The lazy motherfucker known as Mike Elgan is now too feeble apparently to do his own job. So he’s turned to his Google Plus “community” to get them to do his work for him. Here’s part of the text from his desperate plea:
Are you GREAT at finding breaking news
before anyone else does?
I’m assembling a Google+ community of obsessed breaking news hounds — people who are able to cultivate various online sources of breaking news and post breaking news before almost anyone else.
The purpose of this community will be to crowdsource breaking news for an upcoming ticker that will appear on the live TWiT feed 27/7.
The Dumbgum is now asking for help gathering tech news, but his “fans” are turning on him in the comments section of his own forum:
Darryl Barnes
Feb 7, 2015
Meh. I stopped caring about breaking tech news two years ago. I mean unless you count lego mindstorms and Arduino/ microcontroller news.. dammit that’s tech… I dunno sift through my stream. I post a lot of robotics stuff most of the robotics stuff gets more than enough reshares and is usually shared about 20min after the source.
Mike Elgan’s “news” can mostly be compressed into the following –
Twitter
Uber
Facebook
Apple
Google
Other stories for the tech illiterati …
Repeated ad nauseam.
Anon» Quote comment
China! Or Cuba! . Democracy hating places all.
skisomewherebutmostlyhere» Quote comment
A ticker? What is this, 1985?
Wonder what they paid for that visual garbage. Probably too much, why else would the farm out the content to some willing fools?
NormansThirdNipple» Quote comment
This is what this guys comes up with!? a fucking ticker that no one will fucking read? News director my ass. This is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever seen. I don’t even read the ticker on CNN or Fox News.
What a joke.
CoinOperated» Quote comment
Jesus H. Christ, can TWIT become any lamer?
Holden» Quote comment
And what does he mean by ’27/7′? Douchebag.
Holden» Quote comment
I’m not at all shocked or surprised. This is why twit is having a slow painful death. It’s what happens when there is no talent.
woz» Quote comment
Is anyone who knows about Twit really surprised!? If you are, then you have know Idea about twit. This is how twit has done it for years. I remember way back Leo came on the stream and started yelling “Hey you guys, give me something to talk about!!!” sure enough the chat room does his job and lets him know whats happening. For the most part, Twit never “investigates” anything, they even have promoted “roomers” because it SOUNDS interesting, and of course, Leos overbearing two faced opinions. Are you surprised? Im not.
MoFo» Quote comment
Leo has been threatening to do some kind of ticker for years. Remember that LED box he got for the cottage. At one point it was going to be a crawl of tweets. It’ll never happen. They’ll just need to stick to quoting long form blog posts and press releases from Techmeme and their RSS feeds.
Fred» Quote comment
Well when Leo before last weeks twit (this weak in tech) said “I have nothing prepared, but the guests will have something to talk about” says it all.
Let someone else do the work.
Above was paraphrased. I don’t have the patience to comb the archive and find it.
skilost» Quote comment
I love that ’27/7′. 27 hours a day, 7 days a week. Guy can’t even get THE WORLD-POPULAR PHRASE FOR ‘ALWAYS’ right.
evilpants» Quote comment
Ha, just found this from a few years ago. It’s got a great title – Meet Mike Elgan: An Idiot
Following the links, Elgum really does get it wrong, again and again, always.
evilpants» Quote comment
Oh wow I just never knew how much awful nonsense Elgum comes out with. From 2011: “Facebook is now more directly threatening to Apple’s business model than Microsoft, Google and Sony combined,” and “Apple isn’t so much a consumer electronics company as it is a media platform.”
Threatening to Apple’s business model. The man doesn’t even know that Apple is a premium hardware manufacturer that doesn’t aim for market share, it aims for huge profit margins. That’s a very rough description, but to say that Apple’s business model is threatened by Facebook’s moves over the last few years is to show such a lack of understanding of what Apple is about as to remove all credibility as a writer on the subject.
I’m sure there’s more. I’ve been googling “Mike Elgan idiot” and enjoying seeing people ripping him several new ones.
evilpants» Quote comment
But you see, his point was not to make insightful comments, but rather to (a) call out as many high-profile companies in a sentence as possible for SEO and (b) put forward a completely ludicrous narrative that increases social engagement.
That’s why he’s ClickTroll McGum.
NormansThirdNipple» Quote comment
I copied and pasted it. My God I knew Elgum was an idiot but I wasn’t sure the rest of the entire fucking world knew! Thats quite a resume you have there MR. Gumball. I would hire you to sell all the shit at the twit “Going out of business sale”
unconfirmed report from an unreliable source» Quote comment
Hello from the future! He was wrong, and is an idiot, but you were embarrassingly way wrong too. Glaringly wrong today, but wrong then too.
Apple has never been just a “premier hardware company”. Margins have limits and so do physical device sales.
Today, in the future, as they now hide their individual device sales and just released a stack of “me too” subscription services, trying to milk upwards of $50/mtg out of Alex Lindsey, the juror is in.
AllTheWayFromY2K» Quote comment
The network is so hung up on being something it is not since the death of Steve Jobs coverage. They did do a great job with that, probably the best they ever did and had insane ratings.
Sadly, they are clueless that most days nothing “breaks.” There is scheduled breaking news like product launches and actual breaking news. Elgan is bad at scheduled because he has awful insight and theories. (Leo had to do a wrap of last MSFT event because Gûm didn’t reschedule TNT and missed most of the announce,wnt and context)
Where he is truly terrible is actual breaking news. He just can’t think on the fly. http://youtu.be/7ubrUra2tCk
Richardya» Quote comment
Anyone with half a brain knows that anytime you criticize Apple, you get a million fanbois calling you an idiot. That’s just what happens.
There’s no such thing as criticizing an Apple product, then having all the fanbois say ‘yeah that’s a great point.’
I’m been reading Elgan for a long time and the guy is brilliant and insightful and one of the most interesting columnist out there.
Meanwhile, you cowards and pussies are just looking for any stupid thing you can think of to cricize becuase — let’s face it — you all live your lives through Leo and have no lives of your own.
Since you are all so brilliant why don’t you write columns and put your opinions online with your real names and real faces and let’s have a look at how you do.
Morons.
Jason Cortez» Quote comment
I think it is very clear who Jason Cortez really is.
unconfirmed report from an unreliable source» Quote comment
That has to be the most ignorant post of the year!
Moron.
John the third» Quote comment
Crowdsourcing breaking news sounds like a great idea. Doesn’t TWIT crowdsource all kinds of things?
Jonathan Blackwell» Quote comment