May 26
Please forgive me for the relative abandonment of Wednesday’s baseball game.
A compacting of technical issues — poor 4G signal, laptop overheating, and general computer moodiness — came together at the worst possible time to prevent any watchable stream from happening.
I’m starting to look at ways we can prevent this in the future, including alternate Internet providers and laptop cooling solutions.
I’ve never had anything like it happen, so I must admit I was rather unprepared.
We actually said we’d put this up a bit earlier.. a bit earlier being like six days ago (according to Gmail!) so excuse the delay.
Even though names are so often misleading, we have been assured that this will, indeed, be a fun run.
And it’s to help the Ronald McDonald House!
Regardless of what your feelings on McDonalds’ food is, there are two facts that need to be reinforced now.
But they still provide housing for families who have to stay with their children at the hospital. And that’s pretty amazing.
So, long story short, for those of you who have gotten tired of my writing by now:
Over last week (and this week, too!) we have seen three major “Dick”-styled sites go by the wayside:
The only copycats left up are 559 for Real (which, for all intents and purposes, is dead considering it has not been updated since its’ launch) and Visalia Dump, which barely released its first “dump” (as the owner calls it) on Saturday.
So these question need to be answered in the order asked:
There’s a few other ones, too, but we can’t think of them. So, oh well.
More as it happens..
Lemoore Dick Wall of Shame.
This is just terrible. I mean, the content is obviously, but the NAME.
This has to be the rational of the site’s owner: The site’s a copycat of Visalia Dick, so you throw in “Dick”. And since Lemoore is close to Hanford, which has Hanford’s Wall of Shame, you throw in “Wall of Shame.” And it is shameful just how bad the name is.
It looks like it’s the spiritual successor (or, perhaps, direct successor) to Lemoore’s Finest, which was another Burn Book that met its demise.
Find the Lemoore Dick Wall of Shame by clicking here to view the Blogspot page.
UPDATE: Facebook page has come up. Visit Lemoore Dick on Facebook by clicking here..
UPDATE #2: It looks like the Facebook page and Blogspot page have both been shut down.
Oct 20
As we see more Visalia Dick copycats go up, it’s nice to see some positive copycats, too.
The formula’s the same, too: put up everyone who was on Hanford Dick/Hanford’s Wall of Shame and say positive things about them.
Visit the site on Blogspot here — there is no Facebook page.
Visit the site on Facebook here.
Oct 18
“Visalia Dump”, a blog which openly aspires to one-up Visalia Dick, has started up as of yesterday.
The site is both on Facebook and Blogspot. No content has been published yet.
It’s the first of the copycats that has taken the (quite smart, actually) approach of fielding requests first — the site’s creator, on its blogspot, has stated “..start your complaints and whoever has the most points at the end will end up famous” — both making any attempts to find out where (s)he is from a bit harder and making people want to visit daily in order to see when the list of “sluts, hoes, doushebags [sic -- people who libel others cannot proofread?], cheaters, dicks, and fake people” is put up.
The site has no visitor counter so we can’t figure out how many have visited yet, but it only has 46 friends on Facebook at the time of publication.
(I wonder, can a class-action libel suit take on more than one person? People who have been featured on multiple sites could very well be in for a nice windfall of money..)
More as it happens..
Visalia Dick posted this on his wall last night:
SO THE COPS BE INTERVIEWING AND SCARING EVERYONE THATS ON MY WALL. LOL
AND NOW PEOPLE ARE LIKE “YO TAKE ME OFF CAUSE IM SCARED” ………..OF WHAT??? LMAO
There have also been rumblings of a possible lawsuit that were posted on his wall both by him and others.
When we asked him, over Facebook, “People are trying to sue you?!” he had this concise reply:
yup yup yup
So things are getting INTERESTING. We’ve asked him if he can tell us any more details.
Oh, and if anyone from the Police Department approaches us attempting intimidation, we literally have the SPLC on speed-dial. You think we don’t, but we do.
More as it happens..
“Four for you, Glen Coco! You go, Glen Coco!”
This is getting pretty old but pretty interesting at the same time.
Looks like Hanford Dick appeared yesterday. That makes it the third copycat site, and the fourth overall “Dick” site.
It’s another “Dick” site following the same model as Visalia Dick, though he’s differentiated by putting different people in different posts, which is DECIDEDLY GOOD. Not the content, of course, but the fact that there is at least a little uniqueness.
He’s got 227 friends in 2 days on Facebook, and ~3,300 views on Blogger at time of publication.
Here he is on Facebook and Blogger.
UPDATE: It was gone, and now it’s back!
The Facebook page magically disappeared and then returned, but the Blogger page tells visitors to go to Visalia Dick.
UPDATE #2: The site has rebranded as “Hanford’s Wall of Shame”.
The Facebook page still says “Hanford Dick.”
UPDATE #3: The creator thinks he’s the new Nick Denton or something.
He’s now started a blog called “Hanford’s Ballers”, essentially the antithesis of the “Dick” blog concept. Click here to view.
KSEE24 (our favorite news station!) has jumped into the fray on Visalia Dick. Normally we might say they’re stepping into “our turf”, but since they’re not the Times-Delta, who cares?
They’ve produced a short report which was shown on KSEE24 news at 6, and another separate report will air at 11 PM.
We were set to be interviewed by Lindsey Pena for the 11PM story because of our research on Visalia Dick and the two other burn books, but things fell out at the last minute. We have been told they’ve interviewed two girls from El Diamante for the segment, though.
Watch the 6PM report below:
Oh, and the fact that El D Administrator Jeff Brown can get back to KSEE24 but not us, when we were on this first, makes me mad.
El Diamante sucks, for ever, the end.
UPDATE: The 11PM story aired, by Lindsey Pena. A story that is seen “Only on KSEE24!” and touting that he talked “Exclusively to KSEE24!”
(We’d be mad but they’re not the Times-Delta, like we said, so we’re cool.)
They talked to two El Diamante students on-camera who both showed disapproval. They were not happy campers!
Then, in his first comment to the media (except, you know, not really), he answered KSEE24′s questions over Facebook.
In reply to the question: “Why do this?”
I guess the best way to answer that is to say that it was essentially to keep myself busy while not at work. Just a few laughs for everyone. We all need to learn that words are nothing more than words.
They also displayed another quote in which he defends what he does:
Some of these people are proud of it, and a lot of them actually request themselves to be up. The only people that have found it malicious are the people who aren’t on my page.
More as it happens — only on Whitney’s Buzzword..
Okay, so here is a brief summary of Visalia’s (currently three) burn books — presented for both your convenience and, more importantly, ours:
Major changes since then: none. No new content has been posted.
Has the person not received any requests or did (s)he realize that risking a libel suit is a bit “on the extreme”?
Major changes since then: The Facebook page of this site has become the first of the three to go down (voluntarily, but still taken down) by request of the Visalia Police Department.
The site’s Blogspot is still up. No new content has been posted on it, and we don’t expect anything to be posted unless the creator of this site wants some more nastygrams.
So, on to the next section: what the District is doing about these sites.
Oh! And if you’ve got any information to contribute or any concerns you’d like to raise, you can either leave a comment here or text us/call us at (559) 759-6397. We’ll keep you anonymous. Or not. Depends on what you want.