That's how my first post about this went, but it just not how I feel. Honestly, this latest stunt from TWL has gotten me seriously frustrated. So frustrated that I've had this post saved whist I went to the gym.
Some history
For blog newcomers, here's some history. Back in February I wrote a post which included a sentence suggesting PR had been eroded by a recent influx of femininity. It was a stupid, poorly-worded, ill-thought, sentence in which I came off as sexist. TWL rightly called me out on it, and I learnt a valuable lesson blogging.People make mistakes, and learn from them. I can live with that.
Then it went too far
After attacking me in another two posts, it went too far. TWL ran a photo competition about me. Readers were invited to send in their funny captions (two of which bizarrely went to my e-mail address, they joined three previous items of hate mail based upon TWL's attacks). The winner won with "I can see right up her skirt".Online bullying against young PR professionals
Now, TWL has rather maliciously attacked young PR professionals on more than one occasion. Often just for being inexperienced, is that a problem?My problem is that the more I look at it, it's just starting to strike me as anonymous online bullying. Don't get me wrong, TWL does often put out some great insightful posts, and is one of the few that calls people up on their mistakes - which is great. But that element of encouraging your readers to attack a young PR professional just strikes me of online bullying.
Even since this i've exchanged an e-mail or two with TWL, and things have seemed relatively ok.
Am I the Biggest Tech PR Fuck-up?
So today I learn from Alex that i've been nominated for 'biggest PR fuck up' at the Flackenhack awards, these are the awards TWL and Fullrun have set up for fun to cover the great moments of the UK Tech PR/Media industry. I take this nomination as a malicious, rather than comical, attack for 3 reasons.1) My entry is the longest of all 24 nominees.
2) This nomination is based upon the sentence I wrote in February? Is this 'fuck-up' in the top 3 against the daily writings on TWL's blog?
3) My personal favourite. The one that gives an indication how personal some of these attacks from TWL's tech PR blog and tech PR awards have been.
I've never worked in Tech PR (and if this is the sort of people that most industry types encourage and leaders like Edelman are happy to endorse, I never will do).
10 comments:
Morning Richard.
I'm not going to argue whether this is online bullying or not - the blogosphere will decide no doubt.
Thing is, you original post was a bit of a fuck up (I think you've accepted that) and our original post simply highlighted it.
With regard to the awards, we've been democratic. People have sent in nominations - those that have been nominated most have been shortlisted, these shortlists have been judged.
The judges will have taken into consideration the things you point out (e.g. was your fuck up a bigger tech PR one than, say, Google's European press day) and made a decision.
Of course, as a nominee, you don't need to buy a ticket...we'll let you in for free.
Personally, Richard, I don't think you need to take it with good humour.
I think you have every right to be hurt, offended and angry at what is a piss poor, pathetic piece of bullying.
I know TWL thinks I lack a sense of humour on this issue, but I think you're absolutely right. TWL was right to call you out on your original post, but the 3 subsequent posts and now this? Bang out of order.
Mark, old chap, you're wrong about the bullying thing. It's perfectly OK for the victim in any bullying scenario to be the one that says whether or not it feels like bullying. For you to say the blogosphere will be the one that decides is a bit of a cop out, frankly.
If one of your kids comes home from school complaining that they're being bullied you accept that's how they feel and you deal with it accordingly, right? You don't say it's for some nebulous non-group to decide if it really is bullying or not.
I'm not sure if I'd call it bullying, but then I'm not the one of the receiving end of the emails that Richard has been getting, which appear to have been prompted by some of your posts. He clearly feels you're on his case and just shrugging your shoulders is a bit shit really.
Hiding behind the nominations thing is a bit weak, too. Given that Richard isn't in tech PR his fuck up (if we accept that's what it was) had nothing to do with tech PR. By not excluding it from the Flackenhacks on the grounds that it isn't tech PR related you're just playing to the crowd.
And Richard... learn to ignore it. Walk away, stop getting sucked into it.
Sean Fleming
Clarity PR
Fuck it Richard, you're right. You shouldn't have been singled out. You haven't won't anyway, so I've shortened the shortlist.
I thought I better add a comment on this, since Fullrun is 50% of The Flackenhacks and the shortlist was a joint effort between ourselves and TWL.
Just so it's really obvious: Richard, we messed up and we know it. The arguments against including you on the shortlist are bleedin' obvious.
Why did it happen? With The Flackenhacks, we're trying to do something different. One question: where should satire stop?
Working 16 hour days to get an event like this off the ground, it's easier than it might appear to get the answer to this question wrong. I hope that doesn't sound like standard-issue evasion. It's not meant to be.
Hell, I'm 42 and the list of my basic errors this past fortnight would take a while to download in PDF format. And you really wouldn't want to know what I need to apologise for from 20 years ago.
So here we go without reservations or hedging: Richard, we 100% did the wrong thing. We're sorry. And we apologise.
Peter Kirwan
Obviously Peter's comment goes for us too big fella.
We're sorry...no heartache or distress meant, honestly.
I bet you haven't been offered a share of any proceeds from the flacknhacks event by way of an apology? Estimate how much this could cost you in lost earnings over the course of your future career and stick in a legal claim for costs for defamation. The original post has been modified but if you search on your name its not hard to turn up a cached version. The fact that both parties, Peter Kirwin of The Full Run and Mark Pinsett aka The World's Leading (he outed himself in his first comment), have admitted their error in writing on your blog means that you'll have no problem in proving your case. Lawyers will be queuing up to take this case on, on a no win no fee basis.
These anonymous comments seem to be catching on.
I've got an apology, and my name was removed from the categories, that's all I wanted. I don't want to add to some rather trivial lawsuits. But I can't say it didn't cross my mind - or some people e-mailed me recommending it!
If ever I was going to sue anyone, it would've been when a collosal metal pole landed on my head at an event in Sheperd's Bush. Missed opportunity really...
See now, had you had a bit more PR experience you would have blamed the metal pole incident for your original post! :-)
You made a mistake, you got unfairly crucified and now you have had an apology. Time for everyone to move on..
Adrian Attikinson use to be a Bed Wetter and use to steal your clothes at Boarders who went to a Special Needs School.
Chris Jolly who is a Teacher at that Special Needs School is on Adrian's side.
He! He!
Once Mr Jolly smashed a window in at School whilst playing Cricket and blames you for it.
Now that's what I call bullies.
Bullies like each other.
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