The Carreon Saga

The Carreon Saga, Concluding

Wow, what a ride this little blowup has been. The sheer lengths people will go to in order to save face are often incredible, and just serve to reinforce the tenant that we are, at our core, driven by emotions, not logic.

Everyone's talked about Charles Carreon, how he dropped his lawsuit and declared victory. His list of accomplishments here is pretty short, and a comparison to the War of 1812 I saw seems quite apt. 

1. Inman did not add more charities to his fundraiser. Yay! Fewer charities were helped! 
2. Inman photographed a slightly different pile of money than originally planned. Also a victory! (He probably could have gotten away with his original plan, but I don't blame him for making that relatively minor concession to help end this). 
3. Oh yeah, Charles Carreon is famous now for having no idea what charity laws in California actually say, and demonstrating this very publicly. Terrible fail for a supposed professional. That's after this former First Amendment defender had to be told, quite firmly, that yes, the First Amendment does in fact apply to people who criticize you, too.

The Other Half

"But what crosses the line is when someone else starts making statements using words like 'idiot' or 'dumbass." - Charles Carreon, in an interview with Ars Technica.

The real thing I want to focus briefly on is Tara Carreon. While Charles' has at least somewhat tempered his words (several nonsensical 'songs' notwithstanding), when she came out swinging is his defense it was clear she utterly lacked even such minimal brain-mouth filter as he possesses.

Really, everything she has posted has been pure comedy gold, akin to watching a Something Awful main feature come to life. While the saga was ongoing I thought about doing a page-by-page, point-by-point analysis of her "Charles Carreon vs. the Illuminati and Matt Inman" thread on Nader Library (to which site she is, in fact, the sole poster), but with the thing pretty much over I'm not going to bother. Read it though. Comedy gold.

I do however want to call attention to her last post on the subject, her own declaration of victory:

"We're making the video, "Psycho Santa," right now. It's going to be interesting. We're coming onto your playground, evil children. We're going to make an intelligent video. It's not like there are very many out there. Thank God for the ones that are there. It'll probably be another day or two. There is so much you can do when you make a video."

 She is making a video and putting it on YouTube. That'll show us - that is how you 'defeat' the Internet generation.  I bet the comments will be awesome.