Way back at the end of the year before last (bit wierd to be saying that, honestly), I happily jumped on the bandwagon announcing the birth of “The Future of Guns Online”, otherwise known as “GunUp”.
Looking back on that, I find myself very happy I did not jump on the “membership” bandwagon too, despite multiple people encouraging me to do so.
Why? Well, the technical aspects of why not joining that particular subnetwork are touched on in the comments here and then explained in detail a few posts later, but, for me, that was just the first strike.
Around the middle of last year, a particularly infantile weblogger writing under the name “Gunmart” stole a picture of Breda, posted it under an intentionally offensive and provocative title, and then refused requests from the copyright holder and originator of the image to take the image down. At the time, Gunmart was a member of the GunUp network, and still is to this day. I am lead to believe that GunUp’s response to this particular situation, which was brought to their attention, was that they are not in the habit of censuring or censoring their webloggers, and while that is strictly true, if that is the type of person they choose to associate with… well, that was strike two.
And, finally, most of my readers are probably more than familiar with the name “Robert Farago“, but did you know that he and his site have been members of GunUp almost since the former’s inception, despite repeatedly stealing other people’s content? Apparently GunUp was all too happy to ignore this nonstop dickery… that is, until it became apparent that the content-stealing hack was probably fabricating his traffic numbers in some half-assed attempt to get sponsors, at which point GunUp decided to pull their sponsorship of “The Truth About Guns”. Or, at least, that was the story until GunUp changed their minds for no apparent good reason. You cannot choose your family, but you can choose your friends, and you can definitely choose your business associates. Strike three, and GunUp is well and truly out of here in my books.
I shall not deny that their GunFinder functionality is pretty damned slick, but even with my shiny-toy-itis, I must confess to having these crazy things called “standards”, anachronistic and outdated though they may be. Such is life, and, personally, I think I am the better for them; your mileage may, of course, vary.
Glad I never found my way there if that is how they roll. Still new to guns so haven’t discovered much but did see the dickery concerning Breda. Hate people who try to profit off others.
I used to read TTAG every day. I stopped reading them a long time ago – I can’t eve remember why, but I seem to recall that they were jerks, expressing their jerky opinions, and that I began to suspect that they were a false-flag operation.
What they did to Breda was not cool, either.
I don’t miss reading them a bit.
Just so everyone is clear and on the same page, Robert Farago is not Gunmart, nor vice versa, and neither are part of the governing body of GunUp, nor are they, strictly speaking, employees of GunUp. They are, however, part of the “GunUp Blog Network”, and thus their activities are being tacitly supported by GunUp in exchange for GunUp being able to harvest their sites for free material. Every person/organization has its price, and GunUp’s appears to be nothing more than blog posts – kind of sad, that.
That said, thanks for providing yet another corroborating data point, Griffith – you are certainly not alone in your “false-flag” concerns over TTAG
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