Joseph Thornley

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  • Joseph Thornley  Mathew, I couldn't disagree more with you. It is mean to subject someone to ridicule. No one deserves that. The longevity of court jesters was directly tied to make their point without causing personal offence, by doing it indirectly and with wit. What's going on here is heavy handed and without finesse.
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Loren Feldman vs. Shel Israel
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  It may be mean, Joe, but it's also funny. And I actually don't think it's really all that mean -- the puppets lighten things up quite a bit. As for the court jester thing, I will agree with you that they were perhaps wittier (or at least so Shakespeare and others would have us believe) but there was a lot of bawdy comedy and so forth involved as well. Whether Shel deserves it or not isn't for me to say.
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    • 1 reply

  

  • Joseph Thornley  "Loren is just having fun with Shel" Mathew, I hope that you never have the experience of someone "having fun" at your expense in this way. Yes, we should all have a sense of humour. But there's a difference between clever and just plain mean. I think the silence about Loren's tactics is driven by people's desire to stay out of his crosshairs. And to me that's the real indication that he has gone way beyond a healthy sense of humour. If you make fun of someone and they aren't returning the "humour" in the same way, a decent person would back off, not up the volume.
  • • 3 months ago
    •   Loren Feldman vs. Shel Israel
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   ryancoleman  Joe: I get the "crosshairs" notion... there's been a few times I've had the back of the mind thought "I'm so glad I don't even appear on Loren's radar" as I've watched some of this stuff unfold. That said, I largely agree with Matt's sentiment - while it comes across as "mean" Loren tends to keep it at a place where he's only calling people on the points where they're being unauthentic (unauthentic?) to what they preach ... but at the same time he delivers it in his usual style of keeping one last toe on the line so he can claim he hasn't stepped over it (the child hood equivalent of "I'm not touching you!!!). Sure Loren puts it over the edge from time to time, but that's Loren. Personally I think he's a good barometer to have around the 'sphere to keep egos in check in a edgy & funny way.
  •   San Diago  I second that, Joseph. I've seen this crap since the very first post and I think that Loren is acting like a chiwawa nipping at heels and defaming his target to get attention. Shel is doing the right thing by staying quiet and not biting back. He's proving to be the real man.
  •   mathewi  Joe, believe me -- I have suffered through more than my share of sustained criticism in the past (although, to be fair, none of mine involved puppets) and most of it was a lot more unfriendly than I think Loren's is. I don't think he is being mean at all, actually. I think it's more like what court jesters used to do -- puncturing inflated egos, etc..
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    • 3 replies

  

  • Joseph Thornley  Mathew, I personally view Twitter as a vehicle for conversation with the people whose ideas and blogs I find interesting. And this is reflected in the fact that I follow about 80% of the people who follow me. This isn't a criticism, just an observation. The fact that you follow only 1 in 10 of the people who follow you suggests that you have a different view of Twitter. Combine that with the fact that you tweet about every one of your blog posts and it raises the question: Do you view it primarily as a promotional vehicle - another way to attract attention and promote traffic to your blog? I'm not suggesting that there is anything wrong with that. But I think that if you look at the follower/following ratio, it's a quick giveaway of whether people see Twitter as conversation or marketing. Just a thought. :-)
  • • 7 months ago
    •   It’s better than good, it’s Twitterific
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   mathewi  A fair point, Joe. To be honest, I would have to say that my view of Twitter -- like my view of blogs -- is that it's somewhere in that grey area between marketing and conversation. Do I want people to know about and read my new blog posts? Sure I do. Do I want to have a conversation with them about those posts? Definitely. Like I said, my view continues to evolve. Thanks for the input.
  • • 1 point
    • 1 reply