Chill out, GAF. Jason Schreier has written some great stuff on Wired, his blog, and even at Kotaku.
I really don't think too many people are attacking every little aspect of his career. You've got to admit, though, that there's some irony in the "People are stupid (lol Twitter)" article and this situation, however.
The only reason he took so much heat is because he tried to discuss it. It's far better than what a guy like Jim Sterling did with the "oh, you forever nerd virgins got me! LOLOLOLOLOL" type of update.
To be fair, I kind of expected something more about what Sterling said but I figured the whole "Seriously though, you got me good" part kind of smoothed things over.
The thing is, Jason came here about it and inquired about information. I expected things to go well from that. But he quickly went into "I see no proof, you guys are the ones making shit up" mode despite all the posts to the contrary. Perhaps there was some hostility towards him that kicked it into that mode, certainly, but it kind of went downhill from there.
If you want to be pissed about anything, be pissed that somebody with nothing better to do than to dupe a news outlet was successful. Eurogamer could have followed up better, it's true, but if the listings had been pulled, obviously Play.com would have denied that they had existed.
Who do we blame, though? The one who submitted it as news or the one who created it? I'm pretty sure the image creator didn't do it to troll anyone and it's not even a convincing photoshop to begin with.
There was no due diligence. At most, it seems there was some e-mails to the companies (which makes little sense, honestly, for proving/disproving this) and then ... checking the other news websites? "Well, they reported it must be legit."
And, again, this now isn't really about that people fell for it. It's about how the reaction to it. "Hahaha, those silly journalists" only went so far; "I'm not wrong until you guys prove I'm wrong, ps bansssss" is the fuel here now.
Edit:
There's no reason why this needed to blow up into a crazy thread of personal attacks.
This is definitely true, though. Some over the top hostility was present, he gets defensive, and then it just kind of built up from there. Then again, in about a week nobody will care.
Well, unless Monster Hunter, Tales of Innocence R (US), GTA, and Type-0 HD get announced tomorrow. Then this will live on forever.