Here's the whole story, since our dear friend is backing out
The initial contact with the fake IPL blogger was established via a journalist of repute, a relative of mine with the Financial Times, who is not a sports reporter. He passed along the e-mail address of the fake IPL blogger—this was the same e-mail address used by the blogger and/or his cohorts to publicize the blog to reporters and journalists. After he responded, along with Dhruv, Blwe, and Broadbat, we discussed the details for this arrangement. As bloggers are, by nature, egomaniacal creatures who revel in free publicity, we offered him a grand stage (with lighting and BOSE speakers) to voice his opinions, promising to take out a full colored advertisement on Thursday’s Times of India and the Hindustan Times (May Day--he thinks of himself that way) regarding the interview with prominent links to his blog. In addition, we bought almost every keyword related to the the fakeblogger from google, including links that would go toward the blogger’s site (he’s a good negotiator and I’m liberal with pooled money).
Of course, we wanted to know whether this is the real fake IPL player. To this end, we asked him to provide us with a copy of the blog article before he put it on the web. During our highly entertaining chat, filled with choice Hindi words, he said he’ll do so immediately. Almost minutes after sharing his impromptu poem on the messanger, he posted that impressionist post-modern classic, ‘BubLee aur Bubli.’ If it weren’t for the fact that we were trying to coax him to do the interview, we would’ve been stricter critics of his poetry…
We even have the other versions he’d written up—
(snippet: Some games ago, Badshah Dildo promised us a treat if we won. A night out at house of rasputin in cape town. Dildo makes a lot of promises as he’s assured we cannot win. Having obeyed commands from laptops all week, we felt the need to configure our own laps. Dildo never delivers on his promise anyway except when he performs mujra in weddings…we’re saving the rest for the day the IPL blogger reveals his identity…we await eagerly.)
I want to add—in all honesty, I did not particularly care if this was a real KKR player or not and that was perhaps my mistake as it was quite clear to me that his impromptu online chat skills of deception were not as evolved.
The terms agreed upon were:
(1) We will sign a legal document agreeing not to release the IP address of the blogger in any circumstance.
(2) The fake IPL blogger (or brother or anyone else publicly associated with him) will not, within a 7 day period, agree to be interviewed on any other cricket-related website/newspaper/journal/magazine/etc.
The original interview was to take place in a chat format with QandA flowing as freely as women come for Ishant. However, on April 24th he said he cannot do a live QandA. I could understand how this would be akin to Obama doing a press conference without a teleprompter, so offered him a match thread format where people ask questions and he takes his time to type out the responses to certain questions.
He declined this too and said the main problem was that I’d then have access to his IP address as there was nothing stopping me from handing it over to the KKR management (as if I’m a Dildo fan).
Understanding that healthy amounts of paranoia is a reasonable thing to expect in a revolutionary renegade type of blogger, I thought I’d allay his fears and promptly told him that I already had his IP address from the e-mails. After accusing me of hacking his computer, he demanded that I not hand it over to the Knight Riders. He said he feared dildo would end his career. “Well,” I asked, losing my patience, “is this your writing career? Or is Dildo going to hunt you down in London, considering all your e-mails arrive from there?” [for the slow reader, the SRK fans, all e-mails we have received—from brother, associate, disgruntled roomies, all originate from the same IP]
After this, he became both more agreeable to do this interview but also more irate as practices and peeping Lordies were no longer good excuses to cut off our conversations. Personally, I’d enjoyed reading his blogs and pompous chatting, however flattened they’d become by his current predicament of posing to a group who knew better.
It was going to be business as usual. We were giving his fading act new legs and he was giving us a chance to spend thousands of our money on advertising him—a good deal for all. Alas, peace was short-lived as he was now ‘uncomfortable’ and weighed down by moral indignation against CricketVoice, a non-worthy site undeserving of his superior insider’s view of things. We were going to settle for a dull, dry interview at the end; at this point, we just wanted it done.
But he wanted out and accused CricketVoice of ‘forcing his hand’ as if we’d asked him not to use a South African proxy!
Initial payments for ads had already been made at this point and we found the behavior unacceptable given that we’d played along with all of his demands. We managed to postpone our ads for another event through our press contacts but money had also been spent on promoting his site. We asked him to keep his end of the deal.
At this point, he stopped responding and replied with a post on his blog:
“P.S. I think some website's been advertising that I am appearing for a live chat. That's not true. Under the circumstances I can't live chat at all and nobody knows who I am.”
And what circumstances that might be remain anybody’s guess!
We e-mailed him again and asked him to keep his commitment.
The question is, will he?
To the fakeiplblogger, I know you’re reading this because I see your IP address browsing the site—we’ll interview you in your almighty fake self because we never did think you’re real, though we always thought you were more sincere than dildo and his motley crew! We admired your courage, even when you were afar from the action, to bring to light the mayhem that is the Knight Riders. We agreed that dildo and laptop should not be running teams--so, please, join us in a week's time, refreshed from the scars inflicted on your losing stock based on KKR's insipid run (let's face it, even bloggers of teams like KKR are hit by performance recession). Join us, then, unless you take your instructions from a laptop coach at dildo's marketing agency.
AuthorTopic: The Fake IPL Blogger/Player's Identity Revealed (Read 5562 times)
July 22, 2007, 02:58:53 AM
