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Nilay Patel of the Verge Twitter temper tantrum after criticism of his watch review

Have you people finished yet?

Are you the same people who ripped into the guy who wrote to Tim Cook?

I wish I were as brilliant and above criticism as you all. It must be great to always be right about everything. To always be calm. To never allow yourselves to rise to bait and overreact.
 
Arran said:
From what I saw, Patel started off criticizing a thing he was reviewing. Objective criticism is valid in that context - even though it seemed like he was saying it would look silly on him. He was mocking his own sense of style, IMHO. It was self-deprecating.

Gassé, tone deaf to that subtlety, then escalated it on his personal blog by attacking a person's appearance and using that to cast doubt on a person's credibility. Quite different - although I think he really did mean it in jest. He just misunderstood what "ridiculous" meant in the original context.

Admittedly Patel's remarks got childish thereafter, but Gassé (who started the direct personal attacks) made a weak effort at conciliation. When that didn't get him off the hook, he took a haughty tone and tried to unjustly claim the moral high ground.

They were both in the wrong. The whole sorry thing was a draw, IMHO.

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I think ribbing is perfectly fine between two people who have a prior relationship. Without that, it can be quite offensive.

Do they have a prior relationship? I really didn't know anything about either before now.
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He was just poking some fun. If Patel had a sense of humor he wouldn't have flipped out and made it personal. The whole thing is absurdly ironic on his part.
 
Wow ... it is incredibly hard to believe that someone can put comments like that in a public forum. What a childish *******.

One thing I like about using Google News is the ability to customize the articles I see.

Fox News ... gone
Huffington Post ... gone

And now, The Verge ... gone
 
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profmatt said:
Have you people finished yet?

Are you the same people who ripped into the guy who wrote to Tim Cook?

I wish I were as brilliant and above criticism as you all. It must be great to always be right about everything. To always be calm. To never allow yourselves to rise to bait and overreact.
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You've got to be kidding! That has to be one of the worst analogies I have ever heard. Yes, no one is perfect but it's perfectly fine to call someone out for such actions. We're not flaming he flamed himself. It's beyond me why anyone would feel sorry for him and come to his defense. Try to have a sense of humor for a second. I'm going to do my best not to respond to these types of replies and just enjoy being amused with them like I am with Patel.
 
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profmatt said:
I haven't read all of this thread because I assume it'll be the usual villagers-wielding-pitchforks mob mentality that is at the heart of the internet.

It's no doubt very easy to criticise someone's fashion choices publicly and then poke fun at their reaction. Which of us wouldn't be hurt if someone criticised a favoured object? And then the mob piled in to add their own derision?

How much did The Verge's review cost you? Oh yeah. Nothing. Was the review useful? Yes, I think so. Does Patel's wrist thingy look a bit incongruous? I wouldn't wear it. Does he deserve to be savaged on the Internet for it? Hell no.

Nothing to be proud of here.
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Just curious ... did you even read the tweets that he sent out?

The majority of the people in this thread are not criticizing the original article or his fashion choices, but the twitter temper tantrum that he threw.

I actually enjoyed his article and respectfully disagreed with him regarding the milanese loop band, but after reading what he wrote afterwards, I have no interest in reading another Verge article ever again.
 
MH01 said:
Are you referring to this

"I felt ridiculous wearing the Milanese Loop, so I didn't."

That's personal opinion, I also believe its feminine, I've tried it and would feel ridiculous wearing it, are you saying I and others are not allowed to state this?

If you read that as him openly critiquing apple for their fashion, you read it wrong. And that's half the issue, cause suddenly a bunch of MR readers started attacking patel over his studded band, cause they failed to read what he wrote.

Or am I missing something, and somewhere else in the review he bags the watch in relation to the design, cause frankly that is one part he liked.
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He was complaining about the fashion sense of a metal object that you wear on your wrist while wearing an item that the majority of the world would call unfashionable on his other wrist. This is irony.... Now if he had a huge metal barb through his nose it would be less ironic... Or maybe a green 2 foot tall Mohawk... even less ironic.
 
Regardless of what one may think of his review, this definitely pokes holes in his credibility. The dude shops for fashion accessories at Hot Topic, what do you expect?

niyal-feat-e1428959383706.jpg
 
A guy wearing a 'hard rockin' studded bracelet and a suit has the nerve to talk about fashion and expects anyone to take him seriously? Lol. Does he bathe in cologne too?
 
Arran said:
Fine if they have a prior relationship.

That said, a thick skin would seem like a necessity on the internet. People take liberties they'd never risk face to face.
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The "prior relationship" argument applies to private citizens. It doesn't apply to public figures. That's just how it goes if you're a public figure. Especially true if you're an outspoken critic.

As for the "face-to-face vs the Internet" thing, I generally agree. I'm willing to bet you that Gassé would've made that same comment FtF, and Patel would NOT have blown up at him about it in a room full of people.

Patel has a temper. It's clear from his tweets. People like that put me off.

I didn't care about his Apple Watch review. At all.

Those tweets were horrible.

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macgeek01 said:
You've got to be kidding! That has to be one of the worst analogies I have ever heard. Yes, no one is perfect but it's perfectly fine to call someone out for such actions. We're not flaming he flamed himself. It's beyond me why anyone would feel sorry for him come to his defense. Try to have a sense of humor for a second. I'm going to do my best not to respond to these types of replies and just enjoy being amused with them like I am with Patel.
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I'm with you on this one.
 
Behavior like his in those tweets are not going win him any points with potential future employers, that's for sure.

There's a right way to disagree with someone and a wrong way. He illustrated the wrong way.
 
Okay, I got it wrong. I was attributing some of the snarky NextShark content to Gassé himself. My fault. So I went back to the source (Gassé's blog) which says this (and only this) alongside the annotated picture shown below.

Or we have the (presumably) unintended humor of a reviewer who felt “ridiculous” wearing the Milanese Loop on his left wrist:
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That was all Gassé actually said.

So with that, I'll admit Patel overreacted. He should've joined in the fun, because I think his original comment (about it looking ridiculous on him) was in the same vein. Self inflicted black eye.
 

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I lost interest in his video review in the first few sentences when he stated ' the watch doesn't look like any of Apples other products'.....really? It clearly takes very strong design cues from the current iPhone 6.
 
bunnicula said:
I'm willing to bet you that Gassé would've made that same comment FtF, and Patel would NOT have blown up at him about it in a room full of people.
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How on earth do you expect anyone to take you seriously with a silly pink bunny as an avatar. Sheesh!

(Just kidding, just kidding. But you get my point? I hope you get my point (don't judge a book by the cover). Anyway, please don't get all angry on me for saying that because that would kind-of prove my point :D)

Joking aside, I fully agree with what you said above. Volatile humans weren't designed to interact on the internet. There's a lot still to figure out. Emoticons are quite inadequate.

And the bunny's nice. Sorry bunny :)
 
His review was so narcisistic he should have expected people to jump on any mistakes he made. But throwing his toys out the pram and making racist tweets was inexcusable.
 
profmatt said:
Have you people finished yet?



Are you the same people who ripped into the guy who wrote to Tim Cook?



I wish I were as brilliant and above criticism as you all. It must be great to always be right about everything. To always be calm. To never allow yourselves to rise to bait and overreact.
Click to expand...


I don't think you actually have any idea what's going on in this thread, or about the topic. I think you saw the title and immediately made up the story in your own head....
 
profmatt said:
Have you people finished yet?

Are you the same people who ripped into the guy who wrote to Tim Cook?

I wish I were as brilliant and above criticism as you all. It must be great to always be right about everything. To always be calm. To never allow yourselves to rise to bait and overreact.
Click to expand...

"Rise to bait and overreact"
Isn't that exactly what the guy you're defending did??

If I'm wearing a goofy shirt and I tell someone else, "I wouldn't wear what you're wearing, I'd feel ridiculous" and they replied, "Why should I take your advice, look at what you're wearing" thats fair game...real-life

For a guy who doesn't wanna be a "suit" and doesn't care what people think, he sure did seem to care what people thought.

Just because you don't agree with someone doesn't mean it's okay to use profanity, racial attacks, and immature "sorry for partying" remarks. If you think that's justified behavior you have a lot of growing up to do.
 
It must be really nice to be an employee at Verge right now because I guarantee you they've all been making fun of that bracelet behind his back for years.
 
valleian said:
I can't believe he said that "thousands of people are going to be wearing" that fugly bracelet, that's the same argument that those Glass-holes made whenever someone criticized them for their pretentious behavior.
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It's not for me, but I can see why some people like it.
 
Qrispy said:
It must be really nice to be an employee at Verge right now because I guarantee you they've all been making fun of that bracelet behind his back for years.
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Lol. I'm not exaggerating when I say that little outburst could have ruined his career

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Racist pig
 
Arran said:
How on earth do you expect anyone to take you seriously with a silly pink bunny as an avatar. Sheesh!

(Just kidding, just kidding. But you get my point? I hope you get my point (don't judge a book by the cover). Anyway, please don't get all angry on me for saying that because that would kind-of prove my point :D)

Joking aside, I fully agree with what you said above. Volatile humans weren't designed to interact on the internet. There's a lot still to figure out. Emoticons are quite inadequate.

And the bunny's nice. Sorry bunny :)
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He's a vampire bunny. Alas, he only drains carrots. ;)

I'm very laid back. When you get dealt a good little burn on the Internet, you never freak out. It's poor form.

If Gassé had insulted Patel's mother (or something otherwise deeply personal) I'd understand Patel's ire. :D

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Gooberton said:
Lol. I'm not exaggerating when I say that little outburst could have ruined his career

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Racist pig
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I thought about that. It might. Spewing racist, ageist tweets at a beloved SV figure is a very stupid move.
 
Gooberton said:
Lol. I'm not exaggerating when I say that little outburst could have ruined his career

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Racist pig
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Yeahhh I can't believe how unprofessional that was and how poorly it reflects on the site. He comes off like a 12yo insecure racist. I won't be visiting till he's removed.
 
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