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April Fools Day


DonRocks

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I swear to you all that it doesn't bother me if you cite *any* other website here, including Yelp! If you used it to find out information, I *ask* that you give it proper citation. I use Yelp quite a bit - it helps me: 1) check websites, 2) sometimes check months of openings and closings 3) get owners' names - actual, useful, stuff, and I'm glad I have it as a reference tool. If anyone uses it as a review tool, I ask you to cite it, just as I've always asked everyone to cite the original newsbreakers of things (which is generally not Eater; in fact, it's generally the organizations that scour public records which I just haven't bothered to do - it's just *so much* easier to cite them!  :)).

I have no problem in saying that what I don't like about Yelp! are the underhanded ways they used to get so big: threatening and harassing businesses, planting reviews both positive and negative - especially for thinly populated parts of the country, but mainly using threats as extortion. Of *course* their reviews are lame, but I don't hate them for that, and never have, and never will.

Unfortunately, we have hauntingly similar business models, once all the ritz and glitz has all been stripped away, and the two companies should be valued much, much more closely than we are, but the fact is that we aren't, and it's because I've never "gone the last mile" in making a nice-looking website that is thrown in peoples' faces, and I've never harassed businesses for money. Unfortunately, very, very few of the small businesses in the past ten years that I've supported have supported us back; when, in fact, we needed them desperately; instead, once they grew beyond the point where they needed us, they simply walked away. This has happened dozens and dozens of times, both with businesses and with individuals. Members of the press who recognize what we are, and what we do, give us enormous respect - up until the point when they're told not to by the companies they now work for (writers inevitably change jobs, and wind up at the three or four biggest publications which deliberately ignore us because we're "competition," and these once-honorable individuals just end up selling out - instead of being loyal to the one publication that lauded them when nobody knew about them, they just walked away, and never looked back).

I'll be making an announcement soon, and this all is going to come into play. It's something I've thought about for a long, long time, and the time is right: Matt is going off to college, I'll probably need to be moving, and I have no restraints whatsoever on where I need to be living, or what I need to be doing. I could possibly stay the course, and play the game of PR, advertising, and, of course, harassing struggling businesses and charging for employee placement (the average headhunter charges a month's salary; I always did it as a favor, both to the business I was helping, and to the individual I was supposedly friends with). Very few people have even said thank you, and one very famous individual didn't even tell me he had hired the person I hooked him up with - I wasn't going to charge him, so what difference would it have made?

Our so-called "core membership" of about thirty people bailed on us about ten years ago, mainly due to the work of one, particularly psychotic individual who shall remain unnamed. That one individual has more recently been joined by another, and also has several "friends" (to whom she does a splendid job of appearing perfectly normal), and this outcast made it her life's ambition to malign me personally, and to keep this website underwater. Oh, we've had a couple other complete, unadulterated, crazies, too, but nobody was as dangerous as this one particular person was. I've never complained about it, but I have retained all the evidence should I ever need it (and I suspect that one day, I just might - we're talking *that* level of crazy). It takes months - literally months - of hard, focused work - to recover from the damage that these crazies do, even though this is completely invisible to everyone here because I've made it as such. I once had a conversation with Jim Leff of Chowhound - we compared notes, and we were both horrified to find out that he, too, had suffered at the hands of this deranged individual. He wrote a very interesting article that, while not exactly applicable to us, isn't all that far off the mark: "Always Talk To The Mask."

I'd like to end this little rant which this post turned into, by saying that I genuinely love (truly, love) well over 99.9% of the people here; it's those several looney tunes - bonafide crazies - condemned into existence by the laws of mass statistics - that I would do anything to stay away from for the rest of my life. It is for you, the 99.9%, that I have kept the fire burning - to help you out in any way I could, to make your lives better, more entertaining, easier, more fun, and just to give you a little something to look forward to. I truly love you all, more than you know.

As for the businesses who should have been here, supporting us, no hard feelings - it's your call and your call alone. *I* would have done things differently, but even though I know full well that you're not my friends, and never have been, I understand it's all about money, and money does really fucked up things to people who would otherwise be genuinely decent human beings.

As for the PR, marketing, and "look" of this website, I have no one to blame but myself. There's a reason it couldn't get done, and I tried to explain that reason for over two years, and not one person showed any interest; actually one person did - she committed to me, and I told her the deepest, darkest, most private things of my entire life, only for this child to fall in love with some guy and move away. Yeah, I don't call that commitment, and to her credit, she's never used the personal information against me. The mistake I made was not to force her to sign a non-disclosure agreement, and that was a big mistake - I am way too trusting of people. And a very similar thing happened recently too, although with a different subject matter.

Ten good years, and with a little tweaking, we could have been a multi-multi-million dollar company; with a little luck, the right connections, and some hard work, we could have been a billion-dollar company, but it was not to be. People want Yelp? That's what they'll have - consumers, businesses, media outlets, and everyone else: They'll have Yelp, and vague, nagging memories of what could have been. As for the people who have stolen my hard work and unparalleled expertise over the years, using me to benefit their careers while having one foot planted firmly atop my neck? They've got their own set of problems, and I wish them the best of luck - they're going to need it.

I have always said that this resource will not be fully discovered until after I'm gone, and by then it will be too late, and it will merely be a learning tool for the students of the future, and the historians of the past.

For awhile now, I've been wondering when, and more specifically, how, to say this. Why not on April Fools Day?

On April 15, 2015, we will celebrate our 10-year anniversary - we had our "soft opening" on April 13, 2005, and our "official opening" on April 15, 2005.

Many people who were around during that time are still here, but most of our members joined long after that. It is for that reason that I remind everyone that I began this community as a tribute to my late wife, Karen, who passed away at the cruel age of 33 from ovarian cancer.

I was determined that Karen's life would have long-lasting meaning, and I set about to change the way things are done, in her name. I emphasize: If it weren't for Karen's life, this website would have never existed - I'll leave to historians to determine the impact we've had on journalism, culinary science, reporting, and utilizing the internet as a medium of entertainment, education, and community.

Things are very different for me now - my son is going to college in the fall, my mom has passed away, and I have no remaining ties to the Washington, DC area, at least none that require my presence.

I am in the process of making arrangements for this website to exist in perpetuity, and for every post ever written to be saved, titled, tagged, and indexed. This is, essentially, going to become an enormous data-mining project resulting in the first-ever completely indexed social-media resource - imagine if every Facebook status update, or Twitter tweet, was categorized so they could be retrieved with just one or two clicks. We're not there yet, as there is still much backlogged work to organize and index in order to meet these standards, but not one word ever written here will have been wasted.

Going forward, I believe this will be viewed as a prototype for what is essentially "a pair of Google glasses" on a computer screen, capturing every moment of social-media life, and not losing a single word - "lost into the ether" will become a phrase of the past.

It is because of Karen Rockwell that this concept is going to exist, as others will pick up on it, and it will become standard interactive protocol in the future.

I want to thank everyone, especially our forum hosts, membership directors, and several other individuals of remarkable influence who helped gave birth to this concept, whether they know it or not.

Everything will remain accessible going forward, and will only become easier to find as the indexes become more and more honed.

Thank you to everyone involved with donrockwell.com - it was a wonderful ten years, and I'm proud to have been part of such a great experiment.

Cheers,

Rocks

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Where are you going, Don? Are you going to have a garden & a neighborhood restaurant? Best wishes to your son, as he goes off to school, & best wishes to you, as you transition to this next phase...(because I don't think this is an April Fools Day post).

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"Members of the press who recognize what we are, and what we do, give us enormous respect - up until the point when they're told not to by the companies they now work for (writers inevitably change jobs, and wind up at the three or four biggest publications which deliberately ignore us because we're "competition," and these once-honorable individuals just end up selling out"

So much so that they aren't even shoveling dirt on your grave today. What the hell. An active donrockwell.com will be missed, and I hope this is a "if ya can't beat em join em" somethingorother so your admirers can keep reading you somewhere (if this isn't an actual april fools thing). Either way, this crucial rant is punk as fuck.

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