How to be a Douchebag.
Normally, I reserve names such as these when referring to…
…people who beat children and/or spouses.
…people that think civil, or even human rights are “quaint”
…people that go out of their way to shit on others without reasonable justification.
But tonight, it becomes more than a moral obligation to point this waste of internet space out…
…it becomes an absolute pleasure.
Now you have to know a little tech first. You see, I’ve been administering over 10 domains (not including subs) for a long long time. When I first started blogging and transcribing my journals into my blog, I also set up an aggregation site on a sub-domain of TonyTown so that I could read all my news without going to anyone else, or having to surf like mad to so many sites. In doing this, I didn’t realize the RSS feeds were being indexed by the big search engines, which is in fact a pretty huge screw-up on my part. But I screwed up more. This same sub-domain/site is also where I tested out plugins for WordPress. One of these was the first original TonyTown twitter account, which I have also not used or looked at in ages, but was taking it’s queue from posts on the news feed.
Bottom line…All my RSS feeds for The Onion, BitRebels, CNN, Natalie Tran, Ars Technica, Gizmodo and Scientific American they were being posted as linked articles on the aggregation site on my sub-domain. This reeks of techno-babble, but the bottom line is that the articles were getting regurgitated through my sub-domain. This is very bad etiquette on the net. Well, let me rephrase, it is very bad etiquette to re-post content without some level of permission from the publisher.
This was totally me. I never realized the site was searchable, and didn’t know the stupid twitter feed was attached to it.
The part that makes me want to write about this though, is how I was approached about it. This insane low-life self-anointed waste of internet space starts spamming the absolute hell out of my personal twitter account (non-direct, for all the public to see) with completely unnecessary hashes (tags like #douchebag etc) and foul language. There are children who watch that feed. Not to mention a few news sites, WORK, etc…and this guy didn’t even bother emailing me.
I have to point out something here…this guy, out of the 13000 links aggregated, owned…wait for it… 7 articles. They weren’t even really articles. After reading them, I found them to be more or less absolutely useless amounts of regurgitated music babble about who’s hot and who’s not. Even funnier…he hadn’t posted to BitRebels in months, which was the actual publisher of the content.
You see the pleasure of not being in this for the money is this is 100% opinion. This winner could have easily just messaged me but started off the conversation by calling me a Twat…and THEN telling me to remove his content from my site.
Foul-mouthed Tweet #1 “Hey you TWAT! Remove immediately MY POSTS from your so called blog #XXXXingDouchebag”
Thoughts/Reaction #1 – “Wow, this guy is nuts…I don’t rip others content.”
Foul Mouthed Tweet #2 “@XXXXXXXXXXX Just look at the whole thing, [he] is stealing content from @gizmodo, @theonion, @bitrebels and Scientific American.”
Thoughts/Reaction #2 – “Wow, this nut is angry about something. Wait…those are on my aggregator”
At this time…I am trying to figure out how this guy even knows that feed is there. Remember, I haven’t even looked at it in ages, I didn’t even have the password for it.
Foul-mouthed Tweet #3 Sent to his buddy: “People like this [ME] that steals content from others really piss me off. Sorry for the language…”
Thoughts/Reaction #3 – “Why is he spamming Twitter instead of emailing me? Oh…this guy apologizes to his friend for saying PISSES…but wont bother to contact me properly.”
–Friend in California texts me to let me know the activity is on the radar *AWESOME* (not)–
Foul-mouthed Tweet #4 “That is MY CONTENT you XXXHOLE!”
Thoughts/Reaction #4 – By this time I’d found the problem (i.e. me being a dumbass) and apologized to him for the problem.
Foul-mouthed Tweet #4,5,6,7 – “I don’t say they are mine, they are mine you XXXXing douchebag! Just search for [Insert Foulmouthed Asshat’s Name Here] on your site and DELETE IT!”
–Two more people letting me know there is some guy flaming the hells out of me on twitter–
By this time…honestly…nothing I tried to say I was doing was getting through. I had already moved the aggregation access to another undocumented and unsearchable domain AND fixed the twittering silliness, but this guy was now spamming others and continuing on his little rant.
By then a tiny little minuscule spec of the Twitter community…that is ONE of his followers/friends RETELLS his complaint long after I’d already rectified the situation.
I’ve been using that feed for years without a PEEP from the other sites. Yes, the activity it was performing by allowing itself to be searchable was very bad net-etiquette. Yes, my completely forgetting there was a Twitter feed attached to it…yep, all me – my fault.
But you sir. You’re a Twitter Guru right? So in your vast repertoire of blog-knowledge did it occur to you that I might have just screwed up? Because if I were leeching content deliberately…do you honestly think I would pull content from…BitRebels?! Seriously?! I read your articles, (they’re shit) and it makes me glad I didn’t bother trying to get on with BitRebels when they started…because if you’re half the egotistical asshat in person that you come off as on Twitter, I’d probably create a website dedicated to your vastly unreasonable and offensive attitude with people on the net….which by the way…isn’t copyrighted.
The real funny, is after he’s apparently satisfied his insanely valueless content is no longer available via my news portal…he goes on to start another fight with another guy on Twitter about…of all things…how lame his blog posts and intellect is. The guy…none other than Robert Scoble of http://scobleizer.com. This is about the equivalent of Joe the Plumber telling Steve Jobs how to market the iPhone. Yeah. Winner. You. Are. Not.
Finally going to get some rest on this though. Hope everyone had a great night.
-Tony
Okay, this totally made me laugh. Is that wrong? I started to chuckle with the horse pic and then chuckled right through your post. Does that mean I am a douchebag? What the hell, been called way worse….
Thanks for commenting Brahm, my rants tend to end up entertaining…even to Douchebags.
…but rest assured Brahm, you aren’t one of them.
…well…at least not for commenting 😉
-T
Hi, Tony.
I find this interesting and am more than happy to say publicly that I am one of the people RTing @fjfonseca’s #DoucheBagSaturdayAwardWinner tweet. Here is why:
You say:
“Now you have to know a little tech first. You see, I’ve been administering over 10 domains (not including subs) for a long long time.”
Yes, you admit that you screwed up but, do you know any tech? You’ve administered domains for a long, long time yet have no idea until now that posting other people’s content verbatim, without permission and without any links back to the authors is bad form? Along with that your tech skills don’t include how to add a noindex,nofollow robots tag so the stolen content is indexable by search engines and competing with the original author’s posts?
This is why I wholeheartedly support Fernando Fonseca’s handling of this issue. It is not just bad form it is plagiarism, theft and shows no knowledge of how blogging, blog software and social media mash-ups work.
I’m sensing, because you didn’t have the fortitude to publicly link to any of the said “perpetrators spamming you with foul language” that my comment will not be approved. I hope I’m wrong, but, at least I hope you read this and can at some point gain some insight and knowledge about your complete #fail.
Be well,
Donna Winter / @technobozo
Mr. Tony Hunt,
I really don’t know where to start in replying to what is, without a doubt, one of the most hilarious posts I have read recently.
Apparently to you form is more important than content and that explains why you treated my content, and others, as it was yours showing no respect for intellectual property at all.
I am forced to correct you on some of the incongruencies that your post is mined with:
1. You don’t do a rant without naming the person, that is the whole purpose of a true rant: you are objective, you call the person or the facts out and you explain why you don’t agree in the most verbal and furious way you can.
2. You lie when you say that you only had 7 posts signed by me: you actually had all the posts that I had ever written on Bit Rebels and that is more than 7. If they are shit or not is all together something really subjective but if that is the case, I fail to understand why you were actually re-posting them.
3. I would like to know where have you read or seen that I am a Twitter Guru. If you had done your home work you would know that it is one of the words/concepts that I despise specially when applied to Social Media.
4. You should have thought about the public consequences of stealing content before you did what you did. You see, the fact that you blame the “stupid twitter feed” doesn’t really cut it since the “stupid twitter feed” doesn’t have a brain. You, on the other hand, were the one setting it up and, with your vast experience, you should perfectly be aware of what it did. Right?
5. I can’t understand why you don’t name me on your post. I also can’t understand how are you so prude in what comes to language but you aren’t in what comes to your principles. You see, Mr. Tony Hunt, to be called a douchebag, a twat, an asshole is only the result of your criminal practices.
6. Since you mention copyright I am giving advice for free: It is illegal to take copyrighted content and make it publicly available under a Creative Commons License, since they are two opposite intellectual property systems that don’t go well together.
7. You ask me if it occurred to me that you had screwed up? In reality no. Before I called you out I did a bit of background checking and was confronted with someone that has vast professional experience in what comes to blogs and the internet. So it never occurred to me that such a valuable and knowledgeable person would screw up like this; the only conclusion I could take was that this was happening on purpose.
8. Have you ever heard of something called an RSS Reader? You just have to subscribe to the feeds that are interested in and they end up on your mail box. Automatically. As soon as they get posted. All of this without the hassle and complexity of setting a WordPress site and illegally importing content while saving you the hassle of having to navigate from site to site to get your daily dose of information.
9. You are trying to blame it all on the stupidity of the tools when you say that this was all just an RSS Feed importing to a sub-domain. You see, RSS Feeds don’t include tags, authors, and YouTube videos. So what you were doing was something else, wasn’t it?
10. When you use pictures on a post please give attribution to the author a link back. Since you are already stealing their content you might as well put a link back
In conclusion I am glad that you admit that you are a dumbass which is nothing more than being a douchebag, an asshole and so forth.
No matter how offended you might be by my language what happened last night would never happen if you hadn’t stolen content which, I say it again, is punishable by law, even in Texas.
To finish this, very long comment, I can only tell you something: I hope this whole situation has taught you something and that is that it is wrong to steal content. The consequences might not be worth it.
Warmest Regards,
Fernando “DoucheBag Asshat” Fonseca
@fjfonseca on twitter
Hi Donna,
You’ve brought up some great points.
Actually, every link on that feed referred back to its publisher, not the sub. Which is probably why I wasn’t harassed far earlier (but I can only guess now.) The robots.txt wasn’t set up for that site…ever. It was never a “managed” site, it was only ever used to test out a couple plugins and as a feed aggregation portal (as I was pretty clear about above). It wasn’t ever used as a blog, and definitely never intended as a scrape site. You don’t have to believe it, but I am pretty damn embarrassed about it. Hell I actually think it may have been over a year since accessing the admin side of the site, which is in fact totally my problem.
…and it’s been dealt with. Within 12 hours I might add…which is far better than you’d get if I was really trying to rip content.
That said, my problem with him is his candor, not intent. No one with an ounce of professionalism approaches a problem like that starting off with the word “Twat” and immediately follows it with “Douchebag”…how exactly do you expect me to react?
I’ve already admitted it was a huge screw up on my part, and that’s why the content is wholly unavailable now. I’ve even posted about it. 😉
If you want to sensationalize it and play this out like some made for tv net-tragedy, by all means knock yourself out. I have no idea what exactly you guys are expecting to happen now. But from the candor of today’s posts, “teaching me a lesson” actually sounds like a threat. Probably not the best idea to resolve things in any manor congenial.
To be honest…all you guys are doing is bringing readers to my site. Regarding the foul language on Twitter, if you continue to tell everyone I am a content thief, I’ll of course have to continue laughing at you guys because you’re obviously too bone-headed to realize I’ve already done everything I could to rectify the screw up (including the post admitting the screw up). At this point it stops being a what you are claiming to be copyright infringement and starts becoming libel against me…actually, thats pretty much what it was from the start thanks to the continued unnecessary language, and now bolstered by today’s posts from the looks of it.
Keep patting yourself on the back for doing what you feel necessary, but nothing more can be done. As far as Fernando’s reckless candor, well, this is my little patch of the net and here, it is my not so humble opinion he needs to drop the keyboard courage and learn some tact.
Again, thanks for commenting.
-Tony
Dear Tony,
Just wanted to say that I know Fernando for quite some time now and all I can tell you is that when it comes to say what needs to be said, he says it. So I guess you deserved it, as you point out 13000 links were stolen from the original sources and you don’t give the authors credit? We can make “mistakes” and apologize for them, but they are still mistakes, and done for a long time (which 13000 links suggest) seems to me a bit more than a “mistake”
Best regards,
Leonardo Rosado
Hafa Adai Leonardo & Fernando,
Thanks for responding.
Unfortunately, I had to nuke two comments on this thread. I really hate removing comments but I draw the line at talking smack about my family, kids, etc.
I’ve already apologized. I’ve already removed any vestiges of the portal.
Leonardo, I appreciate what you’ve said, and that’s why you guys are getting responses instead of blacklist entries. I understand the point of view man, but to be honest…all it would have taken is note saying that CC’ed content is in the site. But thats not what happened. And now there’s all this.
Fernando,
I am not going to remove your comment. I was fully expecting it, actually. What I wasn’t expecting was you trying to turn this into a flame war. I have neither the time nor the inclination to play your blame game. I’ve already owned up as far as I’m willing. My problem with you was your approach. I can see that’s probably not going to change, so that’s it, I am done.
-Tony
I am an accountant. I’ve been in my chosen career for better than 30 years now. I am probably one of the best accountants I know, (in my humble opinion)
BUT ON OCCASION, EVEN I WILL MAKE A SERIOUS ERROR. AND SOMEONE ELSE WILL POINT IT OUT!
So I would really like to meet Fernando, who is (or knows someone who is) perfect in all that he does! He has never made a mistake through error or omission? This is definitely someone I want to introduce myself to and get to know. I want to be his best friend and his campaign manager when he runs for public office. I don’t know how old he is, so if he needs to complete his education for a law degree, I will help him raise the funds. Because, God Knows, we need some perfect, no-holds barred, non-mistake making people running this country!
As for you, my flawed and human son, every day you make me more and more proud. I wonder if the asshat’s mom, (may the Lord bless her with patience,) feels the same about him?
FFS get a fkn grip, ‘intellectual property’ my fkn ass!!!! SPAKKAAA go on use it say SPAKKAAA, I really don’t care it is NOT intellectual property, its a word for dipshits like you who whinge like sissy girls ower nowt, copy and post my comments anywhere you like, what Tony did was accidental, so FU TWAT!!
So, this is what I’m getting from this whole fiasco.
If someone is not an expert at any one skill, and they make a mistake, I get to treat them with ill-manners and a total lack of respect and consideration, instead of just addressing the issue politely. After all, that could have been a “teachable moment” as they say.
If this man has children, and this is how he reacts to mistakes, I suspect they will spend the rest of their lives in therapy. I know several people who have grown up with parents who expect them to be perfect at everything. Almost every single one of them has, or continues to suffer from alcoholism, anxiety, or eating disorders.
It’s really a pity when someone can’t express understanding for anyone but themselves. However, I will continue to live my life as I did before. In other words, without any knowledge of the posts this man creates. Because *gasp* the world would still exist even if he did not. Though the stratosphere might be slightly closer if his ego wasn’t taking up so much space.
I just couldn’t resist the temptation to contribute my 2 cents.
Tony,
Today is my first day on your website (got here from the links on “Suffusion” WP theme). I read this post with interest and then read the comments.
First, I think your response was appropriate given that you claim that it was an error. Judging from your public response, your detailed explanation, and the verifiable corrections you have made I don’t see why any reasonable person would not believe that it was a mistake.
The bible says, “A soft answer turns away anger”. Give your soft answer and move on.
As someone who has gotten dozens of articles ripped off from me online without attribution, I understand the frustration of finding your content where it doesn’t belong. However, in 90% of the cases, those websites and blogs do not have identifiable people who can be easily contacted.
In the few cases where someone is identifiable, a direct message is usually all that is required to rectify the situation. Human beings will always handle things in their own way for their own reason, and who can know why?
I probably wouldn’t have gone the “D-Bag” route like you’ve done here, but you also did not name names so that’s probably okay. Still, you’ve done what you had to do.