A reader sent in this note, regarding today’s TechCrunch story on Twitter:
“In today’s TechCrunch (the leading technology-news blog, a very, very powerful voice here in the Bay Area and beyond), one of the writers posted a story on why TechCrunch covers Twitter so much. Well, in publishing the story, TechCrunch used the attached image, which reads ‘Why Twitter is not lame (or for fags).’ After people complained about TechCrunch not only putting up a homophobic image but blasting it out through all of its various feeds, the writer, Robin Wauters, left the image up but blurred out the (‘or for fags’) text. When people complained about it in the comments section, the writer was very defensive and catty. Wauters refused to apologize (and is still refusing). Only after he was slammed repeatedly did he remove the link to the original creator of the image (DarkMotion). His final response in the blog? ‘Image removed, link deleted.’ He put a note in the text that reads ‘Image from DarkMotion: no link because the original image contains a word that is offensive to some.’ Perhaps it’s not a big deal, but if this image had read ‘or for n***ers’ in brown text, this story would have made the cover of the NYTimes and CNN, and Michael Arrington, the CEO of TechCrunch, would have been on the news begging for forgiveness. But since it’s just us fags, so to speak, he can get away with not even apologizing.”
The complaints, as of now, are still there in the comments. I read TechCrunch every day. I would have expected better from one of its contributors.
NOTE: I’ve changed the gender references in the tipster’s note so as to avoid confusion.
UPDATE: Wauters has apologized in our comments section: “Hi, I’m the author of the TechCrunch article, and yes I’m a man. I understand why you are all mad at me, and I deserve to be pointed to my own mistakes. That said, I honestly did not see the word when I embedded the image, and I did notice it when it was published. I didn’t remove it because of the comments, it was already gone when the first comment came in. I feel sick about all of this, I hate hatred and bigotry, and I would never ever condone the word ‘fag’ to be used. I’m sorry.”
