You know that awkward phase that children go through when they show their affection for someone by trying to get their attention with name-calling, or hair-pulling, or link-baiting? Well, Henry Blodget is apparently 10 years old and has a huge crush on us.
The Macalope doesn’t link to Henry Blodget anymore and this time it’s not worth even quoting. His latest mash note to Apple fans—“ATTENTION APPLE FANS: Samsung Blowing Past Apple To Become The Biggest Smartphone Vendor Is Not Good News”—is as trite and blissfully ignorant of basic facts as usual.
What Henry doesn’t tell Business Insider’s badly misinformed readers is that we don’t even know how many smartphones Samsung actually shipped, because the company doesn’t report it. That’s probably because it’s so confident or something. So the report he’s trumpeting is an outside estimate. The other thing Blodget doesn’t mention is that it’s an estimate of shipments, not sales. So, where Henry says “vendor,” he means “shipper.” Which is something different.
None of this is anything Blodget hasn’t said before, despite having been shot down repeatedly. He simply continues to write these scaaaary pieces while Apple continues to be wildly profitably and the iOS platform continues to thrive.
So, why’s he doing it?
He’s in looooove.
With our links.
See, we can assume one of two things: He’s either completely incurious about (or unable to process) opposing viewpoints and keeps saying the same thing because he still thinks it’s true, or he’s just link-baiting. Given Blodget’s history as someone willing to lie to make a buck, it’s reasonable to assume it’s the latter.
Also, of the five links in the body of the piece, guess how many are to other Business Insider pieces? That’s right. All of them, each of the insipid “Apple is doomed” genre. It’s a honeypot. Except instead of honey, it’s full of wrong.
Like Forbes, Blodget has picked his business model. He’s not interested in a quality product. He’s interested in generating hits however he can. Sadly, Internet protocols are not sophisticated enough yet to let you send negative links to someone.
Sadder still, you can’t stop people from linking to guys like Blodget. Which is why he still needs to be debunked.
On the plus side, it keeps the Macalope in alfalfa.
[Editors’ Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]