In stage two of George Clooney’s war on the blogosphere, the heralded producer of Academy Award smug (see South Park’s snarky send up) has launched a spam attack against online celeb gossip rag Gawker. It all began with a silly little Google Maps mashup.
Stage one of Clooney’s War was sniper shots at Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post blog, where Huffington purportedly contrived a post authored by the actor.
Stage two is an assault on Gawker Stalker, a Google Maps mashup that lets fans post sightings of their favorite celebrities and track them on the map.
Concerned about the safety and privacy implications of celeb-tracking, Clooney, according to the New York Post, gave this directive to a team of publicists:
“There is a simple way to render these guys useless. Flood their Web site with bogus sightings. Get your clients to get 10 friends to text in fake sightings of any number of stars. A couple hundred conflicting sightings and this Web site is worthless. No need to try to create new laws to restrict free speech. Just make them useless. That’s the fun of it. And then sit back and enjoy the ride. Thanks, George.”
The directive apparently was successful. Though Gawker doesn’t seem to be intimidated, offering copies of Oceans 11 and Oceans 12 to readers who can offer photos along with Clooney sightings.
On Monday, Gawker posted some of the emails they received plotting Clooney all over the country from Portland, Oregon to New York City, down to Florida and over to Utah. He even visited this emailer’s home:
“George Clooney is here in my house as I write this. He is having Jose the gardener build a bonfire to burn any and all books that I own that do not have his name or picture in it.”
Tag: | document.write(“Email murdok here.”)
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