My faithful reader might be wondering why I stopped updating for the past month. Simple answer: I decided to take a vacation from this blog for a month, starting about 2 weeks before I made the decision. I had begun to run low on vitriol and needed to spend some time drilling some from the nearby gulf. The comics I have in my queue were either too young to work with, had spontaneously stopped updating, or were otherwise outside my capacity to review. So I decided to relax for a while and see if a month would give these guys enough time to mature into viable targets. Unfortunately, something far more inane occurred. Ben Gordon finally decided to leap from his bell tower of insanity to the the warm blue waters of the Crazy Sea. If I might be serious for one week, I'd like to point out how utterly ridiculous Gordon has become.
Gordon's magnificent swan dive into madness began almost six month ago, when he decided to take issue with a business model presented in How to Make Webcomics by those Halfpixel guys, namely an assertion that a firmly established webcomic might expect 5-10% of its readers to purchase any items from its online store. Gordon seems to think that this means that buyers will only purchase a single item whose profit is $5, failing to account for repeat customers. Gordon also seems to take a flawed mathematical approach, using monthly traffic numbers to approximate annual income. The use of "Traffic" as a term is also incredibly vague. Is he talking hits, unique visitors, or what? I wouldn't consider every unique visitor to qualify as a "reader" for the purposes of Halfpixel's sell-through rate. Gordon also seems to claim that several of his "case studies" give conflicting data but fails to deliver enough data regarding his case studies. While he seems to want them to remain anonymous, he is trying to imply that the expected income from the Halfpixel model doesn't match up with their actual incomes, but this figure is never given. Information like the age of the comic he's studying, selection in the comic's online store, or anything which would lead anyone to follow his conclusion from the data he's given. In summary, Gordon's rebuttal to the model presented in How to Make Webcomics lacks sufficient evidence to convince anyone but the most gullible.
This led to an intense mistrust of anything Halfpixel did, such as purchasing the webcomics.com domain and tries to find anything remotely suspicious about Halfpixel that he can muster up. Unfortunately, there's not a lot out there so he has to make a lot of it up.
At the same time, Gordon began developing a grievance against Dumbrella, namely for their sponsorship of webcomics blog Fleen. Now I don't know about you, but if McDonald's is producing a blog, I'd expect it to focus on Big Macs and McRibs, not the overall state of the fast food industry as a whole. They have access to information and sources that normal people don't have. But Gordon would have you believe that it would be best for all blogs to cover the same industry with the exact same scope, i.e. all webcomics blogs should cover the entire breadth of the webcomics realm evenly and fairly. Of course, since Gordon fancies himself a real life journalist, this is nothing more than a Journalistic wet dream he has. Wanting amateur webcomics bloggers to be held to some journalistic ideal seen only in films and comic strips. Whether Gordon is justified or not in disliking Fleen, this began an unhealthy obsession with Dumbrella, to supplant his already obsessive dislike of Halfpixel.
Gordon's desires soon turned to uncovering some kind of major corruption scandal in the world of webcomics. He began by developing some kind of "Corruption Metric" for webcomics, but of course he only states what he is measuring, not HOW he is measuring it. But until he found a big conspiracy, there was nothing to test his self-created metric against. Gordon was so intent on finding a big conspiracy that he managed to convince himself that one existed.
Until this past month, his obsessions were fairly harmless. But beginning in February, Gordon moved from harmless stalking to destructive libel. Inspired, perhaps, by the emerging popularity of Twitter among webcartoonists, Gordon began his quixotic crusade by attacking the advice given by Scott Kurtz in How to Make Webcomics, "Fake it 'til you make it," as inciting a plethora of webcomickers to fake their popularity until they actually become popular. In actuality, this is common advice for nervous people, telling them to act like they're highly skilled until they gain their confidence and self-worth. Gordon seems to have forgotten that he has manufactured this intention by Kurtz, and has taken further steps to sabotage his career. This blog post by Bengo was the first shot in a war against scientific integrity.
The next day, he posted a lengthy assault against a small collection of his enemies, accusing them of being a Twitter "faking gang," or a gang of people who created fake Twitter followers for each other. His premise is that a large quantity or Twitter followers is a significant status symbol among webcartoonists, and by inflating this number by dishonest means, one can attract gullible idiots who just want to read whatever's popular. He also tries to connect Twitter cheating to other statistical cheating, but applies circular logic later to convict his opponents to both. They are guilty of Twitter cheating because it's known that they cheat on their other stats, and they are guilty of cheating on their other stats because they are known Twitter cheaters.
His only stated method for identifying fake Twitter accounts is that they have a limited number of people they follow, with few posts of their own. Gordon has made claims that there are more conclusive techniques to identify fakes, but has yet to divulge them: "Various techniques allow us to identify fakes; too many to list today." At this point Gordon attempts to prove the fakers by showing their visitor numbers. These attacks are levelled largely at Scott Kurtz, but Meredith Gran of Octopus Pie also suffers a grand assault. Gordon's main argument is that OP went through large jumps in readership twice over the last year, therefore it must be doing something shady to generate those readership increases. The truth of the matter is simply that Octopus Pie was barely a year old, and at an age where large jumps in popularity are both drastic and common. Consequently, the graphs provided for PvP show nothing more than a single month of poor performance in November, followed by a large increase in December of 2008. The most likely reason is a glitch in the data provided (by a third party, no less), as well as a month where people have a lot of free time. However, presented by Gordon, this is a suspicious increase in traffic by the mastermind of a vast conspiracy.
After this less than damning evidence against Gran and Kurtz is presented, Gordon begins the most troubling part of his "report." He begins listing names of people he believes are fake Twitter accounts, with nothing more than the names of the people he thinks created them. Failure to grasp the behavior of Twitter in the hands of webcomics fans will be Gordon's undoing; these people are merely fans who wanted to follow their favorite creators. They signed up for Twitter just to follow these people, because otherwise they'd have no reason to have a Twitter account. People really are capable of realizing that their lives aren't interesting enough for other people to read about, and therefore feel no need to use this service for themselves. This behavior, continued in later blog posts by Gordon, is reminiscent of Senator Joe McCarthy naming suspected Communists, with no evidence whatsoever.
In the comments of this post, Gordon dismisses alternative sources of data as unreliable (for no discernable reason, no less) and asserts that his accusations of Twitter faking are, indeed, factual. Gordon fails to realize that in order for something to be factual, evidence is first required to verify. His speculation on Twitter cheating is not fact simply because he says it is, and using these false facts as evidence against these cartoonists for faking their other statistics is a terrible logical fallacy.
Several of Gordon's blog posts in February take snipes at his accused Twitter Fakers, turned an innocent party into some kind of exclusive nightclub circle jerk, and otherwise masturbated his own journalistic ego into a Grand Mal seizure of self-congratulation, before attempting to seriously sabatoge Scott Kurtz's career. Kurtz had been asked to host the Harvey awards this year at Baltimore Comic-con, because of a positive response to his presentation in previous years. Due to a manufactured grudge against Kurtz, after imagining a conspiricy, Gordon decided that Kurtz wasn't "good enough" to host these awards, and has started a letter writing campaign to have Kurtz uninvited. This is, of course, a ridiculous course of action to take when your only motivation is something you yourself have manufactured.
Gordon's most recent post on the subject gives more detail to his proposed motivation behind Twitter faking. In essence, the Webcomics Industry is largely run on the character of its creators. By faking popularity, Gordon asserts that popularity can be generated. Communities spring up around popular comics, and these communities will generate traffic in return. But it's a double-edged sword. Levelling audacious claims against webcartoonists with absolutely no evidence to support them, even things as seemingly innocuous as forging Twitter followers, can damage someone's reputation to the point where they begin to lose readers because of it. And that, my friends, is known as libel. Gordon, if he has no actual evidence to support his claims of Twitter forging other than wild speculation and circumstantial evidence, has committed libel, and should begin apologizing immediately.
Ultimately, Gordon is just a fringe blogger who desperately wants to be an investigative journalist with a lot of importance in the field of webcomics. Unfortunately, he has yet to realize that the way to get there is not by publishing audacious claims, inciting career sabotage, and committing grand acts of libel, but by dedicating himself to writing an honest, if boring, blog. Cover the dull stories, and use them to improve your writing skills, Bengo, and when something big actually does come along, then you can use those skills to really make it big. This route is self-destructive and dangerous, and part of me hopes you make the right choice.
PS: Joe McCarthy is a terrible role model
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Bengo's Choice: Investigative Journalism or Libel?
Labels:
Ben Gordon,
Blogs,
desperation,
libel,
name recognition,
politics,
sabotage,
Twitter,
webcomics
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Hey Guy,
ReplyDeleteYou've got a lot of errors in this piece. Let's address a few:
paragraph 2 - "Gordon seems to think" -- Read the article. It's a completely flexible model that allows you to put in whatever numbers you want to form your own conclusions. My point is that using HalfPixel claims, the numbers are far different from what people in the real world experience. It can't be proven wrong, unless you can gather more real world data than me, and, to soothe skeptics, give the sources.
Th exaggerated figures in the HalfPixel book did not "lead to an intense mistrust of anything HalfPixel did." Rather, it made me aware that they are worth watching, and further scrutiny reveals a variety of honesty problems, discussed elsewhere, as well as professionalism issues that don't interest you, so I'll skip them.
I do not "make anything up," as you assert. I encourage you to docment an example if you are confident in yourself.
Your misunderstanding of the Fleen issue is profound. The blog belongs to Dumbrella, it shills for Dumbrella, and that fact has been allowed to slide into obscurity for years, making most people assume it is editorially neutral, when it is not. This is a serious betrayal of journalistic ethics -- exactly the sort of injustice you'd be upset about if you had the talent to uncover an original news story of merit. Writing faulty reviews of me, or even good ones, won't turn you into me, it just makes you look easily ruffled and not well-grounded.
Be careful what you accuse me of manufacturing, because you obviously are unfamiliar with a lot of material I have published and a lot I have not. A serious journalist would be more careful. Oh, and those wet dreams? I have a university degree in journalism, have worked for various publications and have written several books. You've done what, now?
I am reporting. You don't have to read it. Your assumption that I have enemies is hysterical writing. I'm sure I have some people who hate me because I've shone light on their behavior, but that's their issue, not mine.
You're over your head again on the fake Twitter issue, and sound unlikely to be worth careful tutoring. Let's just ask ourselves this: If fake Twitter accounts are not an issue, why does Twitter consider them a "priority issue?" Did you even *try* to talk to Twitter before you jumped in? You make the same error some of the Dumbrella people did: because Twitter is frivolous, the issue must be frivolous. It's not. It says a lot about professional honesty and standards.
Next correction: I don't have a manufactured grudge against Scott Kurtz. I have a real grudge. I did him a favor and he responded by being an absolute prick to my wife and I. That's the grudge, and the readership knows it. Everything else is reporting, where you can disagree with the facts or my interpretation of the facts, generally by disproving facts, providing superior facts or making a stronger logical argument. You'll have more credibility if you do this calmly, with research, instead of insults and opinions.
This business of saying I have "absolutely no evidence" must be you after a few pints, because without evidence, there would be no article, would there? I write some editorials, but I am primarily similar to an investigative reporter. You are pretending away whatever is inconvenient to you, you clearly have no editor to check you on overstatements and your toss-and-turn-all-night hatred of the fact that you can't keep up is eating you alive. You other pieces underperform you talent. Something is making you undermine yourself. You haven't even picked up on some of the stronger arguments that could be used (probably without success) against some of my points, and offer retreads of thoughts by commentators.
The patronizing bit at the end shows you at your most smug. Having gotten some catharsis for your rage from writing the piece, you light your pipe, lean back and tell the world how frivolous I am from a vantage point of an erratic rant blog with little audience. If I am frivolous, why waste your time?
My least informed critics like to accuse me of seeing a conspiracy. To be a conspiracy, actions must be hidden. Seeing how often this comes up from the weakest voices, I can only assume you are tapped for inspiration.
Look, it's clear you'd like to be the next John Solomon -- I recall when you said he stole your idea. With someone like me around, John Solomon -- and you -- are not credible. It's Dionysian to Appolonian. Rants can be fun to write and to read, but surely you can do better. You at least have writing talent.
Do you see how your entire posture paints you as a hypocrite? You want to demolish webcomics, but someone has cut you off by looking at them critically and scientifically. You could do that, or you could write attack articles.
The John Solomon rant/swear/insult/mock model had no logical foundation, and is unsustainable. No one I've seen is as bad as you need them to be for this sort of piece to be effective -- not even you, and you've got troubles.
It's clear, you are writing this impulsively, as a sort of energy discharge. I am reminded of several bipolar people I have known. I generally don't interrupt an "enemy" when they are making a mistake, but I feel a certain amount of compassion for you, given the emotional turbulence you display, and I think getting screened for that type of illness could change your life, pull you out of the fringe and let you develop your talent. Better yet, you don't suffer from anything, but I've seen the destruction of people who went untreated, and so has my wife. I am greatly reminded of those people prior to treatment.
Well, I appreciate your efforts to keep me on my toes. I hope my comments didn't seem too harsh, but you are not an idiot and ought to be doing something more meaningful -- even a sober and well-researched critique of my work, perhaps even one where you checked your assertions with myself and others before committing to them.
Best,
Bengo
(My name is not anonymous, but I prefer my pen name.)
FloatingLightbulb.Blogspot.com
You're not going to bluff your way out of this one. Simply saying that you've given evidence doesn't make it true, and the truth is the only "evidence" you have given is circumstantial at best. You need to provide definite proof before you go around wrecking people's names.
ReplyDeleteIt does amuse me that you seem to think I have some sort of mental disorder, and you throw out the few terms you possibly heard on an episode of Law & Order, considering your tendency towards apophenia is rather strong.
I also found it cute that you said you "worked for" various publications and "written" a book, careful not to say that you've actually been published. The dream lives on, eh?
When you say that the Halfpixel article you wrote didn't lead to mistrust, it just caused you to not trust them, I really have to hold my head and sigh. And admitting to holding a grudge against Kurtz doesn't really present you as a neutral voice regarding him or his colleagues.
And when you ask me to prove that you've made things up, you're forgetting that it's logically impossible to prove a negative. The burden falls on YOU to prove that the things you are saying are true.
OH, and I have no desire to "turn into you" because I rather enjoy reality and would prefer to continue living here.
Good article. :)
ReplyDeleteI've made a post about it athttp://tiltingatlightbulbs.blogspot.com/2009/11/i-have-no-idea-how-i-havent-seen-this.html
Feel free to correct any mistakes I may have made.