What Really Happened, Sincere Apologies
Apple, Web November 28th, 2007Malcor. Most of you probably know that name by now. No, Malcor wasn’t real. Malcor wasn’t me. Malcor was created by the guys behind MacHeist. Here’s the story.
The whole idea of Malcor was to lead up into the MacHeist 2 story-line and first mission with a buzz. The guys really wanted to make season two of MacHeist successful, and saw this as a great opportunity to create some overall buzz - they didn’t expect it to pick up to this extent.
I wasn’t the main guy behind this, I simply handed over the keys to my site for 24 hours to the MacHeist crew in full support of their mission. I was part of this because I wanted MHII to be a success, and just like the other sites involved, the decision to help Phill out was an easily made. No cash changed hands in the process, it wasn’t a case of “selling out.”
The idea wasn’t to pump up my traffic, gain readers, or gain exposure for my site. It was in full support of the base idea behind MacHeist - helping indie developers.
For those who believe I was involved for one thing, traffic, to but it bluntly, I don’t care about the traffic. I was involved in this and handed the keys over for those 24 hours to raise awareness of MacHeist and support the developers involved this year. I had no idea how the situation would be carried out, what message would go up on the site, or anything of the sort. I left the site login details for the team on a Friday night and headed away for the weekend, arriving back to chaos Monday morning.
Keeping it simple, I’ve felt like absolute crap over the past week knowing all this has gone on. I’m upset with myself that I let everything get this far. I’m disappointed that I let YOU down, something which will not happen again. I’m young, I made a mistake, and I know it. That’s the great thing about life, you live and you learn. I learnt something from the past week - and learnt something for the better, not the worse.
I’d like to take a minute and this chance to apologize to those who didn’t like the manner this was carried out in. I fully understand if you plan to unsubscribe from this weblog, you have every right and reason to do so. However please keep in mind, this wasn’t done in spite to raise traffic levels, it was done to show my support for Mac software developers who have teamed up with MacHeist this year. I’m sincerely apologetic to those who feel wrong done.
As John Casasanta stated (The MacHeist director), I hope we can put everything behind us now and move on to another great season of missions for MacHeist II, which will be here very soon after a few tweaks on their end.
Once again, my sincere apologies to you, the readers, the Media Temple team, and WordPress developers. Thanks for teaching me a lesson, I’ve come out better for it.
For the full story by the guys who were behind it, the MacHeist team. Read here.
November 28th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
LAME. Macheist does very little to support indie development. It serves to make the cast of idiots at macheist.com money.
http://daringfireball.net/2006/12/iniquities_of_the_selfish
November 28th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Glenn, you absolutely did the right thing by posting this and it shows your true character. Everyone has momentary lapses in judgment but what defines you is how you handle those lapses and move forward as a better person.
I actually left a comment over at 9rules right before you posted this, predicting that you were very upset and were going to post a big apology entry, and here it is. Glad to see you wrote it, and glad to see I was right :)
Mike
November 28th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
I’m not too caught up on the whole situation, but I don’t see why you should apologize, in either case. I understand wanting to set people straight regarding your motives for this particular incident; but even if you were doing it to garner traffic, there’s nothing wrong with that.
You put your time, and effort, into this - that much is obvious through the quality of your posts. You have the right to gain something out of this… again, there’s nothing wrong whatsoever with wanting to garner yourself some extra eyeballs.
That said, I’m glad to know you had the courage to make this post (-:
November 28th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
Mike, Elliott, thanks for the kind words. I’ve been in a real mess over this last night and today, it’s been hard to focus - inspiration is really lacking, but your two comments have really lifted me. Thanks for understanding.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
↳ Glenn Wolsey - Hope it all works out well, seems like a misunderstanding for the most part. Silly, really. BTW - Two t’s d-:
November 28th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
hey i just want to say this has been really cool and funny actually lol but really keep it up with site and post more stuff also post more videos on youtube man they are really cool and i agree with elliot at some point you didn’t need to apologize but still is cool that you did . it shows how you feel about it so let it go and keep the posts and videos comming
November 28th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
Glen, “we all make mistakes”!!
Head up and move on..
November 28th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
As someone who runs a site (dtgeeks.com, ftw!), I was a little annoyed to find out it was a hoax, because of the trepidation it caused for some of us who were out of the loop: “If malcor is hacking a site as un-fanboy as Apple Matters, what sites *aren’t* possible targets? Is our ExpressionEngine install vulnerable to attack?” I was a little annoyed mainly because my concern turned out being a waste of time. At the same time, I was relieved to find out that malcor was a hoax, so we weren’t a target in the first place!
As for stupid mistakes, I had made a fairly high-profile lapse in judgement a couple months ago. I published a story about a note in the iPod touch user’s guide PDF stating that it required an iTunes account. I thought I had an exclusive. TUAW and some other sites carried the story. The only problem? It was *wrong* apparently. Comment after comment posted on both our site and TUAW indicated that this wasn’t the case. I had to swallow my pride an issue a retraction. Embarrassing? You bet.
So I know what it’s like to be caught in a situation where you have to come clean oor your credibility will suffer. I hope everything works out for the best, but do be more careful in the future. :)
November 28th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
glen,
take it from a fellow younger person that sometimes you have to scrub good and hard to get the ‘tool’ off your forehead.
good sow coming clean
November 28th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
I thought it was a great! An excellent publicity stunt even if you didn’t mean for it to be. Keep up the good work.
Tim
November 28th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
Here’s to your honesty and character, Glenn. :-)
November 28th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Stupid fanboys, don’t you know that Apples are the piano accordions of the computing world. Sure they may be entertaining, but they are not made for professionals!
November 28th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Nice one dude
November 28th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
“As John Casasanta stated, I hope we can put everything behind us now and move on”
well, it’s okay to put things behind and move on, but you gotta remember not to make the same mistakes in the future.
instead of building up for MH2, all that’s happened is that it’s left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth and probably done more damage to the MH cause
November 28th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
You seem to be a complete and utter cretin Glenn. I certainly won’t be reading any more of your shite.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:13 am
What you did was completely stupid, i will definitely be unsubscribing from your site. I hope somebody hacks into it for real and takes it off the net for good.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:26 am
It has come across as being a little dishonest to your readers. Did you see how many people were concerned?! But you’ve done the right thing by coming clean and apologizing.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Yeah, it was the right thing to do for both yourself and your readers.
I had just found and subscribed to your blog when it got hacked so I really didn’t get all that caught up in it anyway.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:06 am
I applaud your decision to apologize, but I fear that you will have a hard time winning back credibility.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:33 am
Well I have to say it was a daft idea but some of the criticism has been way too harsh, especially on those who played along to help MacHeist. I’m not familiar with MH and having just read Josh Gruber’s post, I guess there are those who don’t think too highly of it. But the guys who played along probably only had good intentions in trying to help publicise it. I think those who have a right to be royally pissed are the hosting companies and CMS makers, whose reputations are on the line, as well as those who host commercial sites with them, who were misled into thinking their sites were at risk.
Other than those two groups, I don’t see why regular readers have to get their panties up in a bunch. It’s not as if the New York Times just played an April Fool’s joke by telling everyone a nuclear bomb had gone off in NY. At its heart, this is still a personal blog and Glenn’s a young guy, you can’t possibly expect “journalistic professionalism” from it. If you did, then you’re a fool.
He did make a huge mistake, as did all the other participants in this silly promotion, but he’s been man enough to own up and apologise now. I think we all know how hard it is to stand down and admit one’s mistakes, not to mention in front of an entire readership of thousands. If you’re just a reader who gets his feed from your RSS reader, I don’t see how this whole charade has monumentally changed your life. Cut the guy some slack man.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:33 am
I’m a bit annoyed, but i commend you on making a post apologizing, i was furious at the fact that someone had the nerve to dictate what one posts on his blog, heh, i even made a post about you being hacked on my blog(http://www.gordonswaby.com/2007/11/15/glennwolseycom-hacked/)
But again i really wanted you to say something about it, and you have so kudos to you. Stick in there and move on.
Gordon
November 29th, 2007 at 2:23 am
Thank God there are more positive comments here then on Macapper.
Glenn, I think helping the Macheist guys was a great idea, but got out of hand. It was a good idea in principle, but no one really calculated how the readers would react. I believe you are truly sorry, and think it was great that you apologized. I’m still subscribed, to both your flickr and your blog. :P
November 29th, 2007 at 2:35 am
*covers ears* I can’t hear this. It’s all a lie!
November 29th, 2007 at 3:11 am
It’s great that you are stepping up and apologizing — and yes, you can get cut some slack because you are young — but I really, really hope that you can learn from this, because in the real world, when adults make decisions that mislead their readers (your customers in a sense, since you make money off this site), potentially put other people’s livelihood at risk by propagating the idea that a hosting company or their WP install is unsafe or hackable by a script-kiddie (legitimately huge sites that are not blogs by 15-year olds are hosted on (mt)), a simple “sorry guys, people make mistakes” usually doesn’t cut it. I like that you are finally being honest and apologizing - but the fact still remains, you made your bed - you are going to have to lie in it. And that means that lots of people and blogs and advertisers that might have previously linked to your site will refuse to do so in the future.
For me, it’s not that the whole hoax was created to support a shady (good for consumers/crappy for the actual developers) software bundle — it was the fact that in order to keep up the rouse, you phoned in calls to your host — told them you were hacked - had people questioning if (mt) was reliable (and that’s a blackmark that will stick long after this story fades away, regardless of you coming clean now) - and you had no problem letting that message go through. It would have been quite simple to say you were hacked because you didn’t have a secure enough wordpress password — and that (mt) was not involved in any way; you could have even turned that into a tip for people to always use secure passwords for their blogs/databases/web sites — who knows, that might have even synergized with MH2 depending on what software is offered this time. Instead, you chose to mislead; you owe (mt) a bigger apology than you owe your readers. If it were my business, I’d stop hosting your site - period - for your sake I hope they are more forgiving.
And again, I respect you for apologizing - but ultimately, all this did was confirm your age. Despite your best efforts to appear older and more mature than your years (and in many ways, you definitely are), you are 15 — and while that’s OK, and that can get you a pass for some of these discretions in the future — having that pointed out makes it much harder for those of us who are not 15 (I’m 25) to take you seriously — at least for a couple of years.
Yes, I’ll cut you some slack for being 15 and making mistakes — but by that same token, if you are going to act your age - you aren’t going to be treated with the respect and credibility of someone older. At least not by me…and I’m sure I’m not alone. I do wish you the best - but I really don’t think that a simple, “I’m sorry” is going to be enough to appease the adults (and the people actually paying you money) in terms of being comfortable having a professional working relationship with a kid.
November 29th, 2007 at 3:36 am
Wow, some people need to chill. It’s a blog dammit. I mean this guy works hard to put out quality posts. I, along with many other readers, love reading his stuff. Stop complaining. Was your life significantly altered just because glennwolsey.com was “hacked”? Don’t think so. So chill and cut Glenn some slack.
Props to the people who are supporting Glenn. Keep up the good work man.
November 29th, 2007 at 3:54 am
I’ll give you this Glenn. At least you seem sincere and didn’t try to end your apology with some kind of justifiable explanation. You admit that you made a mistake, you’ve owned it and asked for forgiveness. It’s all you can do. And frankly, I think most readers will respond to that type of approach.
Unfortunately, some of the pinheads at the other participating sites aren’t responding with the direct approach you’ve employed. I’ve never posted to your blog before but I wanted you to know that I, for one, appreciate your candor.
November 29th, 2007 at 4:16 am
Who cares about your apologies anyways, computer-boy?
You’re so full of yourself.
November 29th, 2007 at 4:23 am
MacHeist will probably benefit financially from all the hype generated, while all the sites that helped have to deal with the negative fallout.
November 29th, 2007 at 4:33 am
Sorry, but a late/overdue apology doesn’t win you any points in my books. Worse, I suspect that neither you nor Miles are really sorry at all.
http://macapper.com/2007/11/27/woops-i-did-it-again/#comment-27202
November 29th, 2007 at 4:37 am
Glenn, I think it’s funny how normally you hate when people criticize you because you’re young, but when you screw up, you instantly turn to using the fact that you’re young as an excuse. Make up your mind? Do you want to be treated like an adult all the time? Or only when it’s convenient for you?
“I left the site login details for the team on a Friday night and headed away for the weekend, arriving back to chaos Monday morning.”
You expect us to believe this? If this is true, you are a pretty horrible site admin. Nice try at attempting to distance yourself from what happened. You need to act like an adult and accept responsibility. An apology isn’t an apology if you try and justify your actions.
November 29th, 2007 at 5:24 am
Go fuck yourself.
November 29th, 2007 at 5:31 am
I think you do interesting things with your blog, but this stunt was not one of them. I can understand slipping up - I was once young, too. But, I think this is the one and only major faux pas that you get from most people. If this were just a personal blog, I’d say that what happened was no big deal. However, handing over the keys to your source of income was just plain stupid. I don’t think I need to sugar-coat it.
Apology accepted. This time.
(FWIW, I also think that Philip D. makes some points worth considering.)
November 29th, 2007 at 5:50 am
Understandable, but not the best move you’ve made. That being said, I’m not going anywhere. You still have me as a reader.
November 29th, 2007 at 6:03 am
Well, I found this site entirely because of the “hacking”, but I came here after it was all over, and liked the site, so I decided to hang around.
November 29th, 2007 at 7:52 am
Haha. People need to grow up. Who cares that you got “hacked” it was a day and you pump out quality content. That’s all that should matter. It may have been a bad idea, but we all have bad ideas every once in a while :)
November 29th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Slash. I am regrettably sorry. I know I made a bad move, as stated above. I am showing true remorse for my actions and involvement.
Phillip D. Yes, I do expect you to believe that I was away for the weekend of the hack. I had a cricket tournament in Taupo, New Zealand.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:09 am
From Dusty “Macheist does very little to support indie development. It serves to make the cast of idiots at macheist.com money”
True.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:16 am
↳ Glenn Wolsey - Because everybody knows Cricket is the best alibi one can ever have d-:
↳ Kevin H. - That’s as may be, but it was stupid on his part, privately, if he did something that might jeopardize his source of income. He’s still done nothing wrong in general, to his readers in specific, by doing this, that I can see.
↳ Kiwi - Have some common courtesy.
↳ Philip D. - I don’t know how old he is, and I haven’t been following this blog for too long, but that seems absurd. The guy’s being unreasonably set upon on all sides. Even being treated as an adult, he doesn’t deserve this. And regarding his being absent… an apology is an apology is an apology. Take it or leave it (if it’s directed at you), or just leave it (if it’s not) - because it’s none of your business. Part of making an apology is explaining why you made the mistake in the first place.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:24 am
“From Dusty “Macheist does very little to support indie development. It serves to make the cast of idiots at macheist.com money”
True.”
I totally disagree with that. Macheist has caused me to spend more money on shareware then ever before. Sure the devs didn’t get that much money off the deal, but they got customers for life. Why do people bash macheist for ripping off developers, when developers were the ones to make the decision in the first place. If there was no devs, there would be no macheist. So yeah, if you look at the stats, phil and the macheist guys got a lot of money for macheist 1. But look at all the money they gave to developers and charity, and look at all the people that got their first taste of mac shareware. Macheist is a good thing.
If you want to stay in the past with the traditional way of marketing, that’s fine. All the power to you. But we live in a world where so many people think pirating is the norm. They don’t PAY money for software. I do, but most don’t. Any exposure to quality mac shareware is a good idea.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:48 am
From your post, it sounds like you are sorry you were caught but not sorry for much else. You still seem keen to participate and promote MacHeist? Seriously?
November 29th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Glenn, I’ve been reading your site since 2006 and I trust and believe you and accept your apology.
Live Long and Prosper
November 29th, 2007 at 9:24 am
“I totally disagree with that. Macheist has caused me to spend more money on shareware then ever before. Sure the devs didn’t get that much money off the deal, but they got customers for life.”
Michael
Customers who don’t pay full price for your software yet have access to your support infrastructure are as likely to be a burden as a benefit.
Glenn
I appreciate your apology for your part in this mess. Of the ones I’ve seen, yours is the one that actually seems to be sincere.
But lets be clear about this: You and the other fools have caused a lot of problems for a lot of people. I hope you think these things through the next time.
November 29th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Lame. I was enjoying Malcor’s blog.. wnated it to keep going.. Great Job, though, Glenn. I don’t see why you’re saying sorry.
November 29th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Well done for coming clean Glenn - I’m not sure I 100% agree with what you did (nor would I do it myself), but I’ll still be subscribed to you for the years to come.
November 29th, 2007 at 9:39 am
What an incredibly bad idea. You’ve played your audience like a bunch of fools.
Some of these responses are over the top (or sycophantic) and I think you’re showing some maturity but it was a *really* dumb idea. I’m amazed you thought the response could have been different. The idiots at MacHeist have a lot to learn and I think so do you. Just remember what you’re doing here, pull your head in and treat your readers with some respect.
November 29th, 2007 at 10:14 am
I agree with Chrissy and Jenn here. I can understand your being sorry and all, but why feel bad now when it is out. Why weren’t you feeling bad about it a week ago or as soon as you saw what the MH guys decided to do. I don’t care what the circumstance is, lying to your readers is lying to your readers especially since you have so many loyal readers. And if you did feel bad even when this initially happened, why wait and apologize when you’ve been caught. I know a lot of people are saying they didn’t want to ruin the surprise, but honestly who cares. If you seriously feel bad, then you would apologize immediately and say screw the surprise. If they have bad enough judgement to go through with this just for a little publicity or to kick off MH with a bang, I would just let them know that I was going to issue a public apology and that it may ruin their ploy. It seems like the guys at AppleMatters were the only ones that had the stones to come out with it before it became public from the MH guys. And as far the people defending him because he is young and not thinking it’s fair to treat him like an adult, Glenn put himself out here in the public arena. I doubt he’d do that if he wanted to be treated like a kid or wanted special treatment, so I’m going to treat him or judge him like any other blogger out there. Look, in the end Glenn, I’m just a bit disappointed that you agreed to this in the first place and took so long to issue an apology. I’m a loyal reader and will continue to be because you are an excellent writer and put out quality content, but if you want to continue on this path and possibly think about journalism or writing as a long-term career, you might want to think a little bit about ethics. Just because you are young doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be held to ethical standards or shouldn’t be expected to make ethical choices. As disappointed as I am now, I hope not to be disappointed more if you decide to continue to promote MH. I understand that they are supporting indie developers and thats all well and good, but they made a choice that put a lot of the people involved in a bad position. The one positive about mistakes is that you can learn from them, and I’m hoping that’s what you’ll do with this one.
November 29th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Michael. I was feeling bad about it during the overall process. Read the statement above “Keeping it simple, I’ve felt like absolute crap over the past week knowing all this has gone on.”
November 29th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Well i said what I’m gonna say and I’m done with it, but I am glad that you have learned something from it. I’ll just continue to look forward to more posts from you. Speaking of which, I’ve been hoping for a lightroom review, any chance that might be coming.
November 29th, 2007 at 10:45 am
I am young so I understand what it is to make a mistake and truly regret it in the fashion you do. I read every post, although I do not always make comments on then.
Reading the other post makes me feel like I should unsubscribe from you. You keep saying that you regret it and sorry sorry, and I think you are true for your word.
Keep your focus and all will be well.
P.S. Start posting on you-tube again, ok?
November 29th, 2007 at 10:50 am
No hard feelings Glenn. You paid for your mistakes, and you’re sorry for what you have done. After all, you didn’t know Mac Heist was going to go this far and do this. They are usually pretty secretive about what they are doing, for all you knew they were going to display an ad covering your sites content, or a funny error message like: “There has been an error, call back Wednesday.” What more could we ask of you? Nothing.
November 29th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Oh by the way, yeah, a Lightroom review ‘would’ be sweet, and so would some more of your video show YouTube videos :D
November 29th, 2007 at 10:53 am
Its completely understandable.
Just take it in stride and don’t worry about it.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Glenn,
It’s good you want to support developers but surely there are better ways then promoting macheist which is just a marketing scheme. I understand that people like the fact they get cheap software via macheist but money isnt everything.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:24 am
I have mainly one thing to say… IT’S A WEBSITE, it’s not that big of a deal at all. It won’t really affect any of you and I think it was pretty funny. If you really do find this such a horrible thing I think you should find other interests (go outside and get some fresh air). Completely inapropriate to say anything bad about Glenn, it’s his website he can do what he wants. Treating this a tragedy is rediculous. Dying, or beeing seriously injured is a tragedy, this is nothing.
Glenn, I think your site is great, it’s helped me out alot and you’ve normally answered my emails. You don’t get paid for this but do it anyways, i think it’s great. Keep it up and don’t feel bad at all about what happened. I don’t see this as that bad at all, then again maybe it’s because i’m almost your age, just a little older.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:26 am
You played it well. The other blog, not so well. As a web developer, I knew as soon as they tried to make up a script injection story it was fake.
I won’t hold it against you. But I do wish you guys would notch down the fanboyism a bit.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:28 am
“The idea wasn’t to pump up my traffic, gain readers, or gain exposure for my site. It was in full support of the base idea behind MacHeist - helping indie developers.”
Do you realise how retarded that sounds?
If you’re going to apologise, do it properly and don’t bs people!
November 29th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Sounds like a sound appology to me, “…”.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
“… ” I don’t know how it sounds retarded. This post was an apology, don’t know why you don’t see that. Additionally, how about you come out from hiding, Anonymity is not a cool thing. Cheers!
November 29th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
I don’t really care.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
For those denying that this is a big deal, you’re wrong; it actually is, but it’s not about Glenn’s credibility. It’s about the credibility of his CMS and webhost.
I understand Glenn did the right thing by NOT blaming the CMS or webhost (unlike MacApper), and I’m sure his intentions weren’t to do so, but the fact is, many WordPress and Media Temple users- and potential customers- were scared their own sites could be compromised. And frankly, I have no idea why MacHeist (or the parties involved) could have missed this.
November 29th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Glenn, I said earlier that your apology was the only one I read that sounded remotely sincere. I’m not retracting that.
What “…” is calling you on, I guess, is that it sounds like you are attempting to justify your actions with the remarks they quoted. I wouldn’t use the word “retarded” myself but I do understand the point they are trying to make.
When you’re that wrong, you’re wrong. You’re not “Wrong, but…”. Frankly the fact that you still think MacHeist II will be “great” doesn’t speak well for you either. Those guys still seem to think it’s all a big joke and I for one would suggest not having anything further to do with it all.
I agree with moving on, now, but you have to accept that part of being involved in something like this is that people are annoyed and angry and some of them may want to vent at you.
I don’t mean that gives people an excuse to verbally beat up on you forever or anything silly like that but on the other hand if someone calls you out about some aspect of your apology then getting defensive isn’t going to help you sound sincere.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Glenn, you’re a stuck up, overpaid 15 year-old. Being young is a poor excuse; like someone said above, you only fall back on that fact when it’s convenient for you.
I’m 15 as well — what you did is something for someone far younger than us. The amount you are getting paid, the technology you are given, and the attention you receive is absolutely idiotic. You don’t deserve it, because what you do is nothing new. You’re irresponsibility only adds onto that.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
“Glenn, you’re a stuck up, overpaid 15 year-old.”
Well, I’m 15 too, as of December, and I can tell you that what you just said is something that someone much younger than would have said. Again, if you don’t like something, don’t read it. No one is forcing you. And don’t tell me that you’ve never made a mistake. I know that I’ve had, and I’ve had people laugh at my apology. That’s low.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
Derreck, I wasn’t using that statement as a way to make people say what I did was okay. It was simply a statement made because it is true, I am young. In saying this, I’ve stood up like a man and taken the comments here, I’m learning as I read each one, I thoroughly appreciated you taking your time to comment.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
BURIED AS SPAM.
This idiot does not deserve to profit any more from his awful decisions. Coming clean because you got found out is the sort of rubbish that leads people in the real media to resign their positions.
Oh the irony that the post preceding this one on this AWFUL blog is called “I’m Feeded Up, Goodbye Non Essential Subscriptions”. Let’s hope that this guy’s readership see him for the fraudulent, gold digger that he is and follow his advice by removing his blog from their RSS reader.
I vote that digg bans every single website involved in this nonsense, ESPECIALLY MACHEIST.com under their own terms which state that:
“… you agree not to use the Services:
to create or submit unwanted email (”Spam”) to any other Digg users or any URL;
to participate in any other organized effort that in any way artificially alters the results of Digg’s services;
to attempt to impersonate another user or person;”
Agree with me? Digg me up. We want REAL news here, not money grabbing nonsense like this.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Derreck-
A stuck up 15 year old? Come on. I am barely 14, and I would never post something like that. It is just idiotic. As Michael said, you do not have to come here if you do not want to.
Grow up. And then maybe you will not call someone “stuck up, 15 year-old”.
And the attention he receives is idiotic? Well you are just adding to the attention with your comment, so keep being what you said.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Glenn -
Thanks for the apology.
It’s was an un-necessary bummer that many bloggers were worried about their own sites. But I don’t think the hacking stunt was a reflection on your character at all.
November 29th, 2007 at 1:47 pm
How on earth did you not think that allowing MacHeist (who’s motives are very questionable anyway*) complete access to your server was a bad idea? I certainly hope that you didn’t take up any of (mt)’s support time, and that an apology letter has been mailed to them.
This said, you apologised, something that many others of the ‘malcor’ associates have failed to do. You’ve regained a little respect from me, and since what you write is really rather good you can rest assured that I’ll leave you in my Mail.app RSS reader.
As much of a mistake this was on your part, I do wish you the best over the next few days sorting this out, and urge you to stay the hell away from MacHeist in the future, or you will lose me for good.
* http://daringfireball.net/2006/12/iniquities_of_the_selfish
November 29th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Glenn,
You had real guts for posting this, and I’m really proud of you for doing it.
I can take the fact that it was wrong; I’m 17, I still make mistakes all the time. We’re all imperfect.
But this was probably one of the most immature things I’ve seen come out of phillyru and casasanta since I first heard of them.
I don’t know if you heard, but for about five days we were in total panic mode. We upgraded every single piece of software on the server (I mean, sure, it was good to be safe), and furthermore, we did flash backups every night on our VPS.
I’m so mad now that I’m not even going to allow any of the involved parties’ software to be reviewed on macteens _whatsoever_, and I really don’t care if there’s a gaping hole in our macworld coverage from the absence of interviews with Casasanta or anyone from Macheist.
And you won’t be seeing me or any macteens staff at the delicious generation party.
It just really maddens me that phillyru or casasanta haven’t sent us or any other sites (I’ve talked to a few guys from others) an apology of any sort. Sure, Casasanta said sorry, but, well, sometimes actions speak alot louder than words. So far the macheist crew hasn’t had _any_ class whatsoever in my opinion. I mean, dude. Come on. We had to make flash backups every night, and those are costly.
November 29th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
I understand that I don’t have to read this if I don’t want to - but it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, or I don’t have opinions on it. I admire Glenn’s /attempt/ to apologize, but still believe it came up short, and hold my belief that he is over-respected. What I said is perfectly acceptable for someone 15 years old, especially if they feel strongly about what happened.
I think that this will stick with the blog for a while… the whole idea of MacHeist is rather dramatic, and something that shouldn’t be rewarded or paid any attention to.
Mistakes are good, but things like this are awfully heavy for the kind of respect he receives (I guess that may sound selfish, I know. Remember? I’m 15 :P).
November 29th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Glenn, don’t expect this to blow over fast. It’s nice that you apologized, but that is expected if not require for something like this, so it isn’t going to fix it. You and the rest of the people involved with this left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths with this stunt.
On another note, I really wish you’d consider changing your position on MacHeist. It truly is a ridiculous concept, and while it may be a fun game, it’s not fair to the developers who get such a small cut of the profits. I think someone posted a link to Gruber’s take on this whole issue somewhere in these comments.
November 29th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Of course you did it to boost traffic, but why would you admit to it? Now you will probably loose the readers you gained. :(
November 29th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Alex. How can you make that judgement? Are you sitting here in my chair? Do you have an in-sight into my head? I didn’t do it to boost traffic, everything you read above was the truth, and nothing but the truth. I hope you come to realize that.
November 29th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Glenn,
Mediatemple sponsors your hosting, and you let your readers believe that somehow someone managed to hack your site - reflects poorly on your hosting provider.
Wordpress is the same case.
As someone said above: you can’t use the ‘I’m young’ card when you want to be seen as someone responsible. Yes, you had a lack of judgement, but being young is no justification for it. You just had to explained your reasoning for the decision you made and why you went back on it, simple.
You’re going to have to work hard to regain my, and fellow readers, trust again.
November 29th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
It’s alright, just don’t do it again.
November 29th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
You know, this would have been great if it happened on April Fools day.
November 29th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Glenn,
I do have to say, I was a bit worried with your site being down, and I have to agree that I was worried on the part of (mt) and Wordpress, but I wouldn’t go as far as you losing my trust, unlike Steve A said. I have to dissagree with him for the most part. I’m glad you came out and said it, and your apology has been sincerely accepted.
Good for you, and keep up the good work!
-Taylor
November 29th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
I cheered when I thought your site was hacked. All of the credibility gained from your apology was lost when you said you supported macheist.
November 29th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Hello Glenn,
I’ve been reading your site for a couple of months now. While I think that what you did was not thought out at all and very stupid, as long as you keep on pushing out quality content I think myself and many others included will continue reading your site. Apologizing to the readers and to the people who host your site is basically all you can do right now, so just learn from this mistake and move on.
All of the readers who you lost do not really matter because for every one that stops reading there is someone who started reading because of the publicity.
Anyways I wish you the best, and next time use better judgement.
November 29th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
hey forget about the haters i dont see why this is such a big deal anyways i just don’t see it. i’ve been into computers for a long time know i graduated from a computer science program in my school and im studying web design in college and i don’t see why people is getting so personal about it lol i don’t see any harm done and anyways he did apologized is not that he should call every reader. also by this i don’t mean it was not wrong because it was wrong but still LET IT GO PEOPLE!!
glenn keep it up i think the apolgy was long enough and if you are going to keep apologizing do it to the one that deserve it an apology.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
Glenn,
I am surprised to see that it was all a fake. I’d never read your blog before being linked to the malcor blog, but I saw your November 19th article entitled “Back to Regular Operation” where you lamented “On the topic of Mac fanboyism, this is something I struggle to understand and will be writing about in the near future. Just because some weblogs write primarily about the Mac and Apple, it doesn’t mean they can be labeled as ‘fanboys’ right off the bat. It doesn’t make sense, I don’t understand the logic behind it.”
Just look at your November 12th article right below it for all the answers you need. In short, that “hack” page described your blog very well.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:25 am
I’ve wanted to say this for a long time, but this just proves how unforgiving and arrogant some of some of the internets users really are. Every site admin makes mistakes, it’s how we learn and improve on towards the future. Sure this has happened, but you’ve come clean, stood up and taken responsibility for it. Best of all, you’ve apologized for it. Good on ya.
If some of the readers here can’t see past this, they really do need to get their priorities in order. Come on guys, get over it. Glenn, best of luck in the future and keep up the good work.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:47 am
I have no idea how you would come out of this well! Unless you were never found out.
Would you have produced this statement if you were not found out? Probably not.
You seem to be doing well and by the sounds of it making quite a bit of money, and got a free/sponsored Mac Book pro. So the idea of it done to increase traffic is no surprise. Just because you made a huge mistake and were found out you can’t just blame it on your age.
You will learn from this, but I still have no idea how you thought it would work out well!
November 30th, 2007 at 3:19 am
Wow, he handed his password to someone else for the weekend. So what? It’s his site, he can do whatever he want with it. Glenn, I don’t really know you, but by writing this post you’re just giving everyone a free chance to have a shout at you.
What’s the big deal?
November 30th, 2007 at 6:46 am
WTF dude that is the most pointless thign ever, fucking fake eh!
BS prank! Fuck this pish lks, not a very professional and not so much a respectful site anymore!
November 30th, 2007 at 7:07 am
“.Name ” Of course this post would have been written if it wasn’t leaked early. The story was going to be unrevealed next week on MacHeist, leading it into the storyline. Things were going to be all explained then.
However, things didn’t go to plan, so changes had to be made.
November 30th, 2007 at 7:19 am
for the flat rate cash the developers actually earn in macheist they would probably be better off just posting serialz for their current version on MSJ or C4M.
glenn, i need to borrow your site for a few hours this weekend. ok?
November 30th, 2007 at 8:06 am
glenn can i have it for a couple hours when macheist is finished with it this weekend?
ROFL
November 30th, 2007 at 8:36 am
Glenn,
You run an awesome blog, your content is first class. I think you are just becoming everyones whipping boy over this. It is your site and you can do whatever you bloody well please. Don’t let anyone get you down..
P.S: Just blame Graham Henry everyone else in New Zealand does! :-)
November 30th, 2007 at 11:29 am
I just heard about this on the Your Mac Life Show podcast. I didn’t realize you were only 15. Hopefully you’ll learn from it and move on. Sadly, I agree with them about the narcissistic generation of bloggers these days. Given the coverage it has received, I fear it will be quite a while before you can put it behind you.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Exactly. He’s only 15; I don’t get why everyone’s making such a fuss. Not like other people didn’t make silly mistakes when they were young.
November 30th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
The *fuss* is that it made his web host Media Temple look bad and it made his blogging software WordPress look bad. You simply don’t mess with other people’s reputations for your own gain.
Other people also went to a lot of effort to ensure that their sites weren’t going to be hacked. Personally, I was disappointed that Glenn felt it OK to mislead people.
November 30th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
I hate to be obvious Duncan, but Glenn had no clue Mac Heist were going to go this far, he didn’t know what they would do, and I’d say if he did he wouldn’t have made the mistake in giving them the control he did.
Sure he made an error of judgement which he wont repeat, but “he” didn’t post the message at the end of the day. Mac Heist did.
November 30th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
I don’t wholly blame Glenn - I can appreciate that he wasn’t the ‘brains’ - but he did play a part. He supported a questionable cause by giving them his password. He obviously trusted this Casasanta guy enough to do that.
I’m not trolling, I just wanted to express my displeasure. I am forgiving, but I am not forgetting. Life is like that. I think Glenn has learnt a tough lesson: actions have consequences. To his credit, he was very brave to stand up and take this on the chin. And he’s wise enough to keep doing what he’s always done. Hopefully, without any more stunts.
Incidentally, I’d put money on him being an opening fast bowler. He even looks like Glenn McGrath!
November 30th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Yeah, sorry, I don’t buy that you don’t care about traffic. Everybody who runs a website does care, and you are no exception. I don’t know and care about the motives for your move, but stating that you could care less about traffic is simply BS.
Oh well, maybe one needs to cut you some slack because you’re just 15.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Glenn! just be sorry that we all missed out on reading your great content, nothing more! Keep up the great work; apology accepted :)
November 30th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Kelly. Fair enough, you don’t have to believe me. But what I said is true, traffic is just a little number. I already receive enough without thinking I had to do this to boost it even more. Don’t buy it if you wish - however please understand I am been fully honest, 100% of the published words on this page written by me is stock standard honesty.
November 30th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
Brendan, we’re all responsible for the actions taken in our name and with our permission. By handing over the keys to your website to someone you are allowing them to do whatever they want *in your name*.
An example that happened to a friend of mine:
If you let someone drive your car who isn’t allowed to drive legally, and they have an accident then you am held responsible for your part in that accident; your part being providing the tools despite knowing you should not.
Glenn, to his credit, _has_ taken responsibility for his part in what happened and all credit to him I say.
I’m perplexed at the number of people who don’t seem to see what the problem was with this stunt despite having it explained to them in small words. Are people really that self-centred and uncaring about how things we do affect others?
December 1st, 2007 at 5:06 am
what I said is true… I am being fully honest… stock standard honesty
You\’ll have to excuse those of us who have a difficult time determining when you are lying.
December 1st, 2007 at 6:49 am
All I see is guy who provides excellent information about apple products, it was far from fanboyism…
dude glenn you gonna post any more vids soon?
December 1st, 2007 at 8:06 am
somebody please explain the significance of this and how it affected u.
December 1st, 2007 at 9:08 am
He pretended to get hacked. It caused an uproar. ’nuff said.
December 1st, 2007 at 5:22 pm
But very nice apology young man.
December 2nd, 2007 at 12:10 pm
This is sad Glen, even for you….
December 3rd, 2007 at 8:57 am
Glenn, please post some more videos on youtube. PLEASE!
December 4th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
@baggss
ITS GLENN!!!
WITH TWO NN’S!
January 19th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Glenn, I feel for you being caught in the face of deception, I also had placed support in places looking back now… well places i shouldn’t have. I lost alot of money, and my computer to it. I’m 18 years old and I know I’m not the only one here saying it. You have done a magnificent job here, and everyone makes mistakes. You show a level of commitment in your work that I have rarely, if never seen before. Keep up the amazing work! I hope more people will show you their support as well!