Napster co-founder and former Facebook president Sean Parker speaks during the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Calif., Oct. 17, 2011.Robert Galbraith/Reuters
Please, cruel media, stop making such a huge deal of my lavish Lord of the Rings, magical oasis, rare forest wedding. Internet strangers, it didn't cost as much as you think, and it didn't do any real damage to the environment. The guests had fun (despite their medieval fairy outfits).
I am a Facebook billionaire, and I can pretty much have any kind of wedding I please. I deserve to be happy, and people are being mean to me.
Those are the Coles Notes of a PhD dissertation-sized article Sean Parker wrote today on Tech Crunch entitled, Weddings Used To Be Sacred And Other Lessons About Internet Journalism.
The former president of Facebook and co-founder of Napster, Parker has never been one for subtlety – we get that. But this 9,384-word article, featuring five summary points and seven sections, is absurd (seriously: were there no editors at Tech Crunch today?)
Really, his rebuttal could have been tweet-sized: Instead, in true ridiculous attention-seeking Parker style, we get a novel – arguably more self-indulgent than the wedding itself – on why he had the wedding, why he is misjudged, and why oh why won't people leave him alone.
No, I haven't read the whole thing, and I have no plans to do so. Three times, I have scanned the thing, trying to find a concise snippet, and three times nearly fallen asleep. Here's the best I can do:
"A mob of Internet trolls, eco-zealots, and other angry folk from every corner of the Internet unleashed a fury of vulgar insults, flooding our email and Facebook pages ... this was the sort of angry invective normally reserved for genocidal dictators."
Is one of the founding fathers of Facebook actually a) making the claim that he cannot figure out how to make his profile private and b) stating he's surprised by strangers hating on celebrities?
Here's the thing: his wedding looked out-of-this-world stunning. The two are apparently huge fantasy nerds, and if I were a J.R.R. Tolkien fiend with a $4.5-million wedding budget, this would be perfect. (The 'uproar' from this media organization solely focused on Parker's legal settlement, paid toward environmental conservation.)
What is actually offensive is Parker's outrage: as a pioneer of the Internet, he must be familiar with the mean-stranger-with-a-keyboard world. And for someone who allegedly hates all the press about his wedding, he sure did a great job tweeting about it.
Is it actually news to him that famous people – particularly very wealthy famous people – get picked apart online? And readers – particularly those who can hide behind an anonymous name – make brash, evil remarks at people they don't know?
What do you think: Should we extend Parker any sympathy? Is he making a last attempt at another news story about his magical day? Or does he actually need a lesson in less is more?