Here’s some stunning, Earth-shattering news: You know all those hundreds of incredibly stupid startups that have been raising seed money in Silicon Valley despite the fact that the people running those startups have no experience doing anything, ever, and have no idea at all how to generate revenue (let alone profit) with their lousy ideas, because, in fact, there is no way to make money with their lousy ideas, because in fact their ideas are lousy?

Well, nobody wants to give those dopes any more money. So now they’re going to go out of business.

I’m sorry that I didn’t end up really having a good review to give of your startup. I really am, because I’m not in any way a journalist (just an entertainer) so I don’t particularly like ruining my chances at getting invited back to people’s parties. (I did the knee-jerk nastiness thing back at Valleywag, but that was five years ago.) But it turned out that I thought the startup was something I’d never ever use, in ways that seemed entertaining. So that is what I wrote.

It’s really easy to see why so much tech coverage seems overly friendly and naive. Journalists (even fake ones like me) rely on sources, and sources only talk to you if you’re friendly. See also the fourth paragraph onward of this Penny Arcade post.

So when you finally write something frank about someone, you feel bad because you’re gonna see them react on your blog, and they will rightly be a little hurt, because you drank drinks they paid for, just like their friends did, and then you said something harsh publicly, just like friends don’t do.

But I think that’s still an important, valuable and entertaining thing to do, provided that I truly go into every party and every startup ready to like both. (For instance, I had nicer things to say about the last startup I quasi-reviewed.) But it’ll always be awkward when I issue a thumbs-down, because these are not big targets, and the founder will be right to feel a little hurt and betrayed by, again, some asshole who drank his booze.