Betabeat has only just launched, and already our “hash cred” is plummeting.
Hashable CEO Michael Yavonditte didn’t appreciate Betabeat columnist Mike Taylor’s “Taylor Tees Off” column yesterday—entitled “Hashable Is Worthless”—and wrote to tell us so.
In particular, he took issue with the following passage:
“Apparently, in Hashable founder Michael Yavonditte’s fevered mind the whole world is a series of concentric VIP sections one must navigate, only to encounter Mikey Yavo himself standing guard over the last velvet rope informing anyone who makes it that far, ‘Sorry bro, you’re not Hashable enough.’”
Mr. Yavonditte responded on the record, via email:
“I do find the quotes attributed to me to be highly offensive and frankly ‘lies’. I never worked any velvet rope and I never said a word about people being ‘too Hashable’ or not Hashable enough. It’s just filled with lies. I don’t like liars.”
To clarify, the piece did not intend for the quotes to be read as actual, but as our columnist’s projection of what might have been going on in Mr. Yavonditte’s “fevered mind.”
An editor for Betabeat wrote back to Mr. Yavonditte to explain that Taylor’s article was “an opinion piece and intentionally, comedically extreme in tone.”
Mr. Yavonditte replied, in part:
“No one read it as parody – not even in the slightest. It was simply a piece of trash – a mean-spirited article that everyone thinks is real, and which many are shocked by. I am not going write a single thing in response other than to put you on notice that I will come after you if I ever see such nonsense again. I may come after you anyway.”
A new website, Betabeat launched with the stated intention to provide a more skeptical look at the New York tech scene. Like many journalistic outlets, we run opinion pieces as well as reported stories.
