Paul O'Flaherty

People like Peoria Pundit Remind Me Why The Internet Lacks Integrity

I admit that I get wound up a little from time to time and need to vent but not so often as when a spineless, whiney twat like Billy Dennis, the so called Peoria Pundit makes a public swing at me on Twitter and then takes it down later on.

As readers of this site well know, me having a go at people is far from unheard of. I had a go at Scoble and a bunch of other people over the weekend for not upgrading their WordPress installs when security releases were made available and then complaining when they got hacked.

Mr. Peoria Pundit then decided to visit this blog (while he was supposed to be busy restoring services to the users of his downed WPMU site) and had a go at me for giving out to people for acting like idiots while blaming the universe and it’s mother for their failure to be proactive about security.

Now, I have no problem with Billy Dennis or anybody else coming to this blog and telling me off. I encourage it. It’s why I have a comments section. I encourage public discussion, but what I can’t stand is cowardice and cowardly is the only way I can describe someone who puts up a tweet making fun of someone one and the removes it later on. They don’t have the balls to let what they say stand in public.

Billy Dennis did just that. At some point the night before last, after coming to this blog and whining about how I was being so hard on those poor poor idiots who don’t look after their online property, he felt the need to post this on Twitter:

Hey, @pauloflaherty you called WPMU who don’t upgrade stupid, but YOUR site is down. HA ha.

I would never have noticed, nor would this have even been blog worthy except for the fact that it had been deleted at some point before I logged in to twitter, but my RSS feed of search results for replies to @pauloflaherty caught both the tweet and Mr. Dennis acting like a spanked child throwing a tantrum.

Let’s clarify something here. Firstly, there’s the fact that this idiot is misquoting me as I never called WPMU users who don’t upgrade stupid, well not specifically anyway, I called everyone who doesn’t upgrade any software when security releases are pushed ASAP, stupid. I’m an equal opportunity insulter that way.

Secondly, my sites were down intermittently over the weekend and yesterday due to my host moving our accounts to new servers. It caused some major cock-ups, which they have apologized for and appear to have gotten sorted.

The downtime was not caused by my neglecting to upgrade our WordPress installs or plugins, or perform backups.

Dennis’s actions are a clear indicator of what is wrong with citizen publishing on the internet. It’s all too easy for someone to come out, attack someone and then remove the evidence before it is seen by the person being targeted. Or in Billy Dennis case before any of his followers realise what a child he was being.

Making matters worse is that Billy Dennis lists himself as a former journalist and should know all too well the implications of hitting that send or publish button.

This is the exact type of incident that makes me wish services like Twitter and Facebook didn’t have a delete button. What you write should stand, for good or for bad.

Defending the delete button by saying people make mistakes is a cop out. If you didn’t mean it, why did you type it and hit send or publish in the first place. If you don’t have the integrity to stand by what you write you shouldn’t be writing.

Far better to make the mistake and admit or apologise to it, than to erase the evidence and slink off into the night like a whimpering dog with your tail between your legs. As you can see from this post, the evidence never really disappears!

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