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I’m one of those bloggers who if I don’t like someone, I just ignore them. That’s why I rarely talk about Scoble and I rarely quote Scoble. I don’t talk about what he said, or what he’s doing, or his book. I just ignore him. There’s plenty of stuff going on in blogging that I don’t have to share my attention with him.

However I’m breaking my own rule and call him out on his bullshit. In an entry talking about authoritativeness of corporate bloggers, Scoble invites people to “fact check his ass”:

If I interview, say, the head of the Internet Explorer team or Bill Gates or someone else, you can be pretty sure that’s an authoritative piece of content that reflects the company’s opinion pretty well. But most of the other writings I do? I’m not vetted. I don’t check with others before I write my opinions. So, you should “fact check my a**” as they say around the blogosphere. On the other hand, I am on the record and you can quote me in press and blogs and other stuff (and I often do). If I say something about Microsoft I work very hard to make sure it’s accurate (and if it isn’t, you see that within minutes as my readers jump on me in my comments which are open and unmoderated).

He’s right about comments being open and unmoderated. I actually like this about Scoble. No filtration there. However, this whole thing about inviting people to fact check him – as if he was going to welcome such a thing and not react – well historically this is a crock.

Actually, I’m really tired of Scoble whining about how everyone hates him and that the blogosphere is turning on him and who can create the worst anti-Scoble blog entry. Let’s look at the simmering negatvitiy this past week alone:

The venom is flowing. I figure there’s no way to control it, so might as well encourage it. Who can write the best anti-Scoble flame? What’s the nastiest thing you can say to me? Let’s get it all out on the table so you can get all your venom out of your system and we can go on with life together.

Here, let’s practice: Scoble, you are the evilest, fattest, rudest, stupidest, most egotistical, corporate shill that I’ve ever seen. Even poo is better than you.

Rick Segal: Robert Scoble should be fired.

Of course he has an ulterior motive.

Hey, to his credit, Scoble acknowledged his snarkiness, but too bad all of this wasn’t isolated to a single week where a bad week could truly be the excuse.

Hey, I had a bad weekend, OK? I answer 10s of thousand of comments, most of the time I’m a nice guy with a thick skin and take all the crap that’s thrown my way. Last week I had enough. I bit back. I made mistakes. I was wrong.

I was human.

But, Nicholas Carr used my few bad responses against all corporate bloggers. I guess he wants a PR machine to blog. A committee. A group of editors. People who will ensure that nothing wrong, or bad, or insane will ever get onto blogs.

Hey, I’m sorry for having a bad week. I’ve been getting a good dose of my own medicine this morning (read my “better jail than mail” post to see just how bad my words were taken across the blogosphere) but I guess Nicholas would rather not have humans interacting with customers.

Bottom line to all this linkage is really simple: Robert, if you’re going to open yourself up for criticism, be sure you can take it. Ok?

Addendum: I’m kind of snarky myself right now as I am in day 3 of a cold turkey cigarette detox…

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Written by Aaron Brazell on March 30, 2006

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