave paul alone" crew. You guys know he's laughing his ass off, right? No apologies from him, he's gone into hiding hoping that people will just forget about it. And they will. A couple of days and this will have all blown over.

In the meantime, people are responding to him being a douche. He deserves it. If I did what he did, I'd deserve it to. As would anyone. Its really quite simple - don't act like a douche. I hope he learns his lesson from all this, but I suspect he's just thinking "bunch of assholes" and digging his feet in.

Honestly, the people defending this loser deserves to be his customers. See how you feel when you're treated like shit and then told to "put your big boy hat on".

So at what point do we stop? Until he and his family are dead?

 

[_RT_]

"When these assholes threaten me or Penny Arcade I just laugh. I will personally burn everything I’ve made to the fucking ground if I think I can catch them in the flames."


Love it.

 

[androvsky]

Like others have said, this is going to happen anyway. It may not be in the video gaming industry, but in some other industry.

It hit mainstream news outlets, the chances are greatly reduced now. But you're saying that since there's a chance he might get a contract with another small company and mess with other customers, everybody should be quiet and cover up his abuses, thereby ensuring he will?

 

[Omegasquash]

Yeah, I agree that a public exposure was in order.

That's a completely reasonable feeling, and I'm with you 100%. The more I see about this as it pops up all over the place, the more this fellow looks like a class-A turd. While I certainly won't get out there and trash his name, make a meme or anything like that, I don't feel like I can cast a value judgment against those that feel compelled to do so (as long as they're not just part of what I'm pretty sure is a growing mob mentality). If people want to drag him through the mud, then well...go for it.

Just because someone won't participate doesn't mean that no one should participate, so long as they feel justified in doing so (since it's not up to anyone else to judge that justification, if that makes sense).

tl;dr: this dude is getting what was coming to him by many accounts.

 

[SketchTheArtist]

Here's one for the ''Mike can be a gigantic asshole when he's put in a certain position'' (and I love him for that).

Anyone remember that terrible podcast called ''Jordan Jesse Go Go Go'' or something where Mike and Jerry were invited to?

Long story short, they were invited to this podcast that took place in a stranger's apartment where they arrived an hour early because, as they later found out, there was a PR communication problem, so they had to push the interview an hour later. But to them at the time, the guy was late and it pissed them off to no end. However to Jerry, and especially Mike, waiting for someone who's late, in a stranger's apartment, to do an interview with people you don't really connect with, can take its toll. Especially when the said ''interview'' is just the hosts talking about random stuff without trying to engage you, the interviewee.

JERRY:

The schedule we were given commanded us to be a part of a program entitled “Jordan, Jesse, Go,” and grudgingly we obeyed the document. Already, we were put out; the next episode of Maury promised to feature searing video of cheaters confronted literally in mid-cheat. When we arrived at the address to discover it was someone’s house, I began to mentally embroider grim scenarios. The organism who answered the door had worn a bow tie - and I am not making this up - on purpose. The next forty-five minutes were spent engaged in absolutely the most stultifying kind of nonsense while we awaited the co-host. Recording the show wasn’t much different than the previous hour, except that now there were two people to ignore us. We were steeped in a high PSI stream of cultural detritus, which culminated in an attempt by the hosts to engage seriously the subject of “Waterworld.” I made a note in my iPhone about the experience, which reads:

- Actively fellated by a dog.

This last bit was actually the high point. There was a period during the interview where I began to read the titles of his CDs, one after the other. I honestly didn’t know what else to do. I had nothing to offer these people, and they didn’t give a shit anyway, and all the while a klaxon was sounding: “get out, get out, get out.” They managed to bring out a side of Gabriel that I’ve only seen three or four times in twelve years, and only once directed at me: the implacable judge who becomes (without warning) the unadorned aggressor. You must work diligently to bring out this monster; a feat they managed in record time.

It gets awkward (and funny) really fast:

http://instant-downloads.s3.amazonaws.com/jjgothelostepisode.mp3

 

[Neuromancer]

@TheSchwartz173 Eli Schwartz
Some folks are suggesting that I am Paul C. I can assure you I am not! I work part-time for the company. Especially recently

http://twitter.com/#!/TheSchwartz173/status/152083715814731776

This is getting weird again.

 

[Deleted member 10571]

So at what point do we stop? Until he and his family are dead?

I don't know about us, but you better stop right now -.-

 

[skybaby]

Speaking of investigative reporting,

http://www.examiner.com/video-game-industry-in-national/ocean-marketing-gaming-pr-rep-to-avoid-at-all-cost

Update 15 and 16....

David Kotkin and N-Control has some explaining to do.

Ruh Roh
This keeps on giving haha

 

[faceless007]

Can you point to one example of someone advocating that his family be brought into it or, for that matter, any specific thing that's been done to his family besides maybe them having to shut off the phone because his 1-800 number rings on it?

Regardless of whether anyone actually did anything with it, what was the purpose of going after his fiancee's contact information and history in the first place?

 

[R_thanatos]

So at what point do we stop? Until he and his family are dead?

why such extremes ? this will stop naturally like all the other "affairs" that existed before . why should this dude be treated differently ?

People will get bored , stop ( in time ).
no need to go toward the overdramatic "dead" part it's unnecessary and make you appear like you blow everything out of proportions. This isn't a witch hunt.. this is backlash. a well derserved backlash.

 

[Jobiensis]

You white knights can relax . Paul is a PR whiz and he'll have this mess cleaned up .

Amazing that just a touch of humility could have defused this whole scenario.

I will never get N-Control anything now though. I don't believe that they didn't know this behavior was happening, they were fine with screwing over their customers until it got messy. In essence, they, like Paul, are only sorry they got caught.

 

[spirity]

So at what point do we stop? Until he and his family are dead?

Given some of the white knighting in this thread, I can't tell if you're joking or not. In case you're not, no. Murder is not a satisfactory outcome. Rubbishing him in a thread on a gaming related internet website is fine, however.

 

[Dennis]

So at what point do we stop? Until he and his family are dead?

...

 

[Apoc87]

This guy is a complete douche and deserves everything that is coming to him.

Its amazing that NeoGAF is white knighting for this guy, 15+ pages after.

 

[SHAZOOM]

That whole "I was bullied as a kid" thing from Gabe's update is just awkward.....I was bullied too, but you wouldn't catch me sounding like someone with a chip on their shoulder.

I think that's what most of the "defenders" (though I don't think folks are defending Paul so much as wanting there to be a differential between justice served and "too much").

Paul had this coming to him and for the most part I think justice is served, but Gabe has a tendency to keep things going even after the fires have died down (DickWolves incident comes to mind, Harlan Ellison too, though its kind of obvious both were being belligerent in that instance).

*gets ready for folks to call me a Paul defender when that's not the point being made*

 

[BobTheFork]

So at what point do we stop? Until he and his family are dead?

Mob usually don't stop until they get bored or there is actually some consequence to the individuals in them.

 

[br0ken_shad0w]

http://twitter.com/#!/TheSchwartz173/status/152083715814731776

This is getting weird again.

I don't see anything weird about a high school DJ who is now head of your PR department.

Delving into the credibility of Eli Schwartz came back a bit suspiciously as his Twitter account has only been in service since May 16th of this year and seems to only have been created solely as a shell account to push The Avenger product. Additionally, at further glance of Eli's Facebook and Google+ accounts neither of which show a picture of Eli and smacking of poor grammatical and syntax uses that would be common to a high school age kid (which his Facebook lists him as attending East Longmeadow High School in Massachusetts), it's also been made apparent in the last day or so that Paul Christoforo also lacks a solid command of written language as well evidenced by his online postings. As far as location data, that can be added in a status update bar and can be easily faked if need be via the Facebook web interface. Furthermore, Schwartz lists his profession as DJ, which raises questions why exactly David Kotkin would allow a high school age DJ to work damage control PR for his product in the wake of Ocean Marketing, especially when having Eli send out PR releases from a gmail account as opposed to a avengercontroller.com account would only weaken his position. Finally, adding insult to injury, even Eli Schwartz's 5 star Amazon review for The Avenger on Nov 29, 2011 smacks of other reviews illustrating Ocean Marketing's signature touch.

 

[faceless007]

It's always funny to me when people throw out "white knight." It's like they think it's an automatic debate winner that saves them from having to formulate an actual argument, just throw out the label and boom, you win. Of course I remember when that term really only applied to guys criticizing misogyny because they secretly want to have sex with the victim. Glad we've moved past that, at least.

It's even funnier to me that people are holding up Gabe's "I never got over my middle-school grudges against bullies" as some sort of virtuous crusade. Guess a lot of people never got over them.

Protip: Not a single person in this thread as far as I can see is "white knighting" or defending Paul specifically. No one. But it's much easier to assume that any sort of nuanced critique of both parties that you don't agree with is just a full-throated defense of something totally indefensible and dismiss it as such. It is actually possible for two sides of an argument to be partially wrong.

 

[Joe Shlabotnik]

So at what point do we stop? Until he and his family are dead?

When everyone gets tired of it, which should be in about three days.

Remember that girl who wrote a Gizmodo article about a bad date with the Magic champion guy? The whole internet blew up, it seemed. Boy that takes me way back to... I don't know, four or five months ago. Ah, nostalgia!

 

[Neuromancer]

You white knights can relax . Paul is a PR whiz and he'll have this mess cleaned up .

Amazing that just a touch of humility could have defused this whole scenario.

I will never get N-Control anything now though. I don't believe that they didn't know this behavior was happening, they were fine with screwing over their customers until it got messy. In essence, they, like Paul, are only sorry they got caught.

Pfffttt (is the sound I made reading this)

 

[Maxim726X]

Given some of the white knighting in this thread, I can't tell if you're joking or not. In case you're not, no. Murder is not a satisfactory outcome. Rubbishing him in a thread on a gaming related internet website is fine, however.

There is no 'white knighting'. I guess people only see things in black and white.

He DESERVES to get fired, deserves to be finished in the industry. Having his e-mails publicly exposed is fair game and absolutely necessary.

The rest of the bullshit that has since come to light isn't necessary.

This guy is a complete douche and deserves everything that is coming to him.

Its amazing that NeoGAF is white knighting for this guy, 15+ pages after.

I've lost count of how many of these I've seen. You know what- You got me. I'm White Knighting Paul.

I see the light.

 

[ElRenoRaven]

Speaking of investigative reporting,

http://www.examiner.com/video-game-industry-in-national/ocean-marketing-gaming-pr-rep-to-avoid-at-all-cost

Update 15 and 16....

David Kotkin and N-Control has some explaining to do.

Hmm. So my suspicions about them weren't unfounded. I knew something seemed fishy. And boosting your own products reviews and tanking others. Yea. Sounding to me like they may be on the same level our buddy Paul is. Funny Schwartz can't spell either.

 

[GotEmRunnin]

At the end of the day I don't have a dog in the fight either way. I do know this. Paul opened this can of worms on his own accord by how he responded to a customer. He further went on to offend Mike whom he didn't even know simply because he was behind a computer screen. The guy should have been more in the know of his business and he definitely shouldn't have bit the monstrous hand of the internetz that was feeding him. At the end of the day Paul's use or should I say his belief of online anonymity came back to bite him in the ass.

 

[Amibguous Cad]

So no private information was posted anywhere, you just don't think that people should have collated the public information they googled up. I don't think that's a reasonable standard at all. Think about the dating test here: if this dude had gone out on a date with someone and they wanted to check his history out before committing to a second, would they have been able to find this info? Nobody knew what exactly they were going to find when they googled the guy in the first place, and expecting people to actively hide these things once they came up is unrealistic.

You are calling on every single person who's participated in this drama in any way to self-edit to an extraordinarily conservative level, and presumably for curators of communities where it's been discussed to shut down and delete discussion (again, of publicly available info found through google searches of someone's public name and email) to prevent the spread of this information. That's completely implausible and not particularly reasonable.

There is nothing implausible or unreasonable about establishing a strict norm of respect for privacy and vigorously enforcing it.

 

[SHAZOOM]

There is no 'white knighting'. I guess people only see things in black and white.

He DESERVES to get fired, deserves to be finished in the industry. Having his e-mails publicly exposed is fair game and absolutely necessary.

The rest of the bullshit that has since come to light isn't necessary.



I've lost count of how many of these I've seen. You know what- You got me. I'm White Knighting Paul.

I see the light.

Honestly man, I don't think ANYONE is going to listen to what Me, You and Technomancer have to say (faceless too, you need a AV man) without thinking "are these guys defending Paul? THEY R NUTZ!"

 

[spirity]

There is no 'white knighting'. I guess people only see things in black and white.

He DESERVES to get fired, deserves to be finished in the industry. Having his e-mails publicly exposed is fair game and absolutely necessary.

The rest of the bullshit that has since come to light isn't necessary.

You know what would have made everything so much easier for him? If he genuinely said sorry. An open letter to PA apologising for the way he behaved. Sure, some people still wouldn't be satisfied with that, but it would bring this whole sorry affair to an end far quicker.

But he didn't do that. He didn't apologise. Because he doesn't feel apologetic. That's the kicker.

 

[charlequin]

Regardless of whether anyone actually did anything with it, what was the purpose of going after his fiancee's contact information and history in the first place?

Where?

Protip: Not a single person in this thread as far as I can see is "white knighting" or defending Paul specifically. No one. But it's much easier to assume that any sort of nuanced critique of both parties that you don't agree with is just a full-throated defense of something totally indefensible and dismiss it as such.

False equivocation in a matter of clear moral imbalance is a full-throated defense of something indefensible. When you look at a situation in which one person has misbehaved and another has acted to counteract that misbehavior in some way, boiling it down to "well, everyone misbehaved" is in fact a technique for reducing culpability of the original bad actor.

On this particular topic, that defense involves pointing to things that individual people have done and drawing a bright line back to Gabe for exposing Paul's malfeasance in the first place, then claiming that these people's actions in response to Gabe's posting make him morally equivalent with Paul's long history of unacceptably poor customer service. That's a fundamentally disingenuous argument that serves no purpose but to shield the original target from blame, and it's fundamentally distinct from the "well I hope the internet randoms don't go too far" argument.

 

[Omegasquash]

You know what would have made everything so much easier for him? If he genuinely said sorry. An open letter to PA apologising for the way he behaved. Sure, some people still wouldn't be satisfied with that, but it would bring this whole sorry affair to an end far quicker.

But he didn't do that. He didn't apologise. Because he doesn't feel apologetic. That's the kicker.

Sometimes though (and I don't mean to play the Devil's Advocate, but here it is anyway) an apology won't be enough. This guy acted like a ROYAL dick to someone from a position of perceived power or authority. If someone treated you like that, you might very well have the ability to accept an apology (fake or no) and walk away. It doesn't mean that you have to, though.

Personally I think that the guy is a P.O.S., and I think that lots of hate towards him and him alone (leave the family out of it people, please) is justified. Reap -> Sow. Even after apologies. Words don't make things right, actions do.

 

[Amibguous Cad]

This is like seeing a confirmed murderer executed by a corrupt regime without due process of law. You can be happy that justice was done and the guy got his while at the same time worrying that there's nothing stopping them from doing the same thing to you for much worse or no reason at all.

The internet lynch mob, of which PA is one of the more distilled examples, have gone after people for less (see: the Dickwolves dustup). That's why I find the whole thing distasteful. Reveling in this kind of collective id vigilante justice only legitimizes it, and legitimizing it just leads to more lynchings- some of which aren't going to be justified.