The fourth position from which to regard Gawker is abject fear (and probably consequent loathing) from brand owners. Of all Gawker Media’s titles, Consumerist.com has the most fear-provoking potential. This is because Consumerist.com is a brand killer.

“Capitalism is broken. We’ll help you fix it,” reads the closing to the “about us” section of the Consumerist site. Billing itself as a guide “through the delinquencies of retail and service organizations,” Consumerist promises to highlight “the persistent, shameless boners of modern consumerism” along with “the latest hot deals, discounts, and freebies.” But mostly it does the former, and its favorite targets are cellphone companies, fast food joints, airlines, hotels, and computer manufacturers — all capital “B” Big Brands.

On June 13, 2006, Vincent Ferrari made a recording of his tragically hilarious attempt to cancel his America Online (AOL) account. Despite rumors that he went fishing for such a bad example of customer service, Vincent was soon all over the Internet and the televised news. Consumerist smelled blood and has since made AOL its whipping boy. Recently the site got its hands on an AOL customer retention manual. You can imagine how that went.

Where’d you hear those rumors, Abram? Or are you simply starting them?

It’s not unusual to see a hit piece about me since the AOL incident. Lots of pre-pubescent AOL fanboys think it’s the best thing evar on teh internets!!!1!!!!!!1111!! But to see something like this in a “respectable” publication is aggravating to say the least. In fact, the worst part of it is he seems to completely misunderstand the story.

First of all, Consumerist didn’t propel the story as much as Digg did.

Secondly, there were no rumors of any kind about me fishing for bad customer service examples at AOL until some troll who worked at AOL posted a link to a slapped together blog with a post about how I contacted AOL 170 times fishing for a bad experience. The logic of that notwithstanding, how does one attempt to cancel 170 times without setting off a red-flag of some kind?

Apparently Abram Sauer thinks that’s perfectly rational.

In other words, Abram Sauer is spreading an untrue rumor about me under the guise of reporting that a rumor out there exists. In his obvious desire to take on Gawker, he had to take his shots at me too.

Maybe I’ll pay a call to Mr. Sauer and see what gives.

That is, if he has the stones to actually talk to me.

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