We’ve got a double-troll whammy today — twin trolls, if you will — from the always dependable John Dvorak at PCMag and from Sir Elton John in The Sun, that most credible of British tabloids. The former launched into one of his patented Dvorak rants, thick with portents of imminent doom but thin on actual facts and/or details, in this case about the coming bubble (a troll that caught Fred Wilson and Marshall Kirkpatrick, among others).
In typical fashion, the rant begins with a totally unsupported and ridiculously over-the-top statement:
“Every single person working in the media today who experienced the dot-com bubble in 1999 to 2000 believes that we are going through the exact same process and can expect the exact same results — a bust.”
Brilliant. Notice how it’s not just a few people, or even a few smart people, but “every single person working in the media today.” And they’re not just expecting something similar — no, they’re expecting the “exact same” results.
But the best part of this particular rant is the way he bolsters his argument that this is just another bubble like so many others, by pointing to the previous bubbles in CD-ROM software, pad-based computing, IBM-compatible PCs and software for word processing and spreadsheets. WTF? Apparently, any evolutionary process in which some companies cease to exist — even if they are bought by other companies — qualifies as a bubble for John.
Sir Elton isn’t in quite the same league as Dvorak (but then who is, really). Still, he manages to get off a few howlers in this Sun piece about how he wants to “close down the Internet” because it’s ruining the music business:
“I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span… there’s too much technology available… I’m sure, as far as music goes, it would be much more interesting.â€
Classic. Of course, as the article points out, Sir Elton has been raking in the dough from digital downloads of his music (just the right amount of technology there, apparently). His Elton-ness also tries to get us to believe that “in the early Seventies there were at least ten albums released every week that were fantastic.” Ten fantastic albums a week in the Seventies? By who — the Bee Gees? Captain and Tennille? Foreigner? Please.