Whatever reputational damage he's suffered, he seems to have come by it honestly. What's to defend?
We are all flawed humans. I can empathize so far - but no further, because the thing that comes after "we are all flawed humans" needs to be learning how to manage one's own flawed nature such that its blast radius encompasses blameless others as closely to never as possible. It is not evident Allred has meaningfully done anything remotely resembling that kind of work.
Someone being exposed for leading a fraud organization for several years is not the time to call for "empathy". This reads as a astroturf manipulation tactic to make the guilty seem not as bad as they are.
thankfully this account has plenty of credibility and i have no ties to lambda whatsoever. tinfoil hat off. i can want more empathy while not absolving the guy of guilt.
skimmed it. was a fan of @fulligin since before he became a citizen journalist and have followed it closely, i didnt really see much new info here in my browse thru. i'm not saying to empathize WITH THE FRAUD lol, just responding to GP about why austen stopped answering qtns. yes he fucked up, now give the guy a chance to build Bloom into something legit instead of constantly reading the most negative take into simple things like stopping his hn activity as "A sure sign of the dismal state of things at Lambda/Bloom."
> now give the guy a chance to build Bloom into something legit
That'd be the (perhaps too) generous thing to do, but there's no evidence at this point that he has any interest in doing that. You said that he "fucked up", but there's zero reason to believe that the past tense and not the continuous present is appropriate here. To my knowledge, he's never offered an apology, an acknowledgement of wrongdoing - either in his predatory business model or his mendacious self-promotion - or a promise to do better. The last word we have from Mr. Allred is that he believes that everyone who criticizes him is a "hater" who's just too stupid to appreciate his genius.
The message of turning the other cheek is beautiful, but perhaps a little impractical to those of us who aren't totally Christ-like all the time, and - in the context of a conversation discussing clear wrongdoing - a little banal. We're not single-handedly going to stop him from doing whatever he wants with Bloom but we should say, very loudly, that until further evidence arises his history implies that he's not to be trusted and advise everyone within a hundred yards of him to be wary.
> yes he fucked up, now give the guy a chance to build Bloom into something legit...
Oh hell no. He gets my empathy, sure. Empathy is good for a cup of hot cocoa and a hug if he shows up at my doorstep in tears. But give him more chances to perpetrate fraud after he's been so thoroughly exposed? Hellllll no.
I'm usually a +1 for the empathy train and second chances, but it seems like the guy legitimately committed fraud and hasn't taken responsibility for his it his company's actions.
There's a big difference between an honest mistake and a dishonest one. Given the harm he's seemingly caused people through the dishonesty, it doesn't make sense to give him the opportunity to continue lying and harming people
