Brazen Faith – David Dellifield of Ada, Ohio is a Good Guy

April 13, 2009

Since this is all the stir today amongst some no names on the social sphere including myself I wanted to put an email that I sent to @junloayza and @mattchevy on the matter out in the open. First of all, I am a member of Brazen Careerist and whole heartedly appreciate the efforts of everyone there whether I agree or disagree with them on each post or not. Second, if this gets me kicked off of it I really couldn’t care less. Third, you do not have to agree with me and can dissent all you like in the comments, on your blog, on twitter, etc as long as you keep the language kosher in my comments I’m okay with that. Finally, I do not agree or disagree with what David Dellifield said – that’s not what made me angry. Below is the email I had sent Jun and Matt:

_________________________________________________________________

Apologies for not personalizing this response but you both asked me the same question and I know that we are familiar with each other as it is.

I tweeted that I had lost faith in Penelope Trunk and Brazen Careerist too, so here’s why.

Penelope’s last post, I hate David Dellifield the one from Ada, Ohio, was the catalyst for my response. David Dellifield got into an argument with Penelope on Twitter over a comment she had made about not being completely happy when she had to stay at home with her children.

Specifically:
PT: No school today and the nanny’s on vacation. A whole day with the kids gets so boring: all intergalactic battles and no intellectual banter.
DD: @penelopetrunk sorry your kids are a burden, send them to OH, we’ll enjoy them for who they are

First, I’d like to say that David could be a complete douche bag and completely out of order in his response. Whether he was or wasn’t isn’t what matters to me. What Penelope did to counter David’s response is what really is despicable to me. I never heard of David before this post and to form an opinion of him is not something I’d be comfortable doing. If you read his other tweets he seems like a humble and honest person but again he could be a douchebag. I do indirectly know of Penelope through her blog and I indirectly support her by being a part of BC. Secondly, I’d like to say that I’m not trying to convince either of you to side with me or my reactions to her post.

Penelope found David’s phone numbers online and called him at work as well as called his home to tell David’s wife. Luckily David’s wife was not at home at the time but that’s beside the point. She stalked the man in an attempt to get revenge and go off on a tirade. She put his professional and personal life in harm by calling him directly at work and home. Both of those places are private. Twitter is completely public. David had a RIGHT to respond to her tweet and she had absolutely none to support her actions. Her blog tagline is also “advice at the intersection of work and life” – I know she has every right to do whatever she wants with her blog but to put up personal attacks and slandering on a blog that is supposed to have a positive effect on people looking for a job or excel in their current one is completely wrong in my mind. Start your own personal blog if you are looking for an outlet for negativity. Finally, and I think most importantly is that this guy’s reputation is completely ruined. If you google his full name Penelope’s post is first in just one day. Everyone knows that your H1 and Title tags are most important and this woman has his full name and city, state in hers – that was intentional and that was out of malice. To me that’s intolerable.

Unfortunately, Brazen Careerist was started by Penelope. I say unfortunately because I really like being on Brazen. I like the community including you two who I met through there as well as Nisha and many others. I don’t always agree with everyone which is fine by me. I try to be honest and put my true opinion into each comment I make. I’m not trying to offend anyone and have no intention to play Devil’s Advocate when I do so. Other times there are great posts that really inspire me, Jun your post about refocusing on your girlfriend and your life was one of those. Authenticity is the best strategy when we’re talking about Social Marketing and personal branding.

I have a couple of problems with Brazen in general. Most of those center around too many people calling themselves experts and entrepreneurs. Really most of these guys if you do a little digging are unemployed and spend more time on Facebook than I can afford to. Either that or they’re still in college and their parents support them with wallets wide open – I don’t have time to listen to the advice of these people – not because it’s bad advice but it doesn’t apply to me. Now that I’ve lost a ton of respect for Brazen’s founder I’m struggling. I don’t support companies whose policies and culture I don’t agree with. I gave up on starbucks specifically for this damn reason. I love the benefit of being on Brazen both from a networking and a referral traffic point of view but I’m considering of finding somewhere else. Brazen sometimes feels like the highschool of social networks and with this dramatic behavior by someone at the top I don’t see an end in sight. Maybe if I could I would start my own community but would need lots of help. 20 somethings however is simply not good enough.

Thanks for taking your time to read this. Again, I don’t want to effect anyone else’s opinion of Penelope and/or Brazen but I felt this was wrong and no matter how little effect on the social world I truly have I felt that something had to be said.

I may even put up a blog post saying that ‘David Dellifield from Ada, Ohio is a great man’ because I feel strongly enough to try and help this guy out. Hopefully it gets to the ten search. I noticed that Guy Kawasaki is even supporting Penelope – though I’ve never liked his social strategy either. This is just immature and amateur. You don’t purposely ruin someone’s name online, not if you’re someone with C level popularity like PT.

I’m left with some questions about my next move in blogging. Maybe I’ll just crawl under a rock for a little while.

- Rikin
_________________________________________________________________

Ok that’s it. Again, feel free to comment and voice your opinion whether it is for or against what I wrote. I will not lash out at you on twitter or ring your office or your spouse. I also ask that you do not write your opinion about how Penelope or David rate as a parent. That isn’t any of my business and I would never attack either of them on that topic. It is obvious that they both love their kids very much as they both got emotional in their responses.

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Tagged as: Blogging, Brazen Careerist, David Dellifield, Penelope Trunk, Twitter

  • Dave
    Penelope Trunk is a cunt - plain and simple.
  • Bob
    I thought it was shocking what Penelope did. The same kind of shock one might get from seeing two kids pee in a church fountain before setting fire to the confessional box.

    Someone makes a snarky remark on Twitter, and this woman goes berserk and calls him at work? David's remark wasn't even that bad - I've said much worse things to my friends as a passing joke.

    It's like a bad episode of Jerry Springer, or a Howard Stern prank gone wrong. But then again, I suppose that make for good reading.


    Moral of this story: Jerry Springer is way cooler than CBS News!
  • disgusted
    The big problem is that people think they can tell others how to live and think.

    PT was bored - it can happen - but David told her she didn't want her kids - one had nothing to do with the other. If you do the samething for too long, you can get bored.

    I had a total stranger tell me that I couldn't walk my dogs on my own lawn - where does it stop? Why don't people have respect for others anymore? Why is everything me, me, me these days?
  • Hi Rikin,

    I'm somehow back here again. Why? Probably because I need to write this comment.

    I don't completely disagree with what you're saying, and it's very well-laid out. I think you have to remember that Penelope is very popular and thus every move she makes is very criticized. It's not her "fault" because she puts herself out there for everyone to read. We all do that as bloggers, it's just most of us don't have a lot of people who care.

    Did she flip out on David? Maybe. But it wasn't because he attacked her and she couldn't take it. People attack Penelope all the time online. What I think is missing in this post (and others like it) is context: that Penelope probably saw David's comment as an attack on her children. That's how I would see it.

    Maybe her actions were extreme. But look. If someone attacked my children or my love for my children (and I don't even have children, so technically we're talking about my future children) I would probably go nuts. Because normal people who love their children go crazy over those things. And sometimes those people are semi-famous like Penelope is.

    Maybe you're right, but my sympathy is with P at the end of the day. I don't think what she did was that despicable and it certainly wasn't unprovoked when you put David's tweet in the context of attacking P's children.

    PS. No offense to Rikin or any other guys, I'm just wondering if there are any mothers who have written a post like this. I've only seen versions of this post on single guy's blogs. Just a passing thought.
  • Hi Monica,
    Thanks for coming back and leaving a comment that I know you thought about.
    I agree, it'd be nice to hear what a lot of mothers had to say about PT's
    post but I believe some have commented here and I know I've read quite a few
    comments by mothers on either side of the argument.

    I also don't think my post lacks the thought that David was 'attacking' her
    children because in my eyes that's a little bit of a stretch. I might be
    wrong but I just don't see how he 'attacked' them, I can't find any threat
    in there.

    Oh wells. I guess it's all over with now but we definitely can learn
    SOMETHING from this even if everyone doesn't take away the same thing.

    Thanks for coming by again!

    Rikin
  • Thanks for this post.

    I admit I found the BC post funny, from the standpoint of simple carnage. But really, this issue seems pretty simple: from an internet-level perspective, this David dude is six inches tall, and Penelope is a thousand feet tall. David poked her, and she stomped him into oblivion. Hard to argue with those facts.

    It'd be like LeBron James's wife slapping his hand and him punching her in the face as hard as he could. Regardless of whether David was in the right to slap at Penelope's hand, her response was not grown-up behavior in any place I'd want to live.
  • Shanus - those analogies were amazing and I literally laughed out
    loud.*Anyone else got a quirky analogy or three?
    *
  • I understand that you guys think my post was out of line. I want to suggest, though, that blogging for most people and blogging on a high-profile blog actually do not have the same rules.

    For example, you respond personally to most of your commenters, and if you ignored 90% of your commenters, you would be rude. On any given day, more than 90% of my commenters hear nothing from me, but I am known for actually being very engaged in my comments section.

    That's an example of how the rules are different.

    Another difference is the level of criticism I field. I have been on CNN getting slammed for blog posts. I have written posts on Yahoo Finance that received more than 500 comments, most of them not just negative, but imploring Yahoo to fire me. My Wikipedia page is often on lockdown -- as in all edits must be approved -- because people write such offensive commentary on it.

    So I am operating under a very different set of rules than most bloggers for what is fair game for criticism. In general, I would say I put up with most of it. I can generally tell when I'm going to get slammed on television, and I do the interviews anyway. And I leave up so many absolutely offensive comments on my blog that commenters actually complain that I should delete more.

    This brings me to, what are the rules for responding to people by name. I understand that I have a lot more power than David Dellifield, and when I put his name in a title, I affect his Google search results for a long time. I did that to make a point.

    Women put up with much more harsh criticism than men do online. This is not a controversial assertion -- it is reported in the New York Times and studied at the university level. Men are more rude to women than other men online. So it would be remiss, I think, to squander the power I have online. I have a lot more power than most of the obnoxious commenters of the world. I can use that power to let people know that they cannot be rude and offensive with impunity.

    Additionally, if people can say anything to me -- even on my own blog, since I allow almost anything -- then I should be able to say anything back. This is what real conversation is. You need to know that if you are having a conversation online with a blogger with a big audience, then the conversation will be heard by more people. That's what social media is about.

    This leaves the most common complaint: That I called his house and his work. I have found that in general, high-profile bloggers are very cognisant of the fact that their blog carries more weight than other peoples' blogs, and they are careful what they blog about because of that. This is true for me, too. For example, you never know the names of the men I date because it would destroy their Google search results, and I dont' think that's fair. The other thing I do, because I'm careful, is that I make a phone call to complain to someone instead of using social media. Because for me, anything in social media is a huge broadcast. I called David because this is what I'd do if I had a problem with anyone online -- I would take it offline to make it private. The problem is that after I tried to privately contact David, and told him that my feelings were hurt, he said a second, hurtful thing.

    I have a lot of experience dealing with people who think I'm an idiot. Almost universally, if I contact someone directly, they become more human because I am more human, and their criticism is less sharp. David's criticism became more sharp. At some point I need to draw a line and say that people cannot rip on me endlessly. I am a person, with feelings, and I can choose who I want to respond to and when. If I am endlessly irresponsible, people will stop reading me. If I am endlessly a doormat, I will be doing nothing to contribute to an authentic conversation online.
  • Colleen
    "I have a lot of experience dealing with people who think I'm an idiot."

    Penelope, you yourself and you alone, have caused a person to think you're an idiot. Namely, me. I never heard of you before this week and I certainly will give absolute zero credence to anything you have to say about life, careers, parenting....anything at all in fact, regardless of your credentials. Based on that one post of yours you have defined yourself as...well, I don't have a polite word to say what I really think, so...a psycho. A crazy stalker bitch. You say that men criticize women more harshly? Gee, I wonder why that would be your experience? Could it be that your over-the-top, insane, scary, stupid, ridiculous, unbelievable, oh and did I mention INSANE?!? response to a negative TWITTER (for gods sake!) simply reinforced in many lumpheaded males idea that we are silly and ridiculous and stupid and INSANE!!!! women?

    On behalf of we once-and-future bloggers, working women and moms: thanks SOOOO much for the boost in our credibility. (please note sarcasm) As if it wasn't already hard enough over-coming these stereotypes.

    If you call me at work, I will put you on speaker phone and my colleagues and I will laugh at you. If you call me at home, I will turn on the answering machine and record you and I will press charges for stalking and harassment.

    Rikin: this was an excellent blog post. You I will return to read.
  • Colleen - thanks for your passionate response to say the least, please keep
    the language a little more kosher next time if you could though. I agree
    completely that Penelope really has not made it any easier to put some of
    our stereotypes and gender misconceptions to rest. I just don't know what
    will anymore to be honest. I have yet to hear anything new and fresh when it
    comes to the topic of closing the so called "gender-gap".
  • Penelope,

    Thank you for coming by and offering the other side of the story. The blogging world is definitely hierarchical and I can understand that out of necessity your behavior is inherently different than mine or any other average blogger. I still think that rules of morality and decency apply to us all - though they're individually defined - and hopefully one day if I am ever at your level of exposure I can say that I upheld my rules throughout the journey.

    I also agree that, "if people can say anything to me -- even on my own blog, since I allow almost anything -- then I should be able to say anything back. This is what real conversation is." Where I disagree is that I don't think you had a 'real conversation' with David to get his side of the story. Regardless, you also attempted to offline and involved his wife unnecessarily. I don't see how you can justify reaching out to his wife simply because they share the same home phone number. Just because he mentioned his wife I wouldn't assume that she had any part in his response to you. It just seemed over the top to get her involved. Would you reach out to his parents for raising a boy without any manners if you could?

    Matt also makes a good point and since there's a lot of copy and paste going on I'll do the same: "After all the criticism you’ve taken, David, a relative unknown in comparison to the CNN’s and Yahoo’s of the world, makes one snide remark on Twitter - and it turns into this? You go above and beyond what anyone I know would do to ‘get him back’ for being a jerk?" I think that many of us feel that David's actions and relative lack of 'status' didn't warrant the response he received. We could probably go back and forth on this all day because like you said there's no right and wrong. What can't be denied is that this whole spat at least showed us the effects of taking one path. Some of us will be encouraged and others will be discouraged to follow it . I still stand with the latter group.

    The role of gender in this whole debacle is something I try to stray away from because obviously I don't know what it's like to be a female and a mother. However, I think there may have been better ways to set an example, as a feminist, in such a situation. No male or female should be mute and defenseless when personally attacked but when someone throws a punch you don't take out the guns, so to speak. Maybe you think that what you did was fair and justified but I still simply can't see that.

    Finally, I understand that you have a relative high amount of power and I respect all that you've done to achieve it. I think Brazen Careerist is a great community and the best I've joined so far even with all of its flaws. I think your writing and your track record speak for itself - impressive and controversial at the least. No one gets to where you are without stepping on a few toes whether intentionally or not. I just think some battles aren't worth fighting. I'd much rather read about your actual advice and learn from your experiences than see you intentionally haze others in an attempt to make a point. A point that I don't think came across to all of your readers.

    Thanks again for coming by. I'm not happy that this was our first way of introduction but I hope you can at least understand where some of us are coming from.

    Best,

    Rikin
  • Sarah Pare
    GREAT POST, Rikin.

    I used to be a member of the Brazen Community - I left for reasons *completely unrelated* - but had I still been affiliated, Penelope's post would have given me pause.

    In *know* that Penelope does not define Brazen, as Nisha points out. But she is part of the package - and her actions should reflect the ethics and flat-out common decency that Brazen strives to uphold. And if her actions cannot, well then, she shouldn't tell us all about it in her blog.

    Thanks for writing this one.
  • Sarah Pare
    Actually, wait: I don't *know* that Brazen strives to uphold ethics or common decency. I'm going on the sparse experience I've had with Ryan Paugh, who in all my years online was one of the nicest people I've been in contact with and gave me great faith in the Brazen community.

    I'm making the addendum because I don't want to assume anything, here.
  • Thanks Sarah! You rock. And we miss you.
  • Don B.
    I thought your post was great and I understand your thought. I have always found anger whatever the catalyst, is an emotion that leads to irrational and regrettable behavior. If the target of this anger is considered not a public figure that attack seems even more risky. I found the post and the comments uncomfortable and inconsistent with traditional Penelope writing. I am hoping she will decide she was wrong and post again regarding any lessons learned from what occurred.
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