Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Catfishin': Creating Felix Salmon and the What, Why and How He Got Paid What He Got Paid

Catfishing has a specific meaning on the internet* and I in no way wish to impute that meaning to Mr. Salmon.
It's just that in life we all create ourselves (see footnote) and what with the Felix and the Salmon, I'm going with it.

From The Awl:

Felix Salmon, "Fusion Money," and Floating Upward 
What, why, and how he got paid what he did.
Last Friday, just after 2pm, the financial journalist Felix Salmon posted a blog titled “Why I’m Leaving Fusion.” It was a very short post indeed:

So, that is a provocative shruggie, is it not? At the very least it implies a cheeky “I don’t know (I know)” along with a dash of womp-womp (“not of my own volition!”). Salmon was most recently “working to develop and launch a new project that will explore the world of philanthropy, activism, social entrepreneurship, and spotlighting those working to try and make the world a better place,” on Fusion’s Rise Up “social impact” team, and before that, he had been a Senior Editor since the time he joined Fusion in 2014. For years, there has been rampant speculation among media types (loser dorks) about how much money the “hybrid television and digital media outlet” was paying to poach high-profile digital editors. But two weeks ago, the growing resentment within the Gizmodo Media Group newsroom toward Salmon and his significant salary—which because of a clerical error in 2016 had become an open secret in the newsroom—boiled over.

On January 17, in GMG’s media chat slack channel, Salmon revealed his money privilege in a way that didn’t sit well with some. “As someone who just installed a new kitchen in a rental at my own expense, I can say that decorating rentals is a good and sensible thing to do,” Salmon wrote. It seemed no one else in the room could relate—some took issue with the distinction between “decorating” and “renovating,” while others could not fathom having the money to do either. Salmon explained the sense in spending “3 months’ rent on making your permanent rental a much nicer place to live” thusly: “if you amortize 3 months’ rent over another 6 years, it works out at a pretty small monthly increase for a much nicer place.” Technically he is correct! Practically speaking, this is not the best thing to discuss in a room full of smart alecks who know they’re making a fraction of what you do:

Salmon dug into his economically sound but nonetheless tone-deaf point: “It’s cheaper than paying more rent to rent a nicer place. It’s much, much cheaper than buying. It’s still not cheap. But it does make financial sense, if what you want is, say, a dishwasher.” Tipped off to the exciting chat going on, several staffers joined in to make winking reference to their own financial status as self-pitying millennials who will never be able to afford houses because of avocados and baby boomers:
(n.b. Salmon LOVES talking about the the rent-vs.-buy calculation and rightly insisted buying is “vastly more expensive.”)
“I had a termite swarm this year, so termites caked my floor,” chimed in one person. Another uploaded a photo of a hole in their apartment ceiling. “Which is worse, a hole in the ceiling or a hole in the floor?” asked another. “My old place had a corner with rotting boards where anything smaller than a ping-pong ball would fall through.”

(At some point, Salmon left the chat, but the wonderment continued.)
The next day on Twitter, Salmon posted a tweet reassuring his followers he DOES NOT have enough money to buy a $10 million villa. Presumably he was implying he doesn’t have the twenty percent down payment (about $1.96 million), and any rumors of his wealth have been greatly exaggerated....MUCH MORE
HT: Longform

From the Urban Dictionary:
Purporting to be someone or something you are not on the Internet in order to gain friends, attention, partners, pity, sympathy or money. Named after the faux-documentary "Catfish", Catfishers have been known to post fake pictures of themselves (including but not limited to catalog images), claim to have a dying fiance or mother, or create an entirely fictional version of themselves.
Uh oh, did you see that perfectly posed photo of Donna she posted? That girl is so catfishin'.

Oh man, I heard Northlad's girlfriend is really sick. I sure hope he isn't catfishin' u