When A Prank Goes Wrong, Gizmodo and The TV Blaster

No argument here, I think you’re right.

haha destructive as it may be… still funny lol…. we used to do this in my neighborhood growing up… $10 for a universal remove and some binoculars, you can drive people mad…

“Honey why does the TV keep going on mute… and changing channels when I get up to get a drink … and turning off?!?!?!”

Nothing like injecting a little bit of “Lifetime” in the middle of Monday Night Football ;)

I took one of these things to vegas once.
Turned off the entire horse betting wall.
I was scared.

In the grand scheme of bloggers being screwed by their own (when it comes to professional credibility), this is a pretty small deal (this is likely only to affect Gizmodo). Read about this dumb ass, and the reactions from journalists: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/12/01/in-the-tank-did-national_n_74954.html

Gizmodo will suffer long term for this, as they should. They over-did it when they screwed up the presentations. If I owned or made part of any company involved, I would never advertise on that site again and I would surly back-list their bloggers from my presentations. It was immature and short sighted.

Mind you I did something similar in my youth, I used to take my Panasonic Hi-Fi remote control and I used to screw up the school’s HiFi (was the same model) during assemblies. It used to be such a laugh, but no one’s job was on the line. And I never publicly admitted either. Seriously, grow up Gizmodo.

Wow, lighten up. Not that big of a deal. Motorola had almost no press before this, hell, I watched the coverage and don’t recall anything from Motorola. But after I saw this, I looked up the presentation….

What are you guys? Uptight pretentious 50 year old white guys who complain about the rain?

Seriously grow up Gizmodo? Seriously lighten up UneasySilence.

i wouldnt say you are wrong because when i 1st saw it i was honestly shocked that they did it, i really couldent believe that gizmodo.. who in my mind is the top tech blog would do something like that as soon as i saw it im said to my self “ill be amazed if there ever allowed back”

with that said i think it was awesome that they did that its funny as hell to me and i would of done the same.

however i only think you are wrong for plugging break.com…. that site has done nothing but gone down hill and promote racism since they changed there name from big-boys

Consumer Electronics Association:

“We have been informed of inappropriate behavior on the show floor by a credentialed media attendee from the Web site Gizmodo, owned by Gawker Media. Specifically, the Gizmodo staffer interfered with the exhibitor booth operations of numerous companies, including disrupting at least one press event. The Gizmodo staffer violated the terms of CES media credentials and caused harm to CES exhibitors. This Gizmodo staffer has been identified and will be barred from attending any future CES events. Additional sanctions against Gizmodo and Gawker Media are under discussion.”

Here’s an idea. Stop trying to get accreditation as “traditional media.” Bloggers aren’t that. Blaze your own trail, and work to get bloggers accepted by jndustry for what they are. And whatever that is, it’s not traditional media, and it’s not the press. There needs to be a new category. And it’s up to bloggers to make it happen and work for their own acceptance.

The big mistake they made was bragging about it on their website, if it was never mentioned on Gizmodo than it would have just been a funny joke between all the Gizmodo writers but they had to go ahead and brag about it, big mistake.

90% Bloggers aren’t professional. Little emo billy and his mom can both have blogs and say whatever they want regardless of truth. there needs to be a better separation between ‘Blog’ and ‘News Blog with real journalists’

I agree. It was destructive. It was also pretty funny. I think they should have used the device more wisely. They should have limited it to stuff that wasn’t as important as presentations.

Idols. I’ve not thought much about Gizmodo recently, and this is just the icing on the cake. I’ve now since unsubscribed from their blog.

Sabotage – This must be surely illegal; I saw no humour in humiliating the presenters. I would not be surprised if there isn’t litigation around the corner and if I was Gizmodo I would perhaps see a solicitor right now for an opinion and perhaps to prepare myself for what could happen.

Turning off someone playing Guitar Hero III is funny.
Messing w/ Motorola’s presentation repeatedly is bordering on sabotage.

I hope they get banned from the event.

I can’t stand Gizmodo, I especially love the fact that they’d pull a prank like this but make their commentors audition. The TV walls were kinda funny but the presentation were terrible and anyone with half a brain would be able to realize its just uncalled for.

While I tend to agree that most bloggers are indeed not professionals, what about those who ARE professionals?

Would I do something like this? Hell yeah, and I’d post about it on my blog, but I don’t represent the likes of Gizmodo, TUAW or UneasySilence. I have a couple of blogs that I write on in my spare time for fun. Should I be held in the same esteem as Dan, who runs a professional blog? Absolutely not! Professional blogs, like I used to consider Gizmodo to be, have a responsibility to hold themselves to higher standards.

In my opinion Dan’s point is spot on. I think the “big deal” here is that it was someone with credibility that perpetrated this action. An event like this indeed has the potential to cause major setbacks to professional bloggers who are striving for accreditation as mainstream media due simply to the fact that Gizmodo was involved. Mainstream media has become mostly crap these days (at least in the US), and I think pro bloggers could bring much more to the table and should be allowed the opportunity to have the same access to events, etc., as mainstream media.

In the end I hope that the casualties of this are limited to Gizmodo. This isn’t about the pretentious 50 year old white guy mentality (my views and physicality are far from that), it’s about being professional enough to understand that there is a time and place for everything. Screwing with someone playing Guitar Hero, as Jerry points out, is funny. Screwing with someone who has put a large amount of time and money into a CES presentation, not so much. Woah… that was longer than I had intended! I’ll jump off the soapbox now!

Gawker Media, and more specifically Gizmodo, have always and will always be pre-pubescent immature dolts. The amount of NSFW articles on the front page (*with* NSFW pictures… ON THE FRONT PAGE), pranks, gags, and other very unprofessional manners severely hold back the fight for major blog outlets to be thought of as press. The only redeeming blog out of the whole Gawker lot is Lifehacker… I hope Weblogs Inc or someone else snatch that property up.

yea, it’s one thing to shut off a few screens that are purely for display purposes…but shutting off screens being used during a presentation…come on…

the motorola guy handled it well…

so did the girl …