criticism of the TWoP founders

Nublog: Un-’fit:
Faithful NUblog readers will be aware of our erinbrockovitchlike habit of driftnetting through kilotons of publicly-available data to piece together narratives, rather after the manner of a dramaturge, who explains a work to its own author. rather than an undocumented opinion (hmm. you document yr opinion just by stating it. unsupported is the worn adjective but maybe the better one) ...But you’re entitled to our opinion, right? That, at least, is the slogan of Hissyfit, the bitchy discussion site memorably profiled in these very pages. = =

= = Nublog: Attitude queens: A success story: In our second instalment in a series on user-contributed content (read the first), we examine how attitude and starting small can lead to sparkling, lucrative Web content. As long as you have a slush fund backing it up.
We refer to the triumvirate of sites owned and operated by Tara Ariano (“Wing Chun”) and David T. Cole (“Glark”), namely Hissyfit, MightyBigTV, and Fametracker.


I can hardly wait for their flight to be over ¶ 2007/05/30 FAWNY ~ Personal Weblog of Joe Clark, Toronto Tara Ariano, alias Wing Chun, is the much-unloved dominatrix of Television Without Pity and, formerly, other sites like Hissyfit. We’ve never met. But, as supreme ruler of the worst kind of jumped-up high-school gang (always swift to interpret vague posting guidelines in favour of preferred members), and equally adroit with the cutting remark, Ariano and her husband, David T. Cole (“Glark”), epitomized ***the Wrong People’s Internets***. Hissyfit’s maxim “You’re entitled to our opinion” was rather selective in its interpretation of who was included in “our.” There were always opinions that could get you banned from the site, get your post deleted, or elicit a warning (viz “Watch it, joeclark”).
Things were made even worse by the highly public married couple’s Web-development atrocities, which broke up (admittedly overlong) “recaps” of TV episodes into as many frame- and table-based pages as possible – all the better to maximize (i.e., dishonestly inflate eh I dunno) page views.
“We” took these miscreants to task several times on the old NUblog (first; second) and in the old archives. Their career was based on a dichotomy, if not outright hypocrisy: They enjoyed the relative low cost and livability of Toronto while their entire enterprise centred around U.S. “pop culture.”
An epoch of Television Without Pity ended when the two sold the whole thing to Bravo. Not the Canadian one, of course, the “real” one, owned by NBC. You would have to assume the purchase price was in the low seven digits. Finally, the master and paymaster become one.
Ariano and Cole stand at the top of the hitlist of a certain kind of Toronto parasite, a constant griper about the city who nonetheless keeps living here. ... In another welcome case of hypocrisy reduction, it is now confirmed that the sellouts are finally getting the fuck out of here on June 15. And so I invite you to follow the One Less Hater Countdown. ==
== The Two Fewer Haters Countdown
Just how long till Tara Ariano and David T. Cole finally leave Toronto?
Today’s the day! Have a nice life in the ethically and ideologically more appropriate nation you have chosen! wow.

I remember this site, Fawny, from its inclusion in a book about blogging ... remarked here in the beginning days when I was reading about blogs and jumping all around. hmm I think the book was the one edited by Rebecca Blood.
here go: Deconstructing "You've Got Blog" by Joe Clark. Posted by m at 8/03/2005 12:45:00 PM