John C. Dvorak & Ann Coulter: Separated at Birth?

Were John C. Dvorak and Ann Coulter separated at birth? Yeah I know, they don’t look anything alike (or do they? Hmm….) but rather it’s the recent revelation about Dvorak’s tweaking of the Mac community (Dave Winer & Robert Scoble mentions) and Ann Coulter’s recent slam of 9/11 widows which made me stop, think and realize there was a commonality between the two of them.

Dvorak is purposeful about his batting-the-bee-hive of Mac users to get ’em riled up and swarming. They come after him ready to sting. He knows (and anyone else who thinks critically) that this tweaking spikes attention which it does. He plays the Mac market like a fiddle (vs. a violin which would indicate he makes music). Drawing attention gets people to read his column which, in turn, helps his employer sell advertising, helps him get attention for other endeavors, yadda-yadda-yadda.

Same thing with Coulter: she wants to sell books. Hitting a bee hive or scratching on a fiddle doesn’t adequately express what Coulter does. Her manipulation of those left of center politically is so crass, so pornographic, and so hate filled that I’m still amazed anyone falls for it (and probably isn’t very safe. Luckily for Dvorak, there are probably fewer nuts in the Mac community and even nuts probably suspect he’s tweaking ’em). For Coulter, she knows that her purposeful and outrageous statements get people’s attention.

As the world of content accelerates into one where The Long Tail provides each person with what they’re interested in, there’s no question we’ll see an increase in manipulation as traditional media continues to lose market share.

Though I understand why they do it, both Dvorak and Coulter’s behavior doesn’t do anything positive, nor does it create a climate for discourse about stuff that truly matters.