The Blogosphere Strikes Back
Jeffrey Hoffman, a former play-by-play baseball announcer now working as a web developer, blogs about sports for the Huffington Post, to which, on or about January 14, he uploaded an item predicting chaos and mayhem at the forthcoming South Africa-hosted FIFA World Cup.
“As you probably know,” he wrote, “the World Cup is scheduled for South Africa in June of this year. Many present and former residents see this as a potential recipe for disaster, and for good reason. Most would agree that three of the major venues, Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town are cities where lawless mobs run rampant and threaten both classes on a regular daily basis.” He went on to suggest that readers Google something called “the Johannesburg Times” to find articles substantiating this remarkable claim.
The response from the blogosphere and the twitterverse was swift and brutal, prompting the Huffington Post to do a most unusual thing. It removed Hoffman’s post from its site and replaced it with the above notice. Below is an example of the comment on Twitter, where Hoffman tweets under the moniker “firstwebcam”.
“retiefdv” is Retief de Villiers. “nausherrahman” is Nausher Rahman of Johannesburg, who describes his interests as digital media, politics and the blues.
