Comments on: WKRN blogger quits, cites antagonism from community

By: Nikolaos

Nikolaos — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:33:13 +0000

Cool!

By: Allen

Allen — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 10:35:32 +0000

This is from her site, posted May 24th.

“I miss flying under the radar. It was therapeutic for me to write about my life, my troubles, my mishaps here. I don’t feel like I can do that anymore. I mean, in reality, I shouldn’t be writing this.

Obviously, I’m burned out. Oh, and I feel like a total asshole complaining about the blog job, just so you know”

Looks to me like the job of blogging was too much for her.

By: Chris Weaver

Chris Weaver — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 04:45:47 +0000

It’s too bad that Brittney, of her own admission, couldn’t thicken up her skin to be able to let the bad stuff just roll off.

The good news is she has the talent to jump into a situation somewhere else that will probably give her a bit more of a shield from the public scrutiny.

By: Steve Safran

Steve Safran — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 01:47:45 +0000

I majored in wiseass.

By: tdc

tdc — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 01:44:03 +0000

did you take a night class?

By: Steve Safran

Steve Safran — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 01:40:23 +0000

Zimzo:

It’s hard to slander an anonymous flamer, since slander involves the reckless harming of a person’s good name. Slander also requires saying the statement, so accuse me of libel instead, which is the print version.

So in Brittney Flamers v Safran (2007), I’m going to go with the “Fair Comment” defense, which means a reasonable person would have found/said/written the same thing I did.

I stand by my characterization of people who call Brittney “fucking stupid,” “fucking retarded,” a “Nazi” or “KKK” member, or who write “Fuck a whole bunch of Brittney” as “a bunch of jerks.”

Because the burden of proof in a libel case is on the defendant, they are going to have a hell of a time convincing the jury a reasonable person would not conclude they were reading statements from a bunch of jerks.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 01:37:00 +0000

Zimzo, you copy and paste that everywhere huh?

By: Michael Rosenblum

Michael Rosenblum — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 23:11:26 +0000

Ah Jeez….
OK. Reading the ‘hateful comments’… to me, in all honesty, they look like love notes. You should see what I get.
That she generated high feelings is a positive. That people felt strongly enough to take her on, to insult her, is to my mind a mark of achievement. I think it is tragic that she is walking away from this now. Free presses are messy, the cutting edge can cut both ways and lots of other trite phrases later, the web should engender high passion. Just edit the crap out of it and screw em if they don’t like it. Let em start their own website.

By: zimzo

zimzo — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:59:15 +0000

I guess you were afraid to give any context to what happened because you knew it would make Brittney look bad. Here is what happened: Of all the hundreds of tributes to Steve Gilliard that appeared on the Internet after he died this week, she chose a vile, hateful and racist post to quote extensively and link to. When a number of people objected to this disgusting attack on someone who had just died and whose family was grieving, Brittney did not apologize or disassociate herself in any way. Then she wrote a snarky post making herself out to be some sort of victim, again without apologizing to this man’s family and friends. If it was your son or brother or friend who had been attacked like this I am sure you would be outraged as well. A simple apology or a statement that she did not agree with the sentiments in the post she linked to would have ended the controversy immediately. Instead, she quit and tried to portray herself as a victim, a martyr. The only honest thing she says in this post is that she contributed to hatred in the blogosphere and for her to cry about a situation that she is completely responsible for creating and could have stopped at any time is ridiculous. For you to then slander Steve’s friends and admirers as a “bunch of jerks” when their outrage was completely justifiable makes you almost as bad as she is.

By: curt

curt — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 22:43:20 +0000

Rob - simple answer. Most people suck.

By: Dave Zatz

Dave Zatz — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 21:40:24 +0000

It raises the question (again): Should all blogs allow comments? And the followup… Is a blog without comments (or trackbacks) really a blog? It also reinforces the idea of someone other than the author should moderate comments.

By: Rob

Rob — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:32:18 +0000

Wow. That blows. All the higher-ups came back from NAB and all they raved to me about was WKRN.com and Brittney’s blog and how cool it was. But if she was forced to leave those posts “as is” … I can see how she got burned.

There’s a frustrating parallel between what happened to her and the uninformed masses who turned on Terry Heaton over the last 72 hours of CameraGate. They don’t know - and don’t care - what the person on the other side of the computer’s motivations or intentions really are but feel justified to make some pretty outrageous claims without knowing all the facts of the matter or taking time to rationally discuss their concerns.

Why is it that more people use their keyboards to complain, gripe, threaten to boycott channels and advertisers and make vulgar suggestions that are anatomically impossible than the people who actually think before they post?

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:17:05 +0000

As ‘hateful comments” on the internet go, I thought the ones shown in the blog entry were relatively tame.

Still, if she’s saying she was required to leave posts which were primarily personal insults and those containing profanity, then there’s a problem with the system under which she worked.

By: brittney

brittney — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:08:34 +0000

Yes, hire me!

By: brittney

brittney — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 20:07:32 +0000

I was discouraged from deleting or altering comments in any way.