Dear Michael Arrington, Perhaps You Are Bored Because You Are Boring

January 1st, 2013 by jeremychone

With all due respect, and I have some for your very early TechCrunch days, your new post on your ex-blog about how bored you have become made me chuckle.

Chuckle, because it was not the “I am bored and I should do something about it” kind of bored that we all might be once in a while, but rather the typical Arrington way of lecturing an industry by saying “I am bored because you guys are boring.”

Not surprisingly, you have not changed from your tech media mogul days, when you were lecturing the media industry about what was or was not ethical and how real tech journalism should be done, while many could have easily returned the favor if they had a chance or a voice.

Yes, we get a lot of silly ideas, especially those coming from an inexperienced team—but first, sometimes we need those silly ones to explore paths that our “experienced” eyes would not have looked at, and second, if we get too many silly ideas, it is perhaps because we invest too much in them. Perhaps, investing too much in “inexperience” to get cheap entrepreneurship labor is the reason why we get such poor results. Perhaps, what we need is to treat the “cheaper” investments (all those $50K and such) as experiments and not confuse them with investments in experience and expertise.

I have been in this industry for some time—since my Netscape days—and honestly, I think that this new decade is probably one of the most exhilarating we have seen since the start of the Internet. Technology has been completely popularized to the point that kids can have face time with their grandparents on their own computing devices that can fit in their pockets; enterprise IT is being completely revolutionized as employees are now taking charge of their IT experience by buying their own devices and services; and new services like GitHub, Pinterest, Dropbox, and Square have been revolutionizing their own respective industries by leaving the biggest players in the dust.

And this is just the beginning: as 3D printing, domotic “2.0,” and an ever-increasing variety of computing devices are hitting the market, the new opportunities to change the way we learn, teach, share, care, and live have never been as promising. Mobile is just a stepping stone, as it is not about mobile, tablet, or PC, but about how we are changing the way we include computing in all aspects of our lives across all generations. And if you think about it, everything has accelerated so much over the last few years to the point where one-years-olds feel like swiping and pitching paper magazines. How can this be boring?

So, perhaps, if you are bored during this amazing time, it is because you have been a back seat driver for too long and just need to do something big, and show people how it is done rather than telling them how they should do it.

In other words, stop lecturing and start doing. Take a revolutionary idea and do it—do not hedge it, just do it (i.e., be the CEO).

You did it once with TechCrunch, and you had a swing-and-miss with CrunchPad, but I am sure that you will find many investors who will value you at your fair market value and won’t give you the $50K treatment.

Best of luck on your future venture, and happy new year.

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Jeremy Chone,
– do it, don’t speak it -

PS: Obviously, I assumed that your post was genuine and not a PR fishing stunt. If the latter, please disregard this post, as I was respectfully going by the former.

If you liked this article feel free to +1 on HN

Update for readers coming from HN: I am sorry, but somehow the original title I posted on HN which matched this article title, got edited and the “Dear Michael Arrington” got removed. It is beyond my control, and I am sorry for any confusion it might have caused.

8 Responses to “Dear Michael Arrington, Perhaps You Are Bored Because You Are Boring”

  1. Joshua Gruber Says:

    Your post felt balanced and passionate.

  2. Ben Hebert Says:

    I agree with Joshua. Great post.

  3. Peto Says:

    i agree more with Michael, and his points have nothing to do with whether he is or is not boring.

  4. Tsuaomi Nazaki Says:

    Arrington is trying to grab attention and nothing more, he becomes relevant because he puts himself out there and this is somehow valued by people aspiring to be just like him. This promotion of emptyness and constant self pub can be negated and this is a good starting point to reflect on what is going on in tech at that level. That site is simply a circle mind … enforcer accelerating towards irrelevance like the projects it creates propaganda for.

  5. Luc Fueston Says:

    Excellent.

    Only someone not actively involved in making things could possibly be bored right now.

  6. Why I stopped reading TechCrunch on a regular basis | Technology by-Products Says:

    [...] and did I mention that I too think that Michael Arrington is boring? This entry was posted in Innovation, Technology on January 1, 2013 by [...]

  7. Jeremy Chone Says:

    Thank you @Joshua, @Ben, @Luc, and all for you taking the time to add a comment.

    @petro, ok, I should have specified, I find Michael Arrington intellectually boring, but I do confess that he always had the gift to entertain our industry with soap opera type of articles.

    Anyway, just my opinion, been here for a while, I have been in hist first TechCrunch party at his house then, and he was great then.

  8. Michael Chang Says:

    “… and Square have revolutionizing their…”

    Your grammar seems a bit off here. Pick one:

    a) … and Square have been revolutionizing their… (add “been”)
    b) … and Square are revolutionizing their… (have -> are)
    c) … and Square have revolutionized their… (revolutionizing -> revolutionized)