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Dvorak Admits To Trolling Mac Users

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the everyone's-favorite-gasbag dept.

jalefkowit writes "Tech pundit John Dvorak has long been known for his inflammatory opinions. Many have suspected that these opinions are just a way to drive up traffic to his column. Now, we have it straight from the horse's mouth: Dave Winer has Dvorak on video describing his methodology for trolling the Mac community to pump up his stats." I have to admit I'm also guilty of posting the occasional inflammatory story, but I find it's usually best to suffix the title with a question mark, and let our ever-knowledgeable readers hash out the issue and decide for themselves.

2 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdotted, see it on YouTube by tdvaughan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Link to the video. The sound was out of sync for me, but he basically comes across as a smug arse.

  2. Transcript of the video by InakaBoyJoe · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's the transcript of the video. Note that the audio is out of sync on the BitTorrent version too.

    ---------
    (Dvorak): ... there's a formula for pissing off Macintosh users and getting a lot of links or attention. And this has been deconstructed, but never accurately. I'm going to give you the deconstruction.

    First, I write something that would be semi-innocuous, with just enough insulting stuff to get a lot of attention from the Macintosh community. So then they would write in -- and by the way, it would always be done in such a way that I had outs -- in other words, I would write in kind of a leisurely way. That would get me one column with a lot of numbers.

    Then I'd get a lot of hate mail, and all kinds of weird Macintosh reaction. And then, I would react to it as though I was flabbergasted that everybody misterpreted me, and that they hated it, and I don't get it, and what's wrong with these people ... which would piss them off even more.

    So I'd get like huge hits ...

    (Interviewer): So what was the point of all this?

    (Dvorak): Now wait a minute. For numbers!

    (Interviewer): Which numbers -- exactly, what numbers are you looking for?

    (Dvorak): I get them. Believe me. Lots of numbers.

    Now, then I let it simmer down for a while, and then whatever position I took originally, I would change the position exactly the opposite, and tell the Macintosh people I was completely wrong, and they were write all along, and the numbers would go through the ceiling!! Haha!