Simon Blint : Internet Pariah

Don’t fuck with the internets. How simple is that? You piss off prominent members of internet communities and dude, you are toast. This is what happened to unsuspecting Director of Visitor Relations at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Simon Blint when he ran into Thomas Hawk, a renowned figure in the internet community of digital photography and CEO of Zooomr.com a competitor to Flickr.com.

Hawk attempted to take pictures at the SFMOMA as a paying member and it’s also permitted to do so. And I won’t pretend to know exactly what happened during his photo shoot (Read Thomas’ version HERE), but Simon Blint (pictured below) stepped in and kicked him out of the museum. Poor, poor Simon, look what you have done.

Simon Blint: Look at You Now - Picture by Thomas Hawk

No one knew who you were last week, now if we Google your name, you are enemy number one with so many links leading to blogs and postings on your assholeness, you’ll never get a date again. Then there’s the DIGG effect. 3983 Diggs as I write this. That my friend is being a hit on Digg but for all the wrong reasons. Hell even the SFMOMA’s Wikipedia page mention’s the incident.

On July 14, 2008, the museum revised its public photography policy to allow photography of the permanent collection (with the exception of some special exhibitions (e.g. the Frida Kahlo exhibition does not allow photography at all).

On August 8, 2008, Simon Blint, Director of Visitor Relations for SF MOMA, forcibly ejected museum member, artist, and well-known photographer Thomas Hawk while taking photographs of the atrium architecture.

The internet is mopping the floor with your sorry ass and despite what Hawk may have said or done, it’s all your fault.

It’s hypocrisy to display the works of famous flaneurs or street photographers and then kick another out for doing the same thing. It defeats the purpose of art. A museum kicking out an artist?!?  It just looks bad on the surface. But that, that is just sawdust. The real wood is that you helped reinforce the case that photography is some kind of crime

Ever since “the incident” in 2001 everyone has gone to paranoiaville over the smallest things, photography being one of them, which I fail to understand because in none of any  of the attacks, planned attacks, real or fake, were there ever any reports of pictures being taken before hand by suspects involved in any attacks. None. Ever. This is just more of the Fear Complex authorities like to build upon to gain tighter control over people but that could be another story all together.

People like to be afraid. So much so that they’ve convinced themselves that there are predators at every corner waiting to sequester and molest their precious little snowflakes. People are so afraid of potential pedophiles that any man near a playground is suspect (that’s another blog post alone) and any man with a camera is a pervert, a pedophile and of course a child porn distributor. This type of pedo-crazed-paranoia leads to stories like Gary Crutchley who was accused of being a pervert for taking pictures of his own kids sliding down a cool looking slide having the time of their lives. Nice huh? Here’s his digusting perverted Flickr Stream. What a perv huh?

Nowadays a camera seems to be like a doomsday device branding its holder as a terrorist, a criminal, a pervert, a pedophile and we are treated as such. How many times do we get asked “is that thing on?” looked at funny, stopped for questioning like we are witches at an inquisition.

As I have written before on another blog, I’ve had more than my fare share of trouble taking pictures in Montreal.

• I’ve been inside a building where the security guards heard the shutter – how is a mystery – and 4 guards came after me like I was holding the trigger to a belt-bomb.
• There was that time a wall fell down in the Metro. I barely got a shot off that the director was in my face telling photography was illegal in the Montreal transit system. Oddly enough someone was FILMING the station and trains coming and going and in plain sight but since it was a cute tiny little girl what harm could it do?
• In the ruins of old Montreal, far from the crowded streets, a forsaken decayed area, I’m alone, I take out my camera, I take it up to my eye…”Hey what are you doing there?” “Oh come on!” It was a torn down, burnt down building and I could not take a picture of it.
• And the funny one. I was in the foodcourt of the building of my workplace where I wanted to take a picture of something outside through the window. Nope I can’t, because of security reasons. I told them I had access to the entire building and could just go one floor up and take the picture there, so what’s the difference? No answer but to see the building manager.

This is all done under the guise of SAFETY, of protecting YOU and everyone else. Because there’s real danger out there. At any minute, a terrorist will jump out and blow up everything you care about and he’ll be holding a camera. Yeah that’s the ticket. And this is exactly what Simon Blint did, hid behind the security blanket like a big pussy. Because that’s what bullies are in the end, big pussies hiding behind their fears and anxieties. This is what makes you the epic pariah that you have become. You, a figure of authority, bullied a photographer who just happened to be properly jacked into the internet. This is why so many reacted, why they now hunt you down. Welcome to the World 2.0. The Geeks have inherited it.

My old man had a saying that translates to this:  ”It’s not what you do; it’s how you do it.” And Blint, did you ever chose the WRONG way. Maybe Hawk did also, but in the end whatever happened you were the one that would be held to the higher standard. As someone who works with the public you should know that assholes come and go but how they go is up you. This is why you fail, this is why you pay.